If God is almighty, then why doesn’t He do something about the suffering in our world? If God is a God of love, why doesn’t He intervene? Why does God allow innocent people to suffer? Pastor Mark opens the Bible to uncover the answers to these question in this sermon about suffering.

<p>If God is almighty, then why doesn’t He do something about the suffering in our world? If God is a God of love, why doesn’t He intervene? Why does God allow innocent people to suffer? Pastor Mark opens the Bible to uncover the answers to these question in this sermon about suffering.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

HopeLives365

Mark Finley

Suffering, The Story of God’s Presence

Last year, the Gallup poll, for the first time in 80 years, described the fact that Americans' membership in houses of worship had dropped below 50%.

What that means is that on any given weekend, if you take all of the churches, all the mosques, all the Hindu temples, all of the synagogues, that less than 50% of Americans attend any church at all.

Now that's really startling and quite surprising because when the Gallup poll first measured church membership in churches in 1937, 73% of all Americans were attending church.

And there can be a number of reasons for that.

After COVID-19, A couple years ago, people dropped out of church, they couldn't attend, there were many mandates and many of those people got used to watching on Zoom or some other way on the internet and they never came back.

The secularization of our society could be another reason why people have dropped out of church.

They would much rather do sporting activities, go shopping on the weekend.

It's become something which they have done more.

But yet, But yet, there is a more fundamental reason, and that reason is at the very heart of the Christian faith.

The Washington Post recently published an article on March 13, 2022 by a columnist by the name of Brian Boo.

The title of his article was Why the Decline in Church Attendance Won't End Here.

And it explains that the reason many people have dropped out of church is because they cannot harmonize the idea of a God of love with the suffering in the world.

And so they say, if God is almighty, why doesn't he do something about the suffering in our world?

And if God is a God of love, why doesn't he intervene?

It's at the very heart of the Christian faith.

Why doesn't God do something about suffering, heartache, or disease?

And third, what should our response to suffering be?

Now, when the Bible uses the term suffering, it's not simply speaking about physical suffering.

It also speaks about emotional suffering.

It speaks about the emotional pain that people go through.

When the Bible talks about suffering, it talks about the pressures there are on people in modern society.

It talks about psychological suffering, emotional suffering, the suffering we face in our families when there is division and conflict.

It talks about the suffering that we face from physical suffering of disease.

So the Bible uses the term suffering as a very, very broad term.

The question then is, why does God allow innocent people to suffer?

There are many reasons why a good God, a God that is omnipotent and a God that's loving might allow suffering.

First, to begin with, if God is serious about free will, that means he's not going to violate our choices simply because we make the wrong choices, otherwise we're all robots.

Now the Bible begins And the Bible ends with a story of free will.

It begins with the story of God giving Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden the freedom of choice.

Now what does freedom of choice really mean?

Free will is the capacity that God has given to every human being to make rational choices.

Free will is the capacity that God has made, has given every human being either to serve him or not to serve him.

Free will is always based on individual choice.

And if God would manipulate that choice, if God would coerce that choice, if God would manipulate or pressure that choice, God wouldn't be, we God.

The endowment of free will rules out the use of force on God's part to affect change in human beings.

God seeks to draw us to himself, but he leaves each person free to decide.

Now take your Bible and let's look at how The first book of the Bible talks about this free will.

It's God that gave Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden the freedom of choice.

We look at it there in Genesis chapter 2, And we're looking at verse 15 in Oddward.

The scripture says, then the Lord God took man and put him in a garden of Eden to tend and keep it.

And the Lord God commanded man saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you'll surely die.

Now notice verse 16 particularly, God says, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, So here is the choice that God has given them.

But he says, of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you may not eat it.

God created human beings with a capacity of choice, and he planted that tree in the garden to allow them to exercise that choice.

Without the freedom of choice, Satan's argument that God is an arbitrary tyrant, that God is a dictatorial judge, would be proven true.

But the government of God is based on love and not force.

Now Ellen White makes this striking statement in Patriarchs and Prophets page 49.

She says, God might have created man without the power to transgress his law.

He might have withheld the hand of Adam from touching the forbidden fruit.

It says that God might have withheld the hand of Adam from touching the forbidden fruit.

But in that case, man would have been not a free moral agent, but a mere automaton.

Without freedom of choice, his disobedience would have not been voluntary, but forced.

There could have been no development of character.

Such a course would have been contrary to God's plan dealing with the inhabitants of other worlds.

It would have been unworthy of man as an intelligent being.

And would have sustained God's change of arbitrary rule.

It is because God, 1 of the reasons is God has given his creatures the freedom of choice.

And if God takes that freedom of choice away, then his creatures become robots.

So, therefore, God does not intervene when despotic rulers, when tyrannical dictators, when maniacal men in this point of leadership shoot missiles on innocent people and kill them.

God doesn't always intervene during that.

In the cosmic conflict between good and evil, if God had not given his creatures freedom of choice, Satan's claim that God was unfair, God was unjust, God was arbitrary, would have been sustained.

But God created human beings in his image.

Unlike animals that act largely on instinct, God has created every 1 of us with the capacity to make rational choices, informed decisions.

And God has set before every 1 of us, with that free will, with that freedom of choice, the ability to choose to serve Him or the ability to walk away from Him.

There's an amazing passage on this appeal to choice in Deuteronomy chapter 30.

Deuteronomy the 30th chapter, you're looking there at verse 19 and 20.

God's appeal to all mankind is to use the freedom of choice that He has given to serve Him.

God impresses our hearts with His Holy Spirit.

He charms us with his love as revealed in scripture.

Back to Menu

Suffering, The Story of God’s Presence

Transcript

Description

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine