In a sound bite culture were people appear to be able to proof text anything by referencing the most recent rhetoric, it's probably safe to say people sence the need for more  truth. As this year flows towards the precipice and we approach the new one, ask yourself how are you doing with finding truth in your life? You may feel tired, discouraged, maybe even angry about how your life has been going, perhaps a few  decisions you have made have left you disillusioned, you feel the need for someone or something to point you in the right direction, if only you could just find some true truth.

We are constantly making decisions on the basis of what we believe to be true. Even people who say that there is no such thing as truth, people who say there are just perceptions, perspectives and preferences are claiming that that is the truth!  You can't really get away from the need for truth.

We are really left with just one of two options when it comes to arriving at truth. The first is speculation. Speculation is mankind trying to figure things out without any outside help, our inquiring minds want to know. The second is revelation. Revelation is someone from outside our human limitations showing truth to us. Which have you relied on this in the past year?

 Imagine you're on a long plane ride.  The person you are sitting next to is friendly enough so conversation comes easy. Over the next several hours small talk turns to what we will call truth talk. At first you run through subjects of speculation such as UfO's,  Big Foot, and Michael Jackson, you then move to  hypothetical scenarios like could could Jennifer take Angelina? No doubt these are interesting ideas to entertain but eventually you arrive at deeper questions. You quickly discover you and your flight friend have very different perspectives on what is really true concerning the deeper issues of life.

You pull out all of your Christian apologetics, you provide evidence that demands a verdict and yet they still maintain that outside of themselves there is no knowing any ultimate, objective truth. What would you do? I suppose there are several options. You could recite a real nasty Bible verse that references Gods, wrath and something about worms that do not die and be done with it, or you could continue to engage and invest in the dialogue.

I think what I would do is appeal to revelation. I would point to the fact that our perspective can easily be misguided. For example I may hold a pencil as still as I possible can in my hand in front of my flight friend and ask how still is the pencil? No doubt they would reply as still as one can hold a pencil. I might then point out the window of the plane and ask the same question again. The fact of the matter is we are thirty five thousand feet above ground and traveling at about six hundred miles per hour.  

So then the question becomes, is there a reality we may not be seeing because we are focused on something else, is there a revelation that has been brought out into the light in order to help us on the journey of life. Christians say there is. According to the Scriptures there is a God and He is not silent and He has not left us to speculation but provided revelation.

Psalm 19 is one of the many places the Bible says this. It tells us that We have all the revelation we need to live our lives in the light of Gods' truth. Lets begin were David began, with the world. The first thing this Psalm tells us is…

1. Consider Creation As Confirmation Of The Truth Of God.

Look at verse 1 with me.

• Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

A: God Is Revealing The Reality Of Himself In Creation.

 In other words Gods' glory is on a world tour in the skies above. Gods' got an art exhibit unveiled and stretched across the horizons and just as you can learn something of an artist by their artistry, we can learn something of God by observing creation. This should be a general understanding for everyone.

 For example, recently I was over a good friends house. This friend is a modest person and would never boast or brag about his ability to paint amazing pictures. As I was admiring his paintings I thought to myself man He is good! I didn't have to go through a conscious inner conversation using lots of big words and logic to arrive at that conclusion. The conclusion was immediate and intuitive. I saw a beautiful painting and I knew there was an artist behind it.

The Bible says the same thing about creation. God is revealing Himself through creation even if people refuse to face it.

 These verses also tell us how….

B: The Reality Of Gods' Revelation Reaches Throughout All Creation.

·        Psalm 19:2-4a Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. 3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

In other words creation is a pop-up picture book and there is no place in all the universe where the reality of God is not popping up, providing beautiful illustrations of the Glory of God.

• Psalm 19:4b-6 In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, 5 which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. 6 It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat

 Here David compares the sunrise to a bridegroom leaving to claim his bride in great anticipation eager to consummate each day God creates with its warmth.  Then David pictures the sun as a champion warrior powerful and full of determination, running his course until the day is done. David knew little of the modern scientific data of today and yet he was overwhelmed by the bigness of Gods Glory! How much more should we be today?

If the Milky Way galaxy were the size of the entire continent of North America, our solar system would fit in a coffee cup. Even now, two Voyager spacecraft are hurtling toward the edge of the solar system at a rate of 100,000 miles per hour. For almost three decades they have been speeding away from Earth, approaching a distance of 9 billion miles. When engineers beam a command to the spacecraft at the speed of light, it takes 13 hours to arrive. Yet this vast neighborhood of our sun—in truth, the size of a coffee cup—fits along with several hundred billion other stars and their millions in the Milky Way, one of perhaps 100 billion such galaxies in the universe. To send a light-speed message to the edge of that universe would take 15 billion years.

