Faith and the Grieving Process | God and Suffering

Hey Redeemer Church.

This is Pastor Matt Armstrong here.

Over the last few weeks, our church has held a couple events on Sunday evenings.

One dealt with the topic of grief and how we can grieve as Christians.

And the second one is on the topic of God and suffering.

The recording device for those events did not work, I'm sorry to say.

And so that we can have these talks online, because I promised a number of people that we would, I am going to read those talks now and so that we can put them up online.

Please feel free if after listening to this, you have any questions or follow-up, please feel free to email me Matt at RedeemerMarietta.org.

Okay.

This talk is called God and Suffering.

And it is on the subject of asking the question, how can God be good, as the scripture teaches us, and yet this world be filled with evil and suffering?

Oftentimes that suffering seems meaningless, it seems unjust, especially when it happens to children or a variety of different circumstances.

In our church family, we've had a number of families in recent months go through some severe bouts of suffering.

And it raised the question for the community.

And so we wanted to just put some thoughts together and share them with you in the hopes that it would help.

And uh and so here we go.

The first thing I want to talk about as we broach the subject of God and suffering is uh titled permission.

Um I think for our church and for for any any Christian, these questions need to be welcome.

Uh, we need to have permission to ask these questions.

I think, depending on your background or personality, just thinking questions uh like the ones we just named can bring feelings of shame.

And we can be taught that questioning God's goodness or his justice is a sign of a lack of faith.

And so even though all of us, I would argue, ask these types of questions, they are they're very natural.

Um oftentimes we're afraid to voice them or we intentionally stuff them down inside ourselves, don't allow ourselves to ask them because we feel like we are being bad Christians.

But the truth is that the Bible itself asks these questions.

Here's a couple examples.

In Psalm 13, verses one through four, the psalmist writes, How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Consider and answer me, O Lord my God, lift up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.

The Psalmist here comes to God with implied accusations.

The Lord has forgotten me, the Lord is hiding his face from me, the Lord has left me isolated and alone during my times of need.

He's so overwhelmed by his sadness that he thinks that he may die, he may sleep the sleep of death.

In Habakkuk chapter one, the prophet Habakkuk writes this He says, O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear?

Or cry to you violence, and you do not save?

Why do you make me see iniquity?

And why do you idly look at wrong?

Destruction and violence are before me, strife and contention arise, so the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth.

For the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted.

This opening passage to the book of Habakkuk is a direct challenge or charge of injustice against God.

And because the Lord seems not to hear Habakkuk's cry for help, he says, the law is paralyzed and justice never goes forth.

In fact, justice appears in Habakkuk's eyes to go forth perverted.

And these kind of questions aren't just limited to the Old Testament.

Now, the New Testament uh doesn't have passages that speak quite so directly as the Psalm we looked at or Habakkuk.

But there are a number of passages in the New Testament that speak to the reality of Christians experiencing suffering and undergoing uh evil in this world.

Uh but there is a passage in the book of Revelation, chapter six, and it's it's uh a picture of uh Christians who have died, who were martyred uh during their life for their faith.

For uh it says that they were slain for the word of God and their witness.

And this is what they cry out to the Lord.

O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth.

You see, even as they confess that the Lord is holy, true, and sovereign, they are crying out that justice has been delayed and awaits its needed fulfillment.

What I want us to see here in this first section is that these questions, these doubts, this wrestling with God and the world we live in is not a sign of a lack of faith, but quite the opposite.

They are evidence of a true faith seeking understanding.

Next, a caveat here as we again wade into these deep and difficult waters.

Um where do we go once we now have the permission to ask these questions of why a good God allows evil and suffering to continue to exist in his world?

Well, a caveat to this, a warning as we as we ask the question, um, is that it's important to acknowledge that these are very hard questions.

Um, that while the Bible does lead us to doorways, I would argue, for answers and the possibility of rest and peace within this life in a fallen world, there are no easy answers or silver bullet answers.

If there were, then we would have all read that book long ago, and people wouldn't be continuing to write books and preach sermons on this topic.

But this is a perennial topic.

There are writings that go back before the time of Jesus, of people wrestling with this question.

And as with most things in real life, truth is more than intellectual ascent, right?

We don't just uh hear a right answer and everything is fine.

Uh in reality, we have to live in this world and live in relationship with God.

And I believe that like Jacob, uh Isaac's son, life with God is one of constant wrestling.

If you remember the story of Jacob, that he wrestled with God in the middle of the night, or with the angel of the Lord who represented God, um, God named or renamed Jacob Israel, and it's the name that the people of God took on over time.

