Füf | 11.14.08

Pastor Mike Plewniak continued VFC’s “Questioning God” series Thursday night with a sermon on the source of suffering and evil.  

Before his message, Mike played a video of interviews from UT students talking about why they believe suffering and evil exist.  The problem with these views, he said, was that they never took sin into account.

“You have experienced something from the fall,” Mike said.  ”The whole assumption is that suffering is unjust.”

Mike addressed two main issues that people have with God: the notion that suffering is something bad and that bad things happen to good people.  

First, the pastor reminded the audience that there is no such thing as a good person, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23)”.  If any suffering or grief should come to anyone, it is not unjust because many times of suffering are results of the fall of man.

“Where did evil come into this creation?” Mike asked. “You don’t have to go far to know that.  As soon as sin enters into the world, suffering follows.”

Second, evil also stems from our sin.  It is not something that God cannot control or God does not know about.  It is instead the character of all radically depraved humanity.

But because God is in control, Mike said, He controls, ordains and uses evil for His own glory.  God’s glory is superior to our own and he is not subject to our flawed notions of fairness.

This all culminates at the cross because it is only because God, Jesus Christ, the son of the Lord, whose suffering counts at the end.  He was “a man of suffering who knew what sickness was” (Isaiah 53:3).  Other translations put it as “acquainted with grief.”  

In light of all the sorrows we carry with us, Mike reminded the audience that no one suffered like the Christ.

“Jesus, God Himself, enter(s) into his humanity.  He was the only one who never deserved to supper.  And yet Jesus became sin for us…at the cross, we see a suffering God suffering for people,” he said.  

Let us keep our minds on the cross when we walk through the desert place.

Application/discussion

1. In a survey that VFC took just before school started, the most commonly asked questions of God are ones of suffering and evil.  Why is that?

2. Emily Rimshaw, a woman in VFC, recounted how God has used her suffering for His glory.  How do you make the focus of your questions of God about Christ and not about temporary suffering (Romans 5:6)?