When is the last time you have gone out into Gods creation and been impressed by Gods' revelation? Don't ignore it or deny it, go get impressed by it! Go impress it on others. Set down the Xbox controller, log out of Facebook or Myspace, turn off the news, try not to text, get out of the lazy boy and go where God is and has revealed truth. In other words look out the window of your plane.

The Christian is aided with creation to reveal the name of God to those who have ears to hear and eyes to see.

How is this done? Well, first remember creation confirms the truth of God, allow that to strengthen your belief in God and allow that to provide strength in the year to come, that's the first step and secondly….

2. Look To The Word Of God And Receive His Revelation For Life.

This is the theme of verses 7-11 and what this tells us is that…..

A: The Scriptures Should Have Unique Authority In Our Lives.

In the other words Gods Word should get the last word! The Bible is the "because I said so". This is different than much of what we hear in our culture.

 I stumbled upon two quotes this week by two very different people but let's see what we see.

Keith Richards "If you're going to kick authority in the teeth you might as well use booth feet"

Dali Lama "This is simple religion, there is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy, our own brain, our own heart is our temple"

 A close look at what is being said may reveal a striking similarity. In the former we see the simple traditional trappings of rebellion and in the later we see a more refined approach in the form of enlightened individualism, however they are both in their very essence one in the same world view. You are the authority.

According Psalm 19 this is a bad idea, we should trust in some other form of authority.

·        Psalm 19:7a The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul.

We are given several words to describe the revealed Word of God. Don't get tripped up on the word "Law". Law is a comprehensive term meaning all of Gods' revealed will. Now Gods' Word is not a suggestion on how to live, we did not receive ten hints on how to live. When it says, The Law of the Lord is perfect it means whole, or complete! And what does Gods Law do, but give spiritual life; it revives you, and sustains you.

 I was poisoned this last week by what I believe came from a restaurant. By the third day I was so weak from not eating and the inability to keep fluids in me I could hardly walk. If I were to go without food or water for more than a week, what kind of health would I be in? I would suffer from malnutrition and my body would begin breakdown. Our bodies demand food and water for life.

It is no different in our diet of Gods Law. It is complete and because it is complete when we read it and meditate on it, it makes us whole, complete people.

But that's not all, look at the second half of verse 7.

·        Psalm 19:7b The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.

 Statutes is literally testimony. Gods Word is a testimony on how to live life, it is a trustworthy witness that has taken the stand and testified on the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth and the best part about it is according to verse seven if you listen and obey the testimony of the Lord it will make you smart. Its like the gingko Biloba for the brain.

·        Psalm 19:8a The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart.

The precepts of the Lord describe Gods direction. Gods Law is a life map that gives precision based guidance. Unlike map quest it is totally dependable.

Have you ever been really lost? I mean really, really lost, so lost that the word lost no longer adequately describes the state you are in? You are disorientated; your gas gauge is on E and it's really, really late out. Panic begins to set in as your eyes desperately try to spy a gas station that is still open. How do you feel when you see that gas station sign up in the distance? Joy!

Gods Word is saying that it will lead you in the right direction so you don't get lost and that should bring joy to your whole being! Let's see what else it does.

·        Psalm 19:8b The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.

Basically this is saying that without the commands of Lord we are in the dark.

 You may be in a place in life right now were it feels as if someone has slowly dimmed the lights. Despair is setting in, depression has become the dejure of the day in your emotional life. There maybe many reasons for this and I certainly do not want to minimize your suffering, Christ understands. But ask yourself a simple question. Are you doing what you know Gods Word has commanded you to do? Are you reading the map, or have you wandered down a distant dark road and now the dismal depression has kicked in?

There is a real truth in that the illumination of Gods' light in our lives is often contingent on our obedience to what we know God has commanded.  Gods' Revealed Word is radiant and will give light to your perspective if you listen and follow His commands.

Let's briefly look at the last two descriptions.

• Psalm 19:9a  the fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever.

 By Fear of the Lord it means reverence. This is the human response to the revealed Word of God. Not to be mistaken with anxiety or panic which always exaggerate our circumstances. This sort of reverence is pure, clean, uncontaminated, and undiluted. And the best part about it is that it's not a fad, Gods word wont go out of style this next year, it endures forever! The irony is that feelings do, our emotions migrate. So reverence that which is never on a sale rack because it's out of season.