And Israel means one who strives or wrestles with God.

And it became part of the Jewish self-understanding and a big part of the rabbinic tradition that to be the people of God means that we wrestle with God.

We have a relationship with him, we take him at his word, and yet at the same time we struggle to understand who he is because of the evil and suffering and the things that we experience in this world.

So my encouragement to us is let's wrestle.

Next question.

Where do evil and sin come from?

The biblical story of the history of the world begins by telling us that God created everything, the heavens and the earth, all things, and he created it all very good, Genesis 131 says.

The first sign that something is off in creation is the introduction of the serpent who comes and lies to our first parents.

It deceives Eve.

Eve persuades Adam, and uh the serpent persuades them to distrust God and to disobey his command to eat to not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In the passages later that talk about the introduction of sin in the world, they are clear as to where it does and where it does not come from.

Romans 5 12 says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

Then in James chapter one, verses thirteen through fifteen, James writes, Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire when it can has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

So these two passages, among others, tell us that sin came into the world through Adam.

Sin did not exist, uh sin and death did not exist in God's creation until the first disobedience of our parents.

And then James says explicitly in this section, in chapter one, that God cannot be tempted by evil, God does not do evil, nor does God tempt us to do evil.

God wants his people to always do well.

And so the Bible tells us that evil and suffering that comes into the world is not God's doing, but it is actually the result of our own actions as human beings that we brought sin into the world.

Now, we can wrestle with these questions.

We can ask if we find them personally satisfying.

And they may lead to other questions like, where did the serpent come from?

And later scripture tells us that the serpent was actually Satan disguised in another form.

But again, we can ask the question, where did Satan come from?

Now, this is the first of many places in this discussion where we need to ask this question: Will I take God at his word?

You see, Scripture does speak to these questions, these questions of justice and the goodness of God and the suffering we and our loved ones experience in this world.

But Scripture does not connect all the dots or give us all the answers.

In fact, Deuteronomy 29-29, one of my favorite verses in the Bible because of what it says, uh, tells us that the secret things belong to the Lord, but the things that are revealed belong to us.

And the point of that is that God tells us many true things.

He's revealed many things to us, many wonderful and good things, but he has not revealed everything.

And so it's a constant question for God's people to ask Will we receive and will we submit to God's word, God's scriptures?

Because the scriptures tell us that God is not the author of evil.

Uh, that in fact that rests at our own feet.

We do know that God allows evil, sin, and suffering into the world, uh, but the scriptures do not tell us why.

Next section.

Evil and suffering are not necessarily evidence against God.

Now, these this this thought is for those who ask the question uh how can God exist and be good if there's evil and suffering in the world?

Usually there are a few responses.

Evil either God is not good and all-powerful, and so he's responsible for evil, or he is good but not all-powerful, and so he cannot stop evil.

Um, or God doesn't exist.

Next section.

Evil and suffering are not evidence against God.

So let's return to the original question of if or how a good and all-powerful God can exist in a world filled with meaningless suffering.

When we take some time to think about this question, uh there arises a problem of perspective.

Here's what I mean.

Listen to this quote from Tim Keller.

He says, Tucked away within the assertion that the world is filled with pointless evil is a hidden premise, namely that if evil appears pointless to me, then it must in fact be pointless.

This reasoning is, of course, fallacious.

Just because you can't see or imagine a good reason why God might allow suffering to happen, doesn't mean that there can't be one.

So the truth is that our human perspective is exceedingly limited.

We see and experience things from moment to moment from a single vantage point.

And so, because of that, it makes sense that when something bad happens to us or those around us, we we may ask the question what good could come from such and such situation?

But the scriptures invite us to have a much broader view.

The story of Joseph in the book of Genesis is a prime example.

If you're not familiar with Joseph's story, he was uh one of many brothers.

Uh he was uh one of the youngest and and very arrogant, and his other brothers uh came to despise him, and in fact, they they plot to murder him.

At the last minute, they choose not to murder him, but they sell him into slavery instead.

And so he's taken down to Egypt as a slave, and he lives as a slave in uh a wealthy man's home uh for years and years.

Uh at one point he is accused of rape and is thrown into prison unjustly because he's innocent.

And he's in prison for over a decade.

Now, if you know his story, you know that it it actually ends very well, and we tend to, I tend to, when I read that story, I love that story.

I love the ending, it's so beautiful.

But when we stop back and step back and think about Joseph, he had to endure multiple decades of unjust suffering.

And we can imagine him crying out to the Lord, praying for the Lord to deliver him, to save him from this unjust suffering.

And that that deliverance really never comes, or it only comes after a number of decades that you can read about in his story.

But at the end of the story, we see something incredible.

Because of what Joseph has been through, uh, and because where God placed him, he becomes a high magistrate in the government of Egypt.

He is able to save thousands upon thousands of lives from a great famine that sweeps through the land, including his own family members, the family through which the Messiah would come.

And what we see is that apart from the years of suffering Joseph went through, he never would have been in that place nor become the person to do so much good.

And it's at the end of that story that Joseph offers those incredible words, speaking to his brothers who had sold him into slavery so many years in advance, he said to them, What you intended for evil, God intended for good.

Now, not only are those words incredible, but we have to think about how is it that Joseph can articulate such faith?

And the answer is that it was actually through his suffering, through that time of undergoing unjust suffering in relationship with God that formed his character, that that taught him who God was, so that he could see that God was sovereign over in and through even his own suffering.

And the same is true for our own lives, isn't it?

Many would agree that it's through suffering and hardship that our character is strengthened and developed.

I know that that's true in my own life.

Often we learn and grow the most during difficult times.

Again, Tim Keller, he says, with time and perspective, most of us can see good reason for at least some of the tragedy and pain that occurs in life.

Why couldn't it be possible that, from God's vantage point, there are good reasons for all of it?

Next section.

Evil and suffering may in fact be evidence for God.

So let's talk for a moment of the alternative offered in this question.

What if uh, or how can God be good and allow evil and suffering?

Now, there's there's a few options that people tend to turn to.

Either God is good and he's not all-powerful, therefore he can't stop evil, or God is not good, but he is all-powerful, and so he's responsible for evil, or God doesn't exist at all.

These are kind of three alternatives to uh a Christian view.

Um but C.S.

Lewis uh expresses the problem with uh this view, uh, this problem of not believing in God because of the evil we see in the world.

Listen to what he says.

He says, as a young adult, my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust.

But how had I got to this idea of just and unjust?

What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own.

But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too.

For the argument depends on saying that the world was really unjust, and not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies.

Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple.

End of quote.

Do you see what he's saying there?

He's saying if we reject God because of the evil and suffering we see in the world, God is really the only basis for morality in existence.

And so if you banish God, you banish morality, and and therefore there is there is no real evil.

There's just things in this world that you don't prefer or like.

And so if we really w want to call these things evil, and they are evil, then they are actually evidence for God and not away from God.

Uh in my experience, Christians who walk away from the faith because of evil and suffering, deep suffering, excuse me, do so because they find the struggle too difficult.

And and I I think this is important for us to talk about and to name that this is a hard problem, and and some of us, or some in the Christian faith, walk away because the question is just so difficult.

How can we maintain the tension between the good God we are told of in Scripture and the evil and suffering we experience in this world?

Um turning away from God is really a way to find relief from having to wrestle through this question um throughout our lives, and that's really understandable.

Next section.

The suffering God.

So now let's turn to how the Bible actually addresses the question of evil and suffering.

So there's an adage in the writing world, whether you're writing a novel, a story, a screenplay, those types of things.

And it it's the the adage goes, show, don't tell.

In other words, don't just tell me that this character loves that character.

Show me that this character has fallen in love with that character.

Or your spouse might say, Don't just tell me you love me, show me you love me.

In a sense, this is what God does with regard to his goodness in our suffering.

Again, as we said before, though there are places in scriptures and the scriptures that speak to our experience of suffering in this world and the ways God can work in and through that suffering, nowhere does it explain why God allowed it in the first place.

Rather, the Lord shows us the depth of his love and his willingness to address the reality of unjust suffering when he took on flesh and dwelt among us.

Our God was so intent on addressing the problem of evil, of removing the stain and the effects of sin and suffering, that he became a human being in order to die for our sins and to renew and to heal the creation which had become infected with sin and death.

You can look at Hebrews 2, verses 17 to 18 that speak to that specifically.

Hebrews 2:17–18

Let me read a couple other passages here.

Hebrews 4, 14 to 16 says, Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God.

Let us hold fast to our confession.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need.

The point of this passage is that not only does God remove suffering, sin and death in this world, he's removed sin, but he is ultimately going to renew all things.

But he took on flesh so that he could sympathize, so that he could experience the suffering that we experience in order to take it away.

In Isaiah 53, 3, Isaiah writes, He, the Messiah, was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

As one whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

You see, Jesus became a man of sorrows and deeply acquainted with grief.

This is what God was willing to do, the lengths he was willing to go to to address the issue of evil and suffering in this world.

