Why is there pain and suffering?

Pain, pain's a part of life. I think some people believe it's a test of your faith, but if you don't have a faith to believe in, it kinda makes you wonder why, why is there suffering in this world? It was a reason why he took him. Maybe he needed some angels up there to protect, protect to help him in the fight against the devil. A baby is a beautiful, wonderful thing. Why doesn't he want me to have this? Bad things are just the way that you see them. I think God's in everything we do. Why would anybody wanna create people who do horrible things to each other? It doesn't make any sense. I don't think God's sitting there and saying these people are hurting and maybe I should help them. I suppose the answer from Tom is just, I'm going through a journey right now that's painful.

Explore God is the name of our seven week series that we're in right now. Good morning. Good morning. I said good morning. Good morning. This is an amazing morning. This is one that I think is gonna go down in church history. We've got so many more people sitting outside to watching on video. Hello everybody outside. It's good to hear you out there. So listen, if you are brand new, and I've already met several new people this morning, normally we meet in the building next door. And the kids are in some of those other buildings here on campus. But what happened is we don't have power to this campus today. I mean, electric power. We still have Holy Spirit power, but we don't have electric power today. And there's a lesson behind that, we should have paid our bill. No, just kidding.

So what we did last night, we just scrambled when I say we, I mean our amazing IT team, our facilities team, the worship team, the video team. They scrambled to get a couple of generators enough to power just this building and the loft building over there. So that loft coffee could be open, that's crucial. And that also, so the Spanish service that normally meets in here during the 11 o'clock services now meeting over in the hub room next to loft coffee. The Sunday school class that normally meets there is meeting over in this room. And the worship service that normally meets there is meeting here. And the kids are meeting on the baseball field. So let's thank everybody who made this happen at the last minute. It was amazing.

Well, I'm super excited about this series, because this is about the top questions that people have about faith, about God, about the Bible. We're taking one each week. And one of the things I love is we're doing this with over 175 churches all throughout the Bay Area. All kinds of different denominations, different ethnicities, even different languages. Like I say, from the frozen chosen to the holy rollers, we're all in this together. And we're sharing resources and ideas because we want to resource our congregations to answer a lot of questions that a lot of people have about God. Like today's question, this has gotta be one of the most difficult questions to answer on planet Earth. Why is there so much pain and suffering?

Over the hill, the San Jose Mercury News, they've reported on a lot of tragedies over the years. And after one, they ran this headline amid the grief, a question, why? God is love, then where is God now? The Barna Research Group pulled tens of thousands of Americans asking, if you could ask God one question, what would it be? The number one response, why is there suffering in this world? And it might surprise you to learn that the Bible is full of people asking this same question. I mean, there's literally hundreds of verses, like Psalm 42:9. I say to God, why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning? Psalm 10:1, why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? Psalm 22:1, King David wrote it, and Jesus quoted it, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Now, I gotta be honest, a lot of religious people of all stripes have provided very shallow answers to this question. One of my top theological resources, just kind of for scholarship, is the comic strip peanuts. I love this, and in this particular one, Lucy says, what's the matter with you? Linus says, I have a sliver in my finger. She says, aha, that means you're being punished for something. What have you done wrong lately? I haven't done anything wrong. You have a sliver, haven't you? That's the most misfortune, isn't it? You're being punished with misfortune because you've been bad. Charlie Brown says, now, wait a minute, what do you know about it, Charlie Brown? This is a sign, this is a direct sign of punishment. Linus has done something very wrong, and now he must suffer misfortune. I know all about these things, I know that it's out, it just popped right out. Thus endeth the theological lesson for today.

But that actually is a common religious answer to the question, why is there suffering that somehow or another, well you did something to deserve it in this life or maybe in a previous life, you're reaping the karma consequences, right? And then there's another way that people can answer this question, kinda like my other great theological resource, Calvin and Hobbes. The tiger says, do you think there's a god? And Calvin thinks for a while, well, somebody's out to get me. I love that. And these two comics really represent the two most common answers. It's our fault or it's God's fault, right? Somehow God makes everything bad happen. It's all in his perfect will. God launched those missiles against Israel Friday. God burned Lahaina down. It's all fate. It's all God's will. You can just give up and say it's the will of God. Or it's all just illusion. Or there's no God, it's all pointless. It has no meaning.

Well, you look at these four most common answers, not only just in philosophy, but also in the world's religions. And I find all of them emotionally unsatisfying at least and actually not biblical. Good thing the Bible has another answer. And if you actually wouldn't call yourself a believer this morning, you're just here 'cause you're kinda checking it out or maybe you're just not sure. I would argue that the Bible's answer that we're gonna talk about today is really worth considering, partly because I mean it works, right? For 2,000 years now in the history of Christianity, it has helped literally billions of people through centuries of tragedy, including me. This message is intensely personal for me today. I mentioned last weekend how my mom died of Alzheimer's disease, but here's the thing, she had already had a life of so much unfair suffering.

Most of my earliest childhood memories actually are of grief. And I apologize for repeating myself if you've been here a while, but this deeply influences how I approach this question. When I wasn't quite four years old, as you see me here in this picture with my sister Heidi, my mom and my dad, my father Fred got terminal cancer. And actually when this picture was taken, he had just discovered the diagnosis. And one of my earliest memories is shortly before he went into the hospital, it was a February over in San Jose where we lived. And there was a rare dusting of snow that barely lasts on the grass that you get once every decade over there. And dad made a tiny little snowman out of a couple of balls of snow. And he stuck it in the freezer compartment of our fridge. And maybe two days later he went to the hospital, it was Good Sam over in San Jose. And I remember I wasn't allowed to see him at my age, but my uncle Carl drove me to the parking lot. And dad waved at me from his hospital room. I remember him pulling the curtain aside, it was about four floors up. And he waved at me and he blew me a kiss. And that was the last time I ever saw him.

And later, this is just locked in my memory, mom opened the freezer to get a popsicle or something for me. And I saw the snowman. And I remember thinking at four years old, daddy didn't last as long as a snowman. And I remember how shell shocked I felt, I think you can see it in my face, my mom's face certainly here. Just I remember the bone deep grief, like the marrow of my bones just was hurting. And then after eight years, where we just lived below the poverty line, I mean we literally dumpster dived for things, not metaphorically. And then my mother remarried a great guy who really loved her. His name was Jett. He was a pastor and before that a missionary. And just a dozen years later after a full career, serving God so self-sacrificially. One month into retirement, Jett rather dies suddenly of a heart attack. Leaving my mom a widow again. She had to move out of her house eventually, her few belongings went into storage and the storage place caught fire and she lost almost everything. And there's lots more, but then she gets Alzheimer's disease.

So yeah, I've been thinking about this one for literally as long as I can remember. And maybe for you too, this is not just a philosophical question this morning. If you feel like you are just getting punched in the face by life right now, I wanna share with you what I saw first, keep my mom going. And then what has kept me and my sister going. And what I am going to share with you, I needed like I need oxygen to survive. But I gotta warn you, we're not talking about unicorns and butterflies today. We're talking about suffering, so we're going to be talking about some tough stuff. You're gonna hear some hard things, but you will also leave with hope. So grab your message notes or you can download them at TLC.org/notes or on the TLC app as well.

Now of course in 30 minutes we don't have time to cover every facet of why is there suffering. Libraries have been written about this, so I put some resources in your notes for further reading and we have these books available at our book corner. Kind of our ad hoc book corner that's there in the little lobby today and we make those available at cost. But let me start with this. The way I see it, our choices are a life with suffering with God or a life with suffering without God. Those are our choices. Our choice is never a life without suffering. We never get that choice. Even though some religious people may seem to imagine that they have that choice, right, if they only have enough faith and do enough good stuff, then they'll never suffer, but nobody gets that choice in life. We will all suffer.

Personally, I'm convinced that all of these things would have happened to our family anyway. My father's cancer, my mother's Alzheimer's, our choice wasn't whether or not those things happened to us. Our choice was how are we going to manage those things? Are we going to go through them with faith, with resources of faith, with people of faith, with a community of faith, or without all that? Knowing that we're going to suffer anyway because that's life, I'd rather go through it with the resources of faith than without. So what are those resources? I mean, there's hundreds, probably thousands of Bible verses on this, but I want to stay mostly in the book of Romans as we go through this this morning. This is how I personally have remembered these points from scripture for decades of my life, the acronym WHY. Why? And the W stands for we live in a broken world. We live in a broken, a beautiful world, but a broken world.

The world, the Bible says, was created perfect. In Genesis, God looks at creation and says, it is very good. But then we humans used our divine gift of free will to rebel against God and nature itself was shattered. You could say we're all living in the fallout of a sin bomb. As Romans 5:12 says, sin came into the world through one man and death through sin. And it's not just Adam's fault, we all contribute to suffering with our own sin. That's the rest of the verse. And in this way, death came to all people because all sin. You and I, we insult, we hurt, we pollute, we discriminate, all kinds of different sins. And that makes a broken world even worse. Romans 8:22 says we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. So DNA doesn't always get passed on just right. And cancer happens and meteors fall from the sky. Things decay, we live in a broken world. But if you forget everything else, don't forget this. We have a broken world but not a broken God.

Philip Yancy is a great writer who wrote a book called Disappointment with God. And in the book, he says he decided to interview his friend Douglas. Because he says Douglas is the man whose life most resembles the Bible character Job of anybody who knows so many things have gone wrong for Douglas. He was in an accident that left him severely disabled. His wife had terminal cancer and many, many more things. So Philip asks Douglas, how have you managed this? Like what can you tell the rest of us about how to go through suffering and still have your faith survive? And Douglas thought about that question and he said this. Don't confuse God with life. He said, we tend to think life should be fair because God is fair, but God is not life. And if I confuse God with life by expecting constant good health, for example, I set myself up for a crushing disappointment. He said, I don't really feel any disappointment of God just in life. I feel free to curse the unfairness of life and to vent all my grief and anger. But I believe God feels the same way about that cancer and about that accident, exactly right.

So why doesn't God just stop all that? Well, that's the age. He will make all things right. Maybe at the last point you thought, well, I can't believe in a God who would callously stand by unmoved watching people suffer. Well, I don't believe in that kind of a God either. In fact, the whole entire Bible is nothing less than an answer to the question, why is there suffering in the world and what is God doing about it now? Because here's the story. God himself came to live with us in the midst of our suffering, born into poverty. They call Jesus Emmanuel, which means God with us in our suffering. And then Jesus suffered himself on the cross, taking our sin upon himself. He didn't just watch us like some Greek God from Mount Olympus, laughing at us. He had to be with us in our suffering, and he is still with you in your suffering.

But suffering didn't end the story of Jesus. On the third day he rose again, and that wasn't just some one-off miracle for Jesus, in some ways it was a preview of what God's going to do for your body after your death and for all of creation. This broken heaven and earth will be redeemed, resurrected, remade, reborn, Romans 8:21, creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and the glory of the children of God. And this is why Paul says, I consider the sufferings of this present time aren't worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. Like Mother Teresa said, there's somebody who knew a lot of suffering. She said, the glories of heaven will make all our worst pain on earth seem like one night in a bad hotel. I love that line. And believing this makes a difference.

Years ago I was asked to leave the funeral for a young woman and I talked about this hope and after the funeral, one of her friends comes running up to the front, pokes her finger in my face and says, that is a bunch of BS. She went on, it doesn't matter what you believe because we're all going to die. So we may as well just party because it doesn't make any difference. And she was obviously in pain. I let her talk and I said, I have one request. Could you give me 30 minutes of your life and follow me to the hospital? That's where I'm going next. And I'm visiting two people who are dying there, just hours or days to live. And the first is the father of a friend of mine and he's not a believer. And he is facing his deaths with so much panic that the anxiety has made him literally incoherent. He can't speak anymore. He only talks in syllables that are nonsense and he's gripping the guard rails of his hospital bed, literally white knuckling it into eternity.

And then I want you to go right down the hall to the room of a close friend of mine who attends our church, a strong believer. And when you walk into her room, there's an atmosphere of just peace. I said, you know how you go into a florist shop and you smell the perfume of the flowers? I said, somehow spiritually you walk into her room even though she's the one that's dying and the peace that's just suffused spiritually in that place will make you leave and you are calmer for visiting this person who's on the brink of eternity herself. And I said, please come with me and just shadow me. I won't even say anything. Just observe. And then I wonder if at the end of that half hour you will still be able to say that it makes no difference what you believe. But she refused. And years later, I still think of her so often because I know she would have seen the hope that faith brings.

If for no other reason than all of us are going to suffer, all of us are going to die, wouldn't you want a hope that sees you through that inevitable moment, a hope that tells you though we live in a broken world, healing is promised. You say that's great, but what about the in-between time? That's the why. Your response now is a choice. You can get better or better, really. And when I look in the Bible, I see three healthy choices modeled in its pages. Just lament, grieve more, and don't feel like it's more spiritual to say, "Oh, I'm good, no worries. Praise the Lord." No matter what happens to you in the Bible, people didn't do that. People lamented. You know, getting angry at suffering isn't a sign that you're ungodly. It's a sign that you are more like Jesus. Because when Lazarus died, Jesus, shortest verse in the Bible, two words, anybody know what it is? "Jesus wept." When he suffered on the cross, Jesus wept, angry at death because it's not supposed to be this way. I lament, I'm honest with God, and then I lean into his grace.

Let me show you what this looks like. One day I was looking through some boxes from our attic and I found a notebook I'd never seen before. I open it up and it's in my mother's handwriting. And because of some things in the notebook, I realized it was written right after, about a month after my father died. Never seen this before. And in this notebook was a poem that she wrote from her heart about her emotions in that moment. And so this was after she passed and I was riveted when I unfolded the piece of paper and she wrote this. When my husband died, I cried out to God, "I am so lonely. You took my very dearest, my best friend, my lover, my husband, the father of my children. Just take me too." And then Jesus said, "I know your pain. I too shed tears. I too was separated from my father and I did it all for you. Give me your sorrows, your pain, your fears. I will carry them for you. I'll also be your husband and father to your children and something else I will give you, my peace." A peace the world doesn't understand because they don't know me. Take my hand. We will walk together. Believe in me. I'm here to tell you I saw my mother take his hand through all those years and to this day my sister and I say that watching her go through this for the next eight years that she was single, raising us alone, that's why we are believers to this day.

Not because of the blessings that followed those times but actually because of what we saw during the dark times. That's why we're believers, seeing mom lament and lean and then live with purpose because she believed this Romans 8:28 and we know that for those who love God all things work together for good. It doesn't say all things are good because all things are not good but God makes them work together for good to those who are the called according to his purpose. Back in 2020 I did a Zoom interview with my friend Rob Stewart, not Rob Stewart, that would be another person. My friend Rob Stewart who attends here at TLC with his wife Karen and I want to show you a couple of minutes from that conversation because it's so relevant to today's topic.

Watch this. I considered myself a pretty average person. I grew up in the trades and I got married when I was 26 and had my first child when I was 28 and next thing I know I've got three kids that are about four years apart and then my son Jordan got sick at about 15 months old so they ran an MRI scan and they found the tumor and he passed away on May 8th at two and a half years old in 1992 and it was a really, really hard time. Unfortunately, we went through a divorce a year later and I remarried six years later to my wife Karen and we had a son a year later after we got married and Brendan, my first born, we did everything together. We snowboarded, we raced motocross and tragically 13 years after Jordan died, Brendan and I were snowboarding on New Year's Day at North Star and Truckee, all of a sudden I just lost Brendan. Finally someone skied over the top of his snowboard. He was inverted in a tree well and suffocated. So we were obviously in total shock and grief for months and months. It could have been easy, I think I told you this before, to get in the fifth of Jack Daniel someplace in a gutter and just deal with my grief that way but I chose to turn my grief outward. It was a choice and it took faith to do that because you try to see what good could come out of tragedy like this.

And one of the things I did in Jordan's memory was I started a foundation after he passed and we've raised money and awareness for Family House and other families that are going through cancer treatment. We've raised about $4.7 million since the beginning. And after Brendan died I was just so devastated. It was just much harder than losing Jordan because that 18 years with him but ultimately turned the pain outward and we went to Uganda and we built two orphanages there in Jordan and Brendan's memory about a year after he died and it was really helpful for me to get outside my pain and help someone else in their pain. I couldn't imagine going through these kind of tragedies without having a relationship with the Lord knowing that we would see our boys again and we knew the end of the book that there would be no more heartache and pain in heaven. And I think faith is a choice that you're choosing that God's going to bring good out of this somehow and that when I get on the other side it won't matter the pain and loss I went through because the reunion is going to far out distance the sadness that I've had to carry through these tragedies in my life.

So powerful and do you see how he's weaving together those three strands? The honesty of we live in a broken world but knowing that God's going to make all things right and in the meantime you have a choice. You can live with faith. You can make a difference. Like Romans 12:21 says don't be overcome by evil but you overcome evil with good. We're here on earth as the body of Jesus and you can have a question about suffering but we're part of the answer to suffering. This is one of the reasons that our church all over the world with our global ministry partners we work to alleviate suffering. I mean you might not know but there's a war in Sudan going on right now and about half a million refugees have poured into Egypt over the last four months alone and we've been helping our partners there in Egypt. They've been giving out bags of food, sleeping bags, shelter, prayer groups, even providing retreats in the countryside for these families to give them trauma care with professional counselors and they have get this over 60 Sudanese house churches already for these refugees.

So look at this. These people are in a church there in Egypt. These are your Christian Arab brothers and sisters who are helping those refugees in Egypt with funds that we've sent from Twin Lakes. God has his people, his body in every corner of the world. And as we serve together as his hands we can make a difference. This is why every fall we do our acts of kindness. Why we do our food drive because part of the answer to suffering is us. We live in a broken world. He will set things right. And meanwhile you have a choice. You can make a difference.

Well let me wrap this up. I started by talking about my father's death at just 36 years old. Well his pastor over at Calvary Church in Los Gatos had asked him to share his story in a Sunday service. How was his faith helping him? And my dad wrote down his talk word for word. It's one of my most precious possessions. But then when that Sunday came around he couldn't do it. He got too sick and he was never able to share in person the testimony that he had written down for that day. So as I close this morning I would like my father to finally fulfill that request and share his testimony in this church with you.

When the doctor revealed his diagnosis to me I was at first shocked. He said my disease is incurable that I shouldn't expect to live a full life perhaps only a few months. Immediately I thought of my young family, my wife, our three and a half year old boy and 15 month old baby girl and how their lives will be affected by the untimely death of their husband and father. The thoughts were unbearable. And I quickly opened my Bible. The first verse I read was Acts 20:24, God's answer and encouragement for me. Neither count I my life dear to myself as long as I finish the work the Lord Jesus gave me to do. And this work is to tell the good news about God's gift of undeserved grace. Now listen to this. In that moment I gave my life into the hands of the Lord for him to use according to his perfect will to the glory of God being in sickness and death or in a miraculous healing. And in that same moment an incomparable peace and joy flooded my soul and has remained there ever since. In fact I'm certain that I've never been happier than now.

I joyfully witness to God's wonderful lesson through this sickness to his incomparable peace to the marvelous gift of Christian love through this church. And I encourage everyone who hasn't done so to completely dedicate his life to the Lord without reservation. And right now for we know not what tomorrow may bring. The lesson for me take Jesus seriously when he knocks at the door. Don't postpone for death might be around the corner. Why is there suffering? Well ultimately there's only one who understands everything about suffering and how it will all work out. And that one is God. So that when you don't know all the answers place your trust in the one who does. Let's pray together. Would you bow your head with me and close your eyes. And with everyone's head bowed I would love to pray for you if you're going through a trial right now that you'd like prayer for. With every eye closed if you're going through a tough time right now and you'd like me to pray for you would just raise your hand right now and slip it up. Lots of hands.

Holy Father I look out and realize there's a lot of pain in our hearts today and I pray that you would comfort and strengthen all those who raise their hands. And Lord if there are any who wish to respond to my father's plea to fully surrender to you. May they pray something like this in their hearts. Dear Lord this morning I am choosing you. Help me to remember that the pain is not going to last forever. This is temporary. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for suffering with us and for us on the cross and for conquering death through your resurrection. And it's in your name that I pray. Amen.