Sunday
09/01/19 - Sidney UMC
Sermon Title: “Why is there so much suffering in the
world?”
(“The Realities of Faith and Life” Series – Part 1 of 5)
Old Testament
Scripture: Jeremiah 2:4-13
New Testament
Scripture: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Gospel Lesson: Luke
14:1, 7-14
My friends, brothers
and sisters, welcome once again on this the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost.
Twelve Sundays after the Holy Spirit moved nearly two-thousand years ago on the
day of Pentecost, giving birth to us the Christian Church.
In the history of the Christian Church, many Christians
have suffered. In fact, according to some accounts of church tradition, all of
the original Twelve Disciples chosen by Jesus Christ, except the Apostle John,
died rather brutal deaths. Church tradition tells us that Saint Peter, for
example, was crucified upside down in Rome, Italy. Some Christians were thrown to
the lions in the Roman Coliseum, and some Christians even today are harmed,
persecuted, tortured, and even killed for their faith in Christ. Where is God
in all of this?
A few months ago, a member of this church and I were
talking. This person and I were talking about the different people who were
sick at the time, who have died recently, and all the hurt in this world. This
person told me that they struggle with their faith in God at times, because of
all of the suffering that is in this world. Why would God allow such suffering?
This person then asked me if I could preach about suffering from a Christian
perspective.
As a result of this request, for the next 5-weeks I am
going to preach a sermon series called “The Realities of Faith and Life”. In
this sermon series I am going to attempt to explain from a Christian standpoint
some of the various parts of our faith and lives. This morning, I am going to
attempt to address the question of “Why is there so much suffering in the
world?” I am going to tackle this from a Christian and a biblical perspective.
In the coming weeks, I am going to talk about what authentic Christian faith
means in this world that we live in. I am also going talk about what to do when
our lives seem hopeless. I am going to talk about seeking the lost, and I am
also going to talk about greed vs. generosity. Now there are many other aspects
of our faith and lives, but I am picking just five of them to discuss in this
sermon series. Today is suffering, and why do we have it.
Of the various reasons that people give up on their faith,
or stop believing in God, it is sometimes because a tragedy or an extremely
painful experience or events befalls them. In this moment, these people are
unable to reconcile this tragedy, this experience, or this event with a loving
God. So they stop believing. I have had people ask me, “Pastor Paul if there
truly is a loving God, then how could God have let this happen?” I’m sure that
we have heard or have even asked this before.
I have heard, “But Pastor Paul, this person was so young
and they had their whole future of ahead of them, why would God do this?”
Among the myriad of other questions and statements that I
have heard, I want tackle this real question of human suffering. Does God cause
us to suffer? No, God doesn’t.
I am going to separate this message out between moral and
natural occurrences. Moral occurrences or moral evil is often human driven, and
natural ones are more what we would call “Mother Nature” or random occurrences.
Now
I am also assuming and believing in giving this sermon that we all have “Free
Will”. This means that God allows us the freedom to make many decisions in our
own lives.
In
the Garden of Eden narrative in the Book of Genesis, God created the heavens
and the earth. He created Eden, created Adam and then Eve. There was no
suffering, no pain, and everything was perfect. God however, wanted Adam and
Eve to choose him freely, so he gave them “Free Will”. God could have created
Adam and Eve like robots that make no decisions, but God wanted us to choose
him freely.
Adam and Eve were to live in and to tend to the Garden of
Eden. The garden was beautiful, abundant, and fulfilling. All Adam and Eve
couldn’t do God said, was eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet,
they were tempted to do so by the devil, in the form of a snake or a serpent. Adam
and Eve ate of the fruit, and they were expelled from the Garden. Within a
handful of years Cain kills his brother Abel.
God
could not have put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of
Eden, but if God did that, then how could Adam and Eve really have free will?
After all, there would not be a choice to serve and love God. Perhaps they
could have done something else to offend God, but eating the forbidden fruit,
as it if often called, did it.
We call this the “Fall of Humanity”. The scripture in the
Book of Genesis then tells us we are from now on going to live in a broken
world that has sin, pain, suffering, and tragedy. Since we are no longer in the
Garden of Eden, we are now in a broken and sinful world that has evil and the
devil.