Now, as hard as it is for our finite minds to comprehend, this is really the whole point of the gospel, that God was willing to take on himself the effects of sin and enduring unimaginable, unjust suffering in order to heal and to free us from it.

We won't go into too much depth here, but theologians have argued that Jesus' suffering was far beyond the physical torture he endured on the cross.

Again, let me quote Tim Keller.

He says Jesus' suffering would have been eternally unbearable.

Christian theology has always recognized that Jesus bore as the substitute in our place the endless exclusion from God that the human race has merited.

Christianity alone among world religions claims that God became uniquely and fully human in Jesus Christ, and therefore knows firsthand despair, rejection, loneliness, poverty, bereavement, torture, and imprisonment.

On the cross he went beyond even the worst human suffering, and experienced cosmic rejection and pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as the knowledge and his knowledge and power exceeds ours.

The Bi that's the end of the quote.

The Bible doesn't answer the question why God allowed evil and suffering into his good creation.

But as we look at the cross of Jesus, the answer cannot be that he doesn't care, or that he doesn't love us, or that he is indifferent to our suffering.

In Jesus Christ, God became Emmanuel, God with us.

He not only weeps with us or suffers with us, he suffers for us out of love.

This is not something to pass over quickly or lightly, but especially if you are experiencing suffering right now, it is something to consider deeply, and I would encourage you to spend some time meditating on it.

Okay, last section.

Now, when I was with the at the gathering the other night uh and I got here, I said this this last section is really a 301 or a 401 level class.

This is um kind of a further step than I think we're used to going to, but I think it's really important.

Uh but if you're really wrestling with uh the experience of evil and suffering, kind of what we've talked about thus far is is really the beginning point.

It's asking the question if we're willing to take Scripture at its word when things don't make full sense to us, are we willing to trust God's word and God's perspective over our own?

And will we take time to look at the lengths and the depths God was willing to go to on our behalf because he loves us, but also as a way of dealing with and uh in the future putting away evil and suffering for good.

This last section uh I want us to take the next step in looking at suffering.

And that's this that uh not only from a Christian perspective are we called to uh trust God in the midst of suffering, but God invites us actually into a fellowship in Christ's sufferings.

There are a number of New Testament passages that speak about the necessity or the necessary connection between our experiencing the benefits of Jesus' resurrection and our experiencing his suffering.

Let me read Romans eight, fifteen to seventeen.

Paul writes, For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father.

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him, in order that we might also be glorified with him.

Now a passage from Philippians three, verses eight through eleven.

Again, Paul writes, indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, that I might know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

End of the those verses.

What Paul is writing about here is that as much as it is true that we will enjoy the benefits of Christ's resurrection, that we ourselves will be resurrected on the last day, that just as real as that resurrection will be, and as much as we can look forward to it, we also participate in Christ's sufferings, which means that in this life, prior to our resurrection on the last day, our suffering is linked with Jesus' suffering.

In a very real sense, when we walk as followers of Jesus, we are called to follow his manner of life, which included willingly enduring suffering for the good of others.

In our case, it's not immediately redemptive.

We are not suffering to take away the sins of others, but our suffering can be used by God for the blessing, the benefit, and even the redemption of others.

Listen to this passage from Second Corinthians chapter one.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation, and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same suffering that we suffer.

End of the passage.

Do you hear what Paul is saying?

He's saying that the Corinthian Christians benefit from Paul and those with him their suffering, because as they suffer, they receive God's comfort, and therefore they are able to pass their comfort on to the Corinthians as the Corinthians suffer.

But but what Paul does is he actually links it with Christ's sufferings.

He says, as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so we are able to be part of God's work in these Corinthians.

And he says, Our suffering is for your comfort and salvation.

This is truly a great mystery, but it's not an isolated idea in Scripture.

The point is that when we suffer in faith, receiving our suffering from our Father in heaven as Jesus did, God graciously uses our suffering for the blessing of others and invites us into an even deeper fellowship with Christ as we incredibly join with him in his redemptive suffering.

There are many riches to mine here.

But at minimum, the Lord is inviting us to take a different view and experience of suffering in this world.

It's not just something for us to avoid or to endure, but it's something through which we enter into a deeper relationship with our Savior and actually take part in his redemptive work in the world.

And in this mysterious my we can, like Jesus, endure our suffering with joy.

Listen to Hebrews twelve, two.

Look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was before him, endured the cross, despising its shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Amen.

Thanks for taking the time to listen to this talk on God and suffering.

Again, uh these are not all the answers.

This is this is one uh talk on the subject, but I hope that it's helpful.

And uh if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me anytime.

Thanks.