Solving the Problem of Evil (not RWE Session 3) | Louis Azuma

Speaker: Alright, so our last session is gonna be, we're

gonna solve the problem of evil.

Okay?

That's what we're gonna talk about.

Um, essentially, um, we talked about, okay, so evil is under God's control.

Evil is part of God's good plan.

He uses evil for good, and now we're gonna see that God provides

the solution for evil, okay?

God provides the solution for evil.

That's our sermon in.

In one sentence, God provides the solution for evil.

Um, and we kind of talked about this yesterday, right?

But eventually there's gonna be no more evil.

Remember we talked about lines and line segments and rays, right?

Your favorite subject of geometry.

Um, we talked about how evil is a line segment, right?

There's a starting point.

There's an ending point.

There's gonna be a, a moment where evil stops there.

Will it stop existing?

It'll be totally gone.

Um.

That gives us really a hope that no other religion really has, that we have a God

who's not just using evil for good, but one day is gonna get rid of all of it.

Alright?

And that's our first point is look forward to God's victory over evil.

Look forward to God's victory over evil.

One day, evil's gonna be gone.

All the bad things that we've been, you know, talking about, okay,

how is God using this for good?

How is this gonna work out?

How is this gonna be?

Okay?

Um, God is gonna put an end to all of it

when we think about evil, right?

There's two main categories, if you will, right?

There's, um, there's the effects of sin and there's sin itself.

So sin, right?

Uh.

Happens, right?

People sin against each other, right?

People gossip, people lie, people hurt each other, right?

That sin, there's, there's the sinful actions, but also when sin entered

the world, when evil first entered the world, the world got messed up too.

The whole world, there were these problems, right?

If you think back to Genesis three, right?

When, when God, um, came to Adam and even said, Hey, where are you, Adam?

They're trying to, you know, say, oh, well, you know, we

were, we were afraid, whatever.

Right?

They're making excuses.

And God curses not just the serpent, he curses the ground.

Right?

He curses the ground and he says, it's gonna be really hard for you to work.

There's gonna be, um, there's, you're gonna, he says, um.

The, the ground is gonna be, it's not gonna be easy for you to, to,

um, do all your far more stuff, Adam.

It's gonna be hard for you to do it right?

And we see that in our lives.

The world is messed up.

That's why things like natural disasters happen, right?

That's why people get sick, right?

It's not because necessarily that they sinned, right?

Whenever you get sick, it's not because you know you had a bad week with God.

It's partly, it's because we live in a world that's messed up.

When you sin, uh, or when, when bad things happen to you, sometimes

they're natural bad things.

The world is naturally messed up and one day God is going to get rid of it.

But before that, I want you to think about when you, right now, right?

We're operating in this, in this broken world.

So we have this, this messed up world that we're living in, right?

It doesn't work the way we should.

I, I grew up playing on, um.

The way my family did video games, we bought these consoles

and we never upgraded 'em.

So I played on a PlayStation two for like 15 years.

Um, I had like Madden oh nine FIFA 2008.

I had the original Lego Star Wars.

I had the 2004 Star Wars Battlefront.

Um, those were the games.

I, and I played those for 15 years.

And sometimes if I go back to visit my family, my dad and I will still,

we'll still fire up Star Wars Battlefront, that's 21 years old.

And we'll play it and it works.

But sometimes what happens is it'll freeze.

So we, we had to stop playing.

We tried to play Lego Star Wars just for fun.

And, um, we can't play Lego Stars anymore because whenever you transition between

scenes and the level, it just freezes.

So the video game is messed up.

So we can't play like the console's old.

It's broken, it's messed up Sometimes, um, when we're playing.

When we were playing fifa, it would just freeze.

If you did too many like moves in a row, game would just freeze.

And then you'd have to like tap the side of the, the PlayStation and then

the disc would start spinning again.

You guys are like, boy, video games come on, discs.

What is this?

Um, and then it would start working again, right?

Um, me playing on my old PlayStation two, right playing FIFA 2008.

I expect it to freeze.

I'm not expecting it to work perfectly.

But if I'm at a friend's house and they've got, you know, their PlayStation

five or whatever, and they're playing FIFA 2026, if it freezes, I'm gonna,

I, that's, that's unexpected, right?

So part of this is when we're looking to God's looking forward to God's

victory over evil, we want to adjust our current expectations of the world

because part of looking forward to God's victory over evil means recognizing

that, hey, right now the world's broken.

The world's gonna freeze, if you will.

Right.

If, if you try to get all your happiness from the world, it's going

to, it's broken, it's messed up.

It's not gonna work exactly the way it should.

Right.

Just like my PlayStation two, it doesn't work exactly the way it did back in 2004.

Right.

Um, the world doesn't work exactly the way it's supposed to work.

People get sick, right.

People die.

Um, things don't work out the way exactly.

They, they should have.

Right.

It rains when you wanted to do something fun outside, right?

Um, it there's an ice storm when you were supposed to go to winter camp and

you have to move winter camp, right?

Stuff like that happens.

The world doesn't work the way it's supposed to work, and I want you to

expect that, expect the world to, to not always end up going very well for you.

Right?

Expect your life to encounter a lot of problems.

Sometimes I think we expect too much of the world, right?

We expect the world to run perfectly.

No.

No freezes.

No skips, no, no issues.

And then we're let down when it happens.

I mean, part of it is you adjust your expectations.

You say, this world is broken, this world is messed up, right?

People are sinful.

My friends are gonna let me down, right?

My people I care about are accidentally gonna offend me or

sometimes even purposely offend me.

Expect the world and the people in the world who are part of the problem of evil.

Right?

To.

Sin and to let you down, and that helps you in the meantime to look forward

to when it's not gonna be like that.

Right?

I want you to imagine that you were playing on my old PlayStation two, and

you're, you're stuck there with, with the game that freezes all the time.

It doesn't work, but you're like, oh, but I know for

Christmas I'm getting a new one.

I'm getting a PlayStation five, right?

I'm getting the newest model, right?

Let, let's say the PlayStation six was coming out or whatever, and you were

like, oh, I'm gonna get the newest model.

So every time the game freezes, or every time you can't play the game you

wanted to play, 'cause it doesn't work.

You can think, well, okay, in 10 months I'm gonna be able to do

this and it's gonna be awesome.

Right?

And you get more and more excited about it every time you look at the current

state of how messed up your, your video game is, how old it is, right?

I want you to think that with the world, I want you to, to look at the world and,

and when the world lets you down, right?

When you're, you're, the thing you are really excited about isn't as

good as you thought it would be.

Or when someone sins against you and it doesn't, um, it doesn't feel good.

Right.

And you have to reconcile.

You have to forgive them.

You have to, you know what we were talking about on Sunday?

Like, you have to overlook an offense.

Once you think about, man, there's gonna be one day when I'm not gonna sit against

anyone and no one's gonna sit against me.

There's gonna be one day when I, I'm never gonna stub my toe anymore, right?

There's gonna be a day when I'm never going.

To, to have to deal with all, all of these bug bites and right.

There's gonna be a day when the world is not going to to be broken anymore.

It's gonna be fixed, be perfect.

And so use those opportunities to look forward to what's coming.

Use the the letdowns of the world to say, Hey, one day God is gonna fix

this and it's gonna be so much better.

That's what we see in at the very end of the Bible, right?

Revelation chapter 21.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

It's talking about God.

He is talking about this event.

When God finally gets rid of all the, the messed up stuff in the world, it says God

will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Think about all the things that have made you cry, right?

There's small things that have made you cry.

There's big things that have made you cry really hard.

Things that have made you cry.

God is saying that one day he is going to bring you comfort.

You won't have to carry the weight of that pain anymore, like that loved one that

she lost or that disappointment you had.

Right?

God is going to bring you comfort.

One day he's gonna resolve all of the issues, and death will be no more.

Right?

We even, you even feel that right?

You, when someone close to you die, you feel it is not supposed to happen.

They're not supposed to be gone anymore.

We're not supposed to have that empty chair at Christmas.

You feel that, right?

Even as young as you are, you feel that.

And as you get older and more people die, that you know, you'll feel it even more.

But one day it's gonna be, it is not gonna be like that.

And there won't be mourning, right?

People won't be sad.

That's, you know, not mourning like sunrise, right?

Mourning, like sad mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore for the

former things have passed away.

They're gonna be gone.

There's nothing that you're gonna be sad about anymore.

There's nothing that you're gonna feel hurt about anymore.

That's the future, right?

But right now, it's not like that.

There are things that cause you pain.

There's things that make you cry.

There's there's death.

And use those moments to look forward to.

One day God's gonna fix it.

God's gonna win, right?

This isn't how it's supposed to be, and it's not gonna stay this way forever.

But part of it too is God's gonna fix you.

He's not just gonna fix the world.

He's gonna fix you.

Because we said earlier, right, that we're part of the problem of evil too, right?

Remember we said this yesterday, that you and I are contributing to all the stuff

that's messed up in the world, right?

We hurt people, we sin against people.

We're selfish, right?

You and I contribute to what's wrong with the world, and one day God

is going to fix you and me one day you're not going to sin anymore if.

You're in Christ, right?

And so if you, if you are, um, truly following Jesus, you feel this.

If, if, if it doesn't bother you that you sin, uh, that might be a sign that

you're not really following Jesus.

If, if your sin doesn't, doesn't create some tension or some disap and

sadness in you, that might be a sign that you're not really following Jesus.

But if you, if you do feel that disappointment, not, you're

not disappointed about your sin because you got caught, right?

You're not sad about your sin because you had some consequences, but you're

sad about it 'cause you're like, man, I keep offending God and I love God

and I don't wanna do that anymore.

I don't wanna do these things that Jesus died for.

I don't wanna do these things that God hates.

'cause I love God.

You can take comfort if you're a Christian, and the fact that one

day you won't do that anymore and that should make you so happy.

I know that makes me so happy.

If one day I won't have to ask God for forgiveness anymore, I

won't have to confess my sin and say, God, I have, I have hurt you.

I have sinned against you.

I've rejected you.

I've distrusted you.

You won't have to do that anymore if you're a c.

And if hopefully that, that brings you comfort.

If it, if that is like, whatever, I don't really care about that.

My sin doesn't bother me, that should be a warning sign for you.

Right?

That should be like, um, you know, like a check engine light for you of, Hey,

oh, something's wrong, something's up.

My sin doesn't bother me.

Maybe it's because you actually enjoy it, right?

But if it, your sin does bother you, you can take comfort in the fact that

one day I won't be doing this anymore.

It'll be gone.

Right?

I won't have that temptation to, to look at that anymore.

I won't have that temptation to feel that anymore or want that.

Are we sing that song sometimes at church, right?

Do you feel the world is broken and then everyone goes like We do, right?

Uh, and you don't know which part you're supposed to sing.

Like, are you supposed to sing the questions?

Are you supposed to sing the response?

Like, what about, you know, I always ask Pastor Rod, he just says, sing everything.

And I'm like, that feels weird though, right?

Anyway.

Um, but.

That's the point, right?

Do you feel this?

Do you feel, man, the world lets me down?

Or are you living for the world?

Are you saying that, oh, the world is is what I want.

I want everything the world has to offer.

And if you're not following Jesus, that's all you get.

The best you get is the broken PS two that freezes all the time.

That's the world, right?

You get some fun things, but ultimately they don't last very

long, and you always want more.

It's not gonna get you very far.

That's all you get.

If, if all you want is the world, that's all you'll get.

But if you trust Jesus and you say, this world is too small for me.

This world isn't good enough.

I, I need something better, something better, some one better to truly

satisfy me, you get Jesus right.

That's why he says you can gain the world and lose your soul.

So use the brokenness of the world to look forward to God.

Going to fix everything.

And most, uh, most importantly, right, you get to be with him, right?

If, if you put your hope in the world, you will get let down,

and that's all you're gonna get.

Um, use your, use your disappointments to look forward to heaven.

All right, so part of this too though, right, is that we don't just say, well,

God's gonna get rid of evil, right?

If God's not just gonna get rid of evil, you ever wonder, oh,

what's God gonna do about it?

Right?

When someone sins against you, um, do you feel like, okay, well great,

God's gonna like make sure they don't sin against me again, but what about

the sins that already happened, right?

Because if you say, great, okay, someone sin against me.

Let's say you, you, you're applying the first point.

You're thinking about it.

You're like, okay.

Um, so this person at school, they said something, they gossiped about

me and they, they made me look bad in front of all these people.

And then you say, okay, well, you know, one day I'm gonna live with God forever

and no one's ever gonna do that again.

And you say, that's awesome.

I'm so excited for that.

But what about that sin that just happened?

What, what's God gonna do about that?

Does he just say, well, don't worry, it won't happen again.

Right.

You ever, do you ever do this, like with your siblings?

Um, they do something bad to you and then they, um, you, you tell like.

I feel this as a leader sometimes, right?

Sometimes like, okay, how about this?

When we were playing yoga ball soccer, right?

Caleb kept using his hands, um, and you guys were like, Caleb's using

his hands like, oh, stop, make Caleb stop using his hands, right?

So Caleb kept using his hands during soccer and I said, okay,

if he does it again, I'll throw him outta the game, right?

But that didn't change the fact that I didn't do anything about the

fact that he'd already use his hand.

Right.

Like imagine if Caleb had like blocked the goal with his hands and I said, well, if

he does it again, I'll get him in trouble.

Right.

That I still didn't give you your goal back.

Right.

I didn't credit you with the goal, so, so what about that?

Well, great.

You're gonna take care of it in the future.

What about now?

Well, we can also trust God to do something about the sins

that have already happened.

You don't just have to trust God with the sins that are against you and

say, well, okay, eventually there's not gonna be any more of them.

You can trust God with the sins that have already happened that he can't do

anything about, and that's 'cause one day God is going to judge every single sin.

God is gonna judge every single sin.

So our second point count on God to judge evil.

God's not just gonna get rid of evil, he's going to right every wrong.

He's a good judge, right?

He's perfectly just

so every single sin that's ever been committed, God's

gonna do something about it.

He's not just gonna get rid of the future sins.

He's gonna do something about all of the past sins.

Now, there's two ways God does this.

Uh, I think we know one way that probably comes to mind first, right?

Is God punishes every single sin for the people who don't trust Jesus, right?

He punishes their sin in hell forever, right in hell is eternal conscious.

You're aware of it.

Torment.

It's really bad every if, if you're not.

Right.

If you, if you don't trust Jesus to pay for your sin, you are going

to be held responsible for every single sin you've ever committed.

Every single one, every selfish thought, every lie, every gossiping,

comment, every time you've love something more than God, everything

you've looked at, everything you've thought, everything you've said, God

is gonna hold you responsible for that.

You are gonna stand before God and give an answer for every single sin,

all the things you've felt, all the things you thought, all the things

you've said, all the things you've done.

And you can, unfortunately, for you count on God to do that, right?

God's not gonna miss some of your sins.

Or you might think you can get away with your sins.

You might think, well, my parents don't know about it, or

My leaders don't know about it.

God will God.

We'll find out about everything He actually already knows about

every single one of your sins,

and so one day he will expose your sin and judge you for it.

God is perfectly just, he's not gonna miss any of it.

He's not gonna minimize some of it.

He's not gonna give you 50% off on your punishment.

That's one way God deals with sin.

But what about a Christian?

What about a Christian sin?

What does God do with that?

He forgives it, but does he just say whatever?

No big deal.

We talked about this, right in Romans chapter three.

What does God do with a Christian sin?

He punishes Jesus for it, so God still judges my sin, right?

All the times I've sinned against people, right?

Millions of times.

God still did something about it.

He punished Jesus for it.

God did something about every single sin,

and so you can count on God to judge your sin, whether it's in hell or on the cross.

God will do something about all of your sin, and the best part is if

you're connected to Jesus, if you trust Jesus, you, you get all of your sin

paid for by Jesus, not just some of it.

You don't have to make up for some of it.

You don't have to to try really hard and do better, and then God will do it.

He takes all of it away.

He judges all of it on Jesus.

He puts all of it on him, and that's amazing.

Right?

So what I wanna ask you to ask yourself is, what will God do about my sin?

What will God do about my sin?

Is he gonna put it on me, or is he gonna put it on Jesus?

Am I gonna be held responsible for every single one of my

sins because God will do it?

Or am I gonna trust Jesus and say, Jesus, I need you to pay for my sin.

Your way is better than my way.

I wanna follow you.

I wanna live for you.

You're better than the world, and so I need you to take away my sin.

I can't do it.

I can't avoid it.

I can't distract myself from it anymore.

I can't.

Just be a good church kid and, and make up for it.

I need you, Jesus, to take away my sin.

So what is God going to do about your evil?

Is he gonna put it on you or is he gonna put it on Jesus?

But this also helps because you can trust God to punish the sins

of people who sin against you.

You, you don't have to say, well, God, where are you?

Whatcha are you gonna do about it?

Right.

Um, two Corinthians five 10 says, we must all appear before the judgment

seed of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has

done in the body, whether good or evil.

For some of you, this verse is really scary and it's for some of you,

this verse makes you say, I am so grateful that Jesus pays for my sin.

Right?

We all appear before the judgment seed of Christ.

So this is true about you, but it's also true about other people, right?

You can say, well, okay.

That person sinned against me.

I'm gonna trust that God is gonna do something about their sin,

and what that does is it frees you up right to forgive them.

You don't have to worry about getting back at them for their sin.

That's what God, uh, that's what God says in Romans 12.

Paul says, beloved, never avenge selves, right?

Don't get revenge for yourself.

Someone sins against you.

Don't get revenge for yourself, but leave it to the wrath of God for it is written.

Vengeance is mine.

I will repay, says the Lord.

So you can say, I don't have to get back at that person for

sitting against me because I know God's gonna do something about it.

And that frees you up to forgive people, right?

Someone hurts you, someone hurts someone you care about.

You don't have to get back at them.

You don't have to retaliate with your words or with your actions.

You don't have to retaliate with your thoughts, right?

Sometimes we say, well, I'm not gonna get back at them, but I'm just really

gonna be bitter about it the whole time.

Right.

That's still getting back at them.

You're just not actively doing it.

You're doing it inside, not outside.

You can trust that God's gonna do something about it and hopefully that

makes it easier for you to forgive them.

You can say, you know what, God, you're gonna deal with it.

I don't have to do it right.

You're God, I'm not.

I'll let you be the judge.

When I played soccer, um, which hopefully you saw that I was at

least a little bit athletic, um.

Uh, besides all my marching band stories, um, when I played soccer,

it was always better when I knew the ref was gonna call fouls, right?

I think we've, we've all played some kind of sport or done some kind of game where

you're like, oh, I don't trust this ref to actually make good calls, or I don't

trust this umpire to, to call the strike zone the way it's supposed to be, right?

Um, when I knew the ref was gonna call fouls, that freed me up right?

To, to just play.

I can play and I know if I get tripped, he's gonna call it.

I don't have to worry about, well, they'll kick me and I have to figure out how

to deal with it because I, I gotta stay up because the ref's not gonna call it.

Right.

When, when you're worried about, okay, well I gotta, you know, I have

to dribble even further around this guy because if he trips me, the ref's

not gonna call it, and what do I do?

Right?

You have a referee who's gonna call every foul.

You have an umpire who's gonna call every strike the way it's supposed to be called.

That was for you guys.

Um, you, you have a referee who's gonna call the game fairly.

And so, you know, you know what?

I can let him be the ref and I can just focus on my play, right?

I can just focus on me.

I don't have to worry about anything else.

I can just focus on loving people and forgiving people, and on following Jesus.

Because it's okay, right?

'cause sometimes this happens too, right?

You say, I'm being so faithful and they're not.

But their life is so much better.

You ever feel that, man, I'm a Christian and I'm trying to follow God.

I'm trying to be pure.

I'm trying to, um, obey what he says.

I'm trying to live his way and trust him.

And you're a classmate who is a total hypocrite and parties and does all

these bad things and plays all these bad games, and watches all these bad videos.

Their life seems way better.

They seem way happier.

Well, guess what?

You can trust God.

You know what?

God's gonna punish him for all of his sin.

You know what he's doing?

He is digging his own grave.

And I, I don't have to worry about, well, I, I have to figure out how to

make myself happy and, and compete with this, with this other person, right?

You can say, you know what?

I trust God.

God's gonna deal with him.

I can trust and follow Jesus and obey him.

Right?

It frees you up.

So when you see wrong in the world, right?

What since, oh, that person's getting away with that sin, I can't believe

that no one knows that they're just doing all that bad stuff, or I can't

believe that they sin against me and, and nothing happened, right?

Or maybe it's, oh, I can't believe that no one notices all of the

good things that I'm doing.

I'm trusting Jesus and my parents don't see it, and my leader doesn't

see it, and I'm serving God and nothing good is happening from it.

God is just right both to punish sin and also to reward righteousness, right?

We saw that each one will receive what is due for what he has done

in the body, whether good or evil.

So all the good things that you do as a Christian, God will reward you for those.

So if no one ever sees it, no one ever sees you being patient with

your sibling and forgiving them.

No one ever sees you praying for your parents.

No one ever sees you share the gospel with your classmate.

You can trust, you know what?

God sees it and he will reward me.

And what he's gonna give you is way better than what anyone else could give you.

So I want you to go to God with your desire for justice, right?

When you see something wrong in the world.

Your job is to say, God, I want you to do something about this, and I trust

that you're going to, that's your job.

Your job is not necessarily to go fix it.

Your job is not necessarily to, to get upset about it and, and

say, oh, how is this happening?

And get all worked up and, and harbor resentment, right?

That's not what you're supposed to do.

You're just say, God, you're gonna fix it.

I can count on you to judge evil.

It's gonna happen one day.

God's gonna do it the exact way he wants to.

You know when when you die and go to Heaven or hell, right?

You're not gonna be like, oh man, you know what?

God should have done something differently.

You're never gonna think that you're gonna be like, oh, that was a bad call.

Bad call.

Ref shouldn't have done that.

You're never gonna say that about God.

We're gonna say, that was perfect.

That was a perfect decision.

That's exactly what you should have done.

Isn't, that's such a good thing.

So when you see problems, right?

When you see injustice or unfairness or something wrong with the world, right?

You can say, God, you're gonna fix it.

You're gonna do something about it.

You're not just gonna stop it.

You're going to judge it.

You're going to give people what they deserve, or maybe he'll give you what

you don't deserve because you trust Jesus and he gives you grace, right?

What we don't deserve.

And that helps, right?

That helps us see, okay, um, maybe there's bad things that happen,

but we know God's in control of it.

We know God uses it for good, and we know that God's gonna do something

about it, and that helps us deal with the problem of evil, right?

If God is good, why do all these bad things happen?

But it doesn't always work like that on paper.

Right on.

Sorry.

It does, that's how it is on paper.

It doesn't always work like that in real life.

Right.

You have this great plan.

Okay.

Well, I, I can trust that that God's gonna work it for good.

And I know that he, he's everything's in control and I know he's gonna

do something about it and you know, all these things, right?

But how do you take it from, oh, I know these things.

I learned them at retreat to, well, actually now I'm trusting Jesus.

I feel peace about this.

I'm not bitter, I'm not resentful, I'm not.

Doubting God's goodness anymore.

How do you do that?

Well, you do that with God.

You don't do that apart from God, right?

You don't work through all of your stuff on your own and then say, all

right, God, now I figured it out.

Here I am.

What you do is you say, God, I need your help, right?

I want to trust you.

I wanna trust that you're working all things for good.

I wanna trust that, that you're gonna do something about this bad situation

that's going on that no one knows about.

You go to him and you say, God, please do something.

Please help me trust you.

And so our third point is, go to God with your confusion and concerns.

Go to God with your confusion and your, when something happens, you're

like, how could God let this happen?

Your first thing to do should be talk to God about it.

Say, God, I really don't know how this works, but I want to trust you.

When something's really bothering you, man, that person keeps getting

away with it and no one's noticing.

You go to God, you say, God, you're a good judge.

You see this.

Please do something.

And I trust that you will, that you do it with God.

God's not scared of your questions.

God's not like, oh shoot, someone's gonna ask me a question

and I'm gonna be stumped.

Right.

He's not like, oh man, they're gonna pray about something.

And I'm like, Ooh, I don't know if I could do that.

Right?

God's not scared of your questions.

Part of it too, right, is God endures evil, actually more than you and I did.

God went through injustice.

God went through.

People sitting against him.

God went through unfairness and people getting treated better or

worse than they should have been.

He lived a human life, right?

Jesus, the book of Hebrews says, um, talks about him being our high priest.

That means he's like our representative, right?

You think about what we read in our, our daily bow reading, the past few

months of the high priest is the guy who goes into the tabernacle, right?

He stands before God.

He represents the people before God.

He says, our high priest, he's not.

We don't have one who can't sympathize with our weakness.

Sympathize.

That means, right.

He can't say, oh man, I feel that too.

Right.

We, that's one of the reasons that we love that you guys get to talk to your

leaders about stuff is because they can say, yeah, I've been there too.

That's why we had give you multiple leaders too, because chances are at least

one of them can say, I, I have felt that.

I've been there.

I've done that.

Right.

Jesus can sympathize with.

Your weaknesses, right?

With, oh, I, I'm tired.

I don't feel like reading my Bible.

Jesus was tired and didn't wanna obey God too.

Or you're like, oh, it's hard for me to focus during prayer.

Jesus had to focus during prayer.

He, he was tired, sleepy, distracted.

He had to, he had to lock in right and focus with, with the weaknesses.

Jesus was hungry and had to serve people so he can sympathize with our weaknesses.

Um.

In every respect, right?

Jesus has been tempted as we are, Jesus faced all the same

temptations that you and I do.

Temptations to lust, temptations, to disobey his parents temptations

to be bitter or resentful or, or temptations to be anxious.

Jesus faced all of those temptations.

You're not, when you're praying to God, you're not talking to someone

who has no idea what it's like to be tempted, to be scared or be

tempted to be angry or prideful.

You're talking to someone.

Who faced all those same temptations and succeeded right yet without sin.

And verse 16, that should give you confidence to draw near to God,

to bring your weakness, right?

Bring your, your asking for help to God that you may receive mercy and

find grace to help in time of me right.

God is ready and willing to help.

He wants you to come to him with your questions, your concerns,

and and what's on your mind.

Right?

Part of prayer isn't just asking, God, please give me this.

Like, you're not just taking your shopping list to the prayer store and saying, all

right, God, here's what I need today.

Part of it is you process your emotions with God.

It's why Psalms is such a big book, 'cause it gives you so many different templates

for how to process your emotions with God.

But what's so cool about this, right, is that Jesus knows what it's like

to live in a world that's messed up and you can talk to him about it.

Jesus knows what it's like to have siblings who sin against him.

Jesus knows what it's like to have imperfect parents.

Jesus knows what it's like to have friends let him down, right?

He had a friend who said, I love money more than I love you.

Jesus knows what all this is like.

He had a friend who say, I don't even know that guy, and bailed on him.

Jesus knows what it's like to have to forgive a friend who really offended him.

Jesus knows all of these things and you can talk to him about it.

And also, Jesus endured evil, right?

Jesus endured more evil than you and I ever will.

The greatest evil in the history of the world was directed at Jesus.

So he knows what it's like to live in a messed up world, and you can

talk to him about it, like God wants your questions and your doubts.

There's a really cool book in the Bible.

It's the book of Habakkuk and it's a short book, minor prophet.

Um, one day maybe he'll make it to the major prophet league,

but um, right now he's in the miners top prospect, as they say.

Um, yeah, you're welcome.

Um.

Anyway, that was for like five people just to see if you're awake.

Um, but there's this cool book called Habakkuk, and what's happening in the

look of Habakkuk is there's this army from Babylon that's invading Israel.

And God is like, yep, I'm gonna send these Babylonians to invade Israel.

And the Babylonians are like the worst people out there.