The second half of verse nine closes out the description of Gods revealed Word by simply saying,

·        Psalm 19:9bThe ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous.

Ordinances means judgments. What this is saying is that Gods' Word confronts us with right and wrong, and good and bad. It induces ethics and moral Law. We need this today.

Only Gods revealed Word is perfect, trustworthy, right, radiant, pure, sure, and all together righteous. All this said the Scriptures have the authority we need to live our lives by. David goes on by reflecting on the value of all of Gods' revealed Law by saying,

·        Psalm 19:10-11 They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.11 By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

These verses tell us that,

B: The Scriptures Should Have Priority In Our Life.

Look at what verse 10 is saying. It is saying if you have a choice between the Word of God or gold chose the Word of God. So Gods' Word is more valuable than you or I can imagine. He goes on to establish that there is pleasure to be had in reading Gods' revealed Word. David says they are sweet. Essentially David compares Gods' Word to a lot of money and sweets and says Gods Word is better! This begs the question, what is valuable, what is sweet to you?

 It easy to forget that the way we treat the revealed Word of God is how we treat God. If this is true it isn't difficult to determine where you are in relation to God. Do you desire Gods Word, are you hungry and nothing will satisfy, don't try a snickers try reading Gods' recipe for a satisfied heart found only in Him. Lastly…..

3. Look at Yourself And Respond To The Revelation Of God.

·        Psalm 19: 12-13 Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults.13 Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then will I be blameless,   innocent of great transgression.

The Psalmist looks at himself in light of Gods revealed truth and concludes with a prayer of response. He is in no way naïve about the human condition. He acknowledges that at any given moment he may be operating off of some hidden faulty motive. And that it is only when he submits himself to the truth of God that he will be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.

A story is told about battleships assigned to a training squadron and had been out at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. As night fell the visibility was poor with patchy fog so the captain remained on the bridge keeping a close eye on all the activities. Shortly after dark the lookout on the wing reported, light, bearing on the star board bow. Is it steady or moving astern? The captain cried out. The look out replied, steady, captain, which meant we were on a dangers collision course with that ship.

The captain then called to the signalman, signal that ship: We are on a collision course, advice you change course twenty degrees. Back came the signal, Advisable for you to change twenty degrees. The captain said send: I'm a captain, change course twenty degrees. I am a seaman second class, came the reply. You had better change course twenty degrees." By that time the captain was furious. He spat out send: I'm a battle ship, change course twenty degrees." Back came the flashing light I'm a light house.

The Bible is our light house it is our authority in times of darkness and confusion, it maintains the might and the right in all areas of life.

 I suppose there are many lessons I have learned while serving as one of the pastors here at Christ Community but perhaps one of the most important is that my speculations, my suspicions, and yes even my judgments are not always right. In fact they are wrong a lot more than Id like to admit. Now I know that this is not what a congregation likes to hear concerning a pastor. But it's true. Much of the time I am looking at the pencil not out the window, I don't see how fast I am going, sometimes I don't recognize the light house for what it is and I am refusing to change direction because I am trusting in myself to much!

The fact of the matter is that we are born broken. If that isn't bad enough we are raised in a broken world by broken people. And at any given moment our brokenness can elude us, it hides. And so we develop bad beliefs, wrong ways of cooping with life. We are motivated by fear which opens the doors to all kinds of passions that rule our lives.

Broken. Maybe you feel broken like me. In fact I hope you do because I have found great consoling from a broken friend. Gods' Word reveals to us truth and ultimately truth found in a person whose name is Jesus. According the Scriptures Jesus was born un-broken lived out the Law perfectly and even though He had all authority in heaven and earth was broken by our sin on a cross so that we could be made whole and complete. He became our redeemer!

• Psalm 19:14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight,   O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.

Does God Exist?

A Cosmological argument

Noah's' Great Big Metaphysical Epistemological Question.

Recently I was at a church retreat. The location of the campground was surrounded by the Ocala National forest in the heart of central Florida. I was up there with my whole family enjoying the beautiful surroundings and the time we had together. One evening just before sunset my eight year old son Noah asks me "Dad, there is something I just don't get, how do we know that there is a God and that he made everything?" there was a long pause as we sat there on the stairs of the porch looking out over the pond that was in the distance. My mind began to race, all of the intellectual jargon that I was so accustom to using was failing me as I tried to explain to him the inconsistent alternatives to believing anything other that what the Bible teaches about God and His creation. 