How many of us here believe that there is evil in the world
today? I know that I do. Yet, how can we know what evil is, if we don’t know
what good is? If there is no good, then there is no evil, because how would we
know the difference between them? Let me say that again, if there is no good,
then there is no evil, because how would we know the difference between them?
So within this new broken and fallen world, just like in
the Garden of Eden, we have free will to choose God, or to choose evil. From a
moral standpoint then, I believe that much of the moral end of suffering on
earth, occurs not because of God, but because of our own sinful natures. The
sins we commit are so often committed because we are seeking things for
ourselves. In seeking things for ourselves we do great damage, harm, and hurt to
others.
When someone is randomly hit and killed by a drunk driver,
they are killed because that drunk driver used their free will in ways that
were sinful. Jesus tells us to reject sin, accept him as Lord, and follow him.
Jesus says that he is the way that leads to life. Will we still sin after we
know Jesus then? Of course, but we are then on a path to be more and more free
of sin.
Perhaps that drunk driver who before they hit and killed
that person had faith in God, but now they don’t. Maybe they say, “If there
really was a loving God, then why wouldn’t have God not put their person on the
road when I was driving?” On the converse, the victim’s family who was killed might
ask the very same question. Yet again, how do we know what evil is, if there is
no good?
You see friends, some people want to believe in a God that
gives us no free will. Where everything is scripted and nothing bad ever
happens. If we have free will though, then evil exists, but so does God, because
good exists. If God is the source of goodness, then seeking God combats evil.
So often the tragedy of humanity therefore again, is caused not by God, but by
us. We are often the ones that kill, maim, destroy, and harm. “Well why didn’t
God intervene and save that person?” One could then ask “Why didn’t God
intervene in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve sinned”?
The problem I think is that we want a purely predictable
world and we want no surprises. If we want no free will and we want to be
robots, we could have that. Yet, would we really be living life? Sure there
would be no evil, but how would we know the difference? Sin, from a moral
standpoint, I think, is the root of so much human suffering.
The other dimension of suffering that I want to address is
natural suffering. This one is harder. Natural suffering is when a tree falls
on a house and kills someone suddenly, a tornado, a hurricane, and etc. A child
dies from a disease, you lose your spouse or loved one suddenly. These are the
disasters and the tragedies where nature or things non-human cause the harm. Or
to say it another way, no one did this to another person directly.
These
ones are a little tougher, and some we can say “Why God?” God promises to be with
us eternally, forever, but never promises that our lives would be perfect.
Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and is the key to salvation,
hope, peace, and love. Jesus Christ is not a trust fund, a vending machine, or a
publisher’s clearing house check. Some of us have come to learn about a God
that exists when everything is going great for us. We get a raise, a new car,
and or something else, and we praise God! We then find out we have cancer, and
we lose our faith. We want a God that doesn’t allow pain, free-will, and who will
give us tons of possessions and money, and etc. Do we really think that this is
who the God of the universe is? If so, why didn’t God intervene when Saint
Peter was being crucified upside down? Further, why wasn’t Peter mad at God as
he was dying, as church tradition says he wasn’t? When we are mad at God, it is
because we know the difference between good and evil. If something bad has happened,
and if there was no good, would it bother us nearly as much? Let me say that
again, if something bad has happened, and if there was no good, would it bother
us nearly as much? The reality is we know what good is, but we have a hard time
with evil and tragedy, don’t we? I know that I do. That doesn’t mean though
that God doesn’t exist though. We are angry, because God does exist. Jesus
comes to liberate us spiritually, not just “Buy me a Mercedes Benz,” as Janis
Joplin said.
Some people say, “Well everything happens for reason,” but often
the reasons things occur is because of sin and evil. So much of human suffering
happens because we cause it. I also don’t think that God is punishing us when
bad things happen. Bad things happens because we live in a broken and a sinful
world. So sometimes thing just happen. When we make decisions though, we need
to take accountability for those decisions and not blame God. If someone stole
money and went to jail, God didn’t make you do that.
Friends there was no suffering when the Garden of Eden was
created, and there will be no pain and suffering one day again, but not until
Jesus Christ returns to earth. I don’t believe that God causes our suffering,
but he can use our suffering to help others in the world. I also don’t believe
that if we pray enough then we won’t suffer. We will all suffer. You will
suffer, I will suffer, and the tragedy of humanity is something that we cannot
escape. The poorest to the richest person will suffer and will die on this
earth, unless Christ returns first.
We have to accept that we will suffer sometimes, and most
of us don’t like this, and as such, we want to believe in a God that fits this
mold. It works for us, until the mold shatters. If God is eternal, which I
think God is, if we are offered eternal life through Jesus Christ, which I
think we are, then this promise is ironclad.
So for example, why did some soldiers die in battle in
World War II and some did not? Because we live in a broken and a hurting world.
Maybe we can’t accept that, so then we reject God, the moral law giver and the
source of all love and goodness. How can we reject God and fully admit there is
evil on earth, and yet we still believe in goodness? What then, what do we
replace God with?
This
reality has brought us to what experts refer to as the “Post-Modern” Era that
we are now living in. In this “Post-Modern” Era there is no longer “Absolute Truth,”
as everything is purely subjective. This means that we all have different
truths and different understandings of good and evil. Part of the reason for
this, is that we have a hard time accepting an absolute God in a broken absolutely
imperfect world. We cannot reconcile a sinful and broken humanity with a loving
God. We then reject God, and God alone gave us the free will to reject him.
Also, this all does not mean that all of life on this earth
has to be terrible, as there is so much joy on this earth. It doesn’t mean that
we just suffer and die and then go to heaven. I don’t believe though that we
alone as human beings can create a utopian and a perfect society without
suffering. Can we do better? Absolutely, and we should! If after thousands of
years of recorded human history though, if humanity is still so broken, do we
really think that we can figure all of this out on our own? Do we really reject
God, because we don’t want to take accountability for our decisions and actions,
and because bad things happen?
I don’t want bad things to happen any more than you do, but
God is with us, we are with each other, and the promise of Jesus Christ is
eternal. For those who believe in him, we will be gathered together on the
shores of heaven. Rich or poor in wealth, healthy or sick, the promise is
eternal.
In our Old Testament reading for this morning from the Prophet
Jeremiah, Jeremiah says once again in Jeremiah 2:13 of the people of Israel
turning away from God:
“for my people have committed two
evils: they have
forsaken me, the
fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13, NRSV).
Human
evil and sin, causes suffering.
In our New Testament
reading from Hebrews 13:5-8 for this morning, the Apostle Paul once again
reminds us about a type of human sin. Once again this scripture says:
“Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content
with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” So
we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What
can anyone do to me?” Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to
you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus
Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:5-8, NRSV).
Friends, human evil and sin, causes suffering.
Once again, our gospel of Luke reading
for this morning says again:
“On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house
of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching
him closely.
When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he
told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do
not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you
has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come
and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start
to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the
lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up
higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table
with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble
themselves will be exalted.” He said also to the one who had invited him, “When
you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or
your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and
you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled,
the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay
you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Lk. 14:1, 7-14, NRSV).
Jesus is teaching us in the gospel reading for this morning
how to be good. How to know the difference between good and evil, and how to
treat each other accordingly. Friends, human evil and sin, causes suffering.
Again, the
natural tragedies that we don’t expect and were no human caused them directly,
those are the toughest ones. We live in broken world though, and in a world
where bad things happen. Even though there is bad or evil however, there is
also goodness through God in Jesus Christ. Christ is eternal and we will be
with him eternally.
I was on my Facebook
account this past Wednesday, and a quote that I posted on my Facebook page from
four years ago from Tim Keller about human suffering popped back up as a memory
on my Facebook account. I would like in closing to share this quote from Tim Keller
about human suffering. Here it is:
“Some
suffering is given in order to chastise and correct a person for wrongful patterns
of life (as in the case of Jonah imperiled by the storm), some suffering is
given not to correct past wrongs but to prevent future ones (as in the case of
Joseph sold into slavery), and some suffering has no purpose other than to lead
a person to love God more ardently for himself alone and so discover the
ultimate peace and freedom.”
~ Tim Keller ~
Friends, evil is exist, but God is good and reigns enteral.
Amen.
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