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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Restoration 2026: If God is Love...

Aron Crews

01 If God is Love... Why Suffering?

02 If God is Love... Why Satan?

We're going to be seeing how the Bible answers some of life's biggest questions.

And so I think the best place to start the series is actually with a question.

So the first question I have for us here is, and I actually want to hear from you, Maybe just raise your hand or whatever.

Yeah, raise your hand, because you can't be talking too much with food.

Okay, we heard a lot of yeses, some mm-hmms, and some hand raises, okay.

Now let me rephrase the question, and just, we're gonna put God backwards here.

Raise your hand if you think it's good news there is a dog.

Raise your hand if you don't think it's good news if there's a dog.

We have 1 person in the back who doesn't like dogs.

Now, what if I said, notice the question here is I'm using the indefinite article A.

It's then up to you to then fill in the blank of what kind of dog it is.

Would that be good news to be around the dog with rabies?

What if you're allergic to dogs, as maybe my friend in the back is?

I would say it would depend on what kind of dog it is as to whether it's good news that there's a dog.

So circling back to my first question, is it good news that there is a God?

I think the best, most appropriate answer to that question is It depends.

It depends on what kind of God there actually is, or what kind of God that you conjure up in your mind.

Now, when I first asked the question, the response from the room, if you call this a room, yeah, this is a room, right, where this is a roof, was generally positive.

It was, yes, that tells me that you have a positive view of who God is, right?

You may think that, oh, God is love, God is nice, God is forgiving, God is positive things.

But when we were young, we have, of course, born into this world without knowing anything.

And over the course of our lives, we formed, we developed an understanding of reality as we know it.

And part of that reality, most people develop into their framework of thinking, is some view, some understanding of who God is.

And this is first developed probably based upon a relationship with our parents along with other authority figures in our life.

This then develops into what we would call a worldview, the way in which we view the world, the way in which we view God, the way in which we view ourselves, and the way in which we view God, the way in which we view ourselves, and the way in which we view others.

And generally, if you had a childhood where you were taught loving things about God and you had good experiences with people at church and authority figures, you're probably going to be like, yeah, God is love and that's nice.

However, that is not the case for many people in the world.

Now, this is, I'm speaking at a Christian university, and so granted it's probably most people have a generally positive view, but there are other people who do not have a positive view of who God is.

The Bible states very clearly, we're gonna test out a different backdrop here.

The Bible states very confidently from beginning to end without any, it states that God is love, full stop.

Now, even people who grew up in a church environment who have a positive view of who God is and may think, yes, I believe the Bible, I believe that God is love.

Even these kind of people have questions, right?

If God is love, then why is there suffering?

If God is love, then why did God create Satan, right?

If God is love, then why does God have all these rules?

Can do this, thou shalt not, thou shalt not.

If you've grown up around any church people for much of your life, yes, you probably met some really great people, but also when you look at the world at large, we see that many church people, many Christians, many people who say that they're Christian are grossly misrepresenting, if you will, God.

They are doing all kinds of terrible things.

In fact, it was Gandhi who once said, I love your Christ, but I don't like your Christians.

If God is love, why send anyone to hell at all?

And there's many views of hell out there that hell is a place of eternal torment where people who go there will suffer endlessly.

If God is love, why did Jesus have to come?

Why did Jesus, the Son of God, have to suffer so immensely for the sins of this world?

There's lots of questions that people naturally, intuitively ask as they learn, or they hear, that God is love from the Bible.

And those are questions, these are questions that we're gonna be exploring day by day, twice a day, 12 o'clock and 07:00.

Really what we're doing in a sense is throughout this week, we are putting God on trial.

We are seeing, okay, God claims, the writers of scripture claim that God is love, and we're saying, okay, you may believe it, you may not believe it, you may believe it with some caveats, but we're asking the questions that if God really is love, then what about this topic and that topic and that topic?

Sometimes people think that it's not okay to question God.

But I say that it's not wrong to question God at all.

But do we take the time to really let him answer?

We should be in the business of questioning God, but far too often people don't wait to get a response from God.

We're not just gonna question God and then walk away.

We're gonna question God and say, God, what do you have to say about this?

Why is this thing happening?" Whatever and whatever.

In fact, God invites us in Isaiah chapter 1 verse 18, we read God speaking, come now, right?

It's an invitation, come, come and let us reason together, says the Lord.

We're coming together, we're reasoning, and if God is love, which I personally am convicted, am persuaded that He is, then we should be able to make sense of different Bible teachings, of different ways that God has made the world to operate.

Sort of our theme verse, 1 of the theme verses for this week is gonna be 1 John 4, verse 16.

And it's sort of where I want to guide us to throughout the week to then be able to say this verse from a personal conviction.

We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us, God is love.

So hopefully if I'm doing my job, now look, there are many people who've asked these questions that we're gonna be tackling, and hours upon hours could be spent on any given presentation, on any given topic.

So we're only in a sense gonna be scratching the surface, but hopefully I'm gonna be able to give you some serious biblical answers, at least start to answer some of these questions for us, that if God is love, what about thus and so.

So probably the most frequently brought up issue that people have when someone claims that God is love is they object and they say, well, what about suffering?

This is just completely normal for us to go through at some point in our life.

Again, whether you just wholeheartedly that God is love or not, we then experience the world experientially.

And we see that we go through suffering, we go through loss, we see not just is there a little bit of evil, a little bit of suffering in the world, but there's actually huge amounts of it, gratuitous evil, intense evil in the world, and oftentimes people, many people have left God altogether because of the amount of evil and suffering in the world.

So I've dedicated the first 2 presentations this afternoon and this evening.

It's going to be sort of like a double header, a two-part that are more closely connected of addressing this question, if God is love, why is there suffering?

Or substitute the word suffering, why is there evil in the world?

This is not something that people just started asking in the 21st century.

It goes back, of course, I believe all the way to when suffering first began whenever the world was created and sin entered into the world.

But at least as far back as the third century BC, there was a Greek philosopher, I was gonna say falafel.

Back to Menu

Series

Restoration 2026: If God is Love...

01 If God is Love... Why Suffering?

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

The Battle is On

54m

Bible Boot Camp 2009

How to Give a Bible Study on - The Great Controversy

50m

Unlocking Prophecy

6- A Game of Thrones and Revelation’s Answer to Evil

1h 4m

SWYC 2008 Plenary Sessions

Delivering the Captives

58m

GYC SE 2012 Plenary Sessions

Why Is There Evil?

1h

What Jesus Said

4. Good and Evil

1h

A God Worth Knowing

02 The Problem of Evil: Does God Care?

59m

What is Your Citizenship?

53m

Sound Doctrine