They're like.

Evil people.

They're, they don't even worship God.

They don't care about God.

They, they do horrible things to the people.

They invade, they enslave them, and they send them all over the place and

kind of destroy their, their culture.

Um, and Habakkuk is like, God, how can you let this happen?

Right?

You think about all the bad things that happen in your life.

There's.

Probably right?

Not an invading army coming in to destroy you and your family, Makki.

He's saying, God, how can you let this happen?

Why?

How can you who are a he?

He says, God, I know you're a good God.

I know you.

You hate sin.

How can you let these sinful, awful people do all this?

And he talks to God about it, and then God responds to him, which is

kind of crazy when you think about it.

God doesn't have to respond to you.

God doesn't have to answer your questions.

He's God, right?

You're just you.

I'm just me.

God doesn't have to say, oh yeah, I'm gonna answer Lewis 'cause who am I?

Right?

I'm just a random person that God made outta dirt.

So God answers Habakkuk, and then Habakkuk is still kind of confused, so he talks to

God more and he, he brings him some more questions and then God answers again.

And then at the end, Habakkuk says, you know what?

Even if all of these bad things happen, I can still trust God.

I can still trust that what you're doing is good, right?

What you're doing is, is from a, your heart of love and of goodness, and you're

still a good judge and you still hate sin, and I can believe all these things.

You're gonna use it for good, but the point, right, isn't just the

conclusion, okay, I trust God.

Right?

I don't want you to just put my, I trust God bandaid over it, right?

Because sometimes that's what we do.

We say all these bad happen, but oh, God's working everything for good.

It's like, okay, well what, where's the process there?

Do you go to God with your doubts?

Do you go to God with your confusion and your, your questions?

You spend time in prayer talking to him and working it out?

Or do you just say, oh yeah, trust God, it'll be better.

Right.

Don't, don't put your trust God bandaid over it, right.

Talk to God about it and work through it with him.

Right.

You're not going to give God a question that he's gonna be like, oh,

I never thought of that.

Sorry, dude.

You're on your own for that one.

Right?

When God, um, when God gives us his word, he gives examples of what it's like.

To talk to people or to talk to him and process that.

And also, God gives you other people, right?

God gives you your parents, your leaders, right?

That's why we're here.

We care about you and we wanna help you, right?

This isn't just like a, oh, you gotta have everything together,

otherwise you're a bad Christian.

It's like, no, the, the point is the process, the process

of I want to go to God.

So when you have doubts about God's goodness, right?

When you wrestle with some, some really bad things that happen in your

life, when the world lets you down.

We talked about this yesterday, but don't turn away from God.

Don't isolate yourself.

Turn towards God and bring it to him and trust that he is good and he has

all the things we talked about, right?

I'm giving you bullets for your gun, right?

We talked about this in Roman six.

I'm giving you bullets for your gun and you believe them.

You, you load 'em and you shoot them, and you, you right.

Keep firing.

Keep going to God, right?

Don't just say, well, I tried to pray once it didn't work.

Well, keep going.

Maybe God wants you to, to learn what it's like to be a persistent prayer, right?

So you'll talk about that more in small groups.

So let's pray, um, and we'll go do that.

All right?

Make sure that you have your, um, clean up responsibilities ready, um, and then pack

up your rooms and we'll be good to go.

All right.

Let's pray.

God, we.

Love you.

And we're grateful that you are bigger than our doubts.

You're bigger than our confusion.

You're bigger than all the problems in the world, and that you're

gonna do something about it.

So I pray, um, that you would help us to look forward to what you're gonna do.

Help us to be confident that you're gonna get rid of sin, that you're going

to, um, even get rid of the sin in us.

And I pray, God, I I, I desperately ask you that every single person in this room.

Would be together with you in heaven.

I, I pray that not a single person here would, would turn away from you

and live for themselves and fall for the lie that the world is all there is

and it's the best thing they can have.

I pray that the brokenness of the world would give us a greater desire

to be with you and to know you.

Um.

In the meantime, God help us to process our doubts and our confusion

with you and not apart from you.

We pray this in Jesus name.

Amen.