What my son did not know was that he was asking one of the oldest questions in all of human history. For thousands of years man has been grappling with and asking that perplexing metaphysical question of "What is really real?" Why is there something rather than nothing, Are the cosmos all there is, or is there something more?" This leads to another question "How do I know that what I know is true?" In philosophy this falls under the branch called epistemology. Epistemology asks the basic question "What do we know?" and "How do we know that what we know is truly true?"

Last week we established the fact that we all have ideas, and that those ideas answer the questions that metaphysics and epistemology ask, therefore weather you realize it or not you are a philosopher which is to say you are a (philo) friend or lover of (sophia) wisdom. These ideas influence how you see and interact with the world around you. Here in the west there are two main contenders competing for you allegiance, Theism and Naturalism.

Theism simply states that there is a God at the center of all there is. Naturalism propounds Nature is enough and that nobody, plus time, plus chance, equals everything, that there was a sort of spontaneous generation.

In this lesson I would like to explore the claims of naturalism and see weather or not it is consistent in its claims. In order to do that we must start were naturalists start; we must get inside their minds, understand their ideas, and see things through their worldview. In order to do that we will be looking at what is known in philosophy as cosmology.

1. Cosmo….what?

The word "cosmos" is a Greek word that refers to everything that exists, the universe itself and all its constituents. A cosmological argument attempts to prove the existents of God by presupposing three basic tenets. They are as follows.

.. -->[if !supportLists]-->1.     .. -->[endif]-->Whatever exists has a cause.

.. -->[if !supportLists]-->2.     .. -->[endif]-->The universe exists.

.. -->[if !supportLists]-->3.     .. -->[endif]-->Therefore the universe has a cause.

This argument centers on the concept of causality. Every event has a cause, and that includes the universe. It had a beginning. There was a time when it was not, and a time when it was. A cosmological argument concludes that God exists as the cause of the universe and that the universe could not exist without God. And so the thrust of the argument is to show that the universe was caused by some agent that was neither part of the universe nor itself caused. In other words it is possible for God to exist without the universe but it is impossible for the universe to exist without God. This contradicts the naturalist philosophical ideas concerning origins, as the Atheist Carle Sagan was famous for saying,

"The cosmos is all there ever is, ever was and ever will be."

There are two major cosmological arguments (Kalam and Thomist) but for the sake of time I will focus primarily on the Kalam argument.

A. The Kalam Cosmological Argument

This particular argument attempts to show that the universe is not infinite (never ending, unlimited) but rather finite (restricted or fixed). Perhaps a few illustrations will help.

Let's say you are reading a book and you have just finished reading chapter two. Now in order for you to have reached the first page of chapter three you would have had to first read the last page of chapter two. And before that page the one before it and so on and so on going all the way back to the first page. Now since this book has a first page there are only a finite number of pages to read.

Now imagine with me that there is infinity (immeasurable amount) of pages in front of chapter three. When will you get to the first page of chapter three? The answer, never.

The same logic holds true to the events that make up the history of the universe.  Take for instance my wedding day. That event can only occur if a finite (predetermined) number of events occur before it. If an infinite number of events happened before my wedding day I would have never got married.

Time is not infinite, it had a beginning. And the best way to show that is to point out that there is a now. If "now" exists then time cannot be infinite.

B. Thomist Argument

There is no such thing as an effect that did not have a cause; if it exists something initiated it. The Kalam argument asserts that there must have been an uncaused cause, or as Thomas Aquinas put it "What ever moves must be moved by another" or everything that comes into existents owes its existents to something else and that chain cannot regress infinitely.

Take for instance an oak tree. An oak tree was once an acorn. That acorn was once on another oak tree so on and so forth. But we must eventually ask where did the first oak tree or acorn come from.

If this premise is true, (and I believe it is), then it is appropriate to say that the universe began to begin, it had an origin. This premise has received powerful support from natural science in what has been dubbed "The Big Bang Cosmology".

C. The Big Bang

If the universe is expanding then it must have had a point of origin from which it is expanding. Other discoveries have been made that show that the expansion of our universe is slower now than it was when it began- like an explosion. This explosion became known as the big bang, the beginning of the universe. Our universe is kind of like a rubber ball in which with each bounce it bounces lower and faster until it stops.  The big bang remains the best explanation for the current state of the universe.

Conclusion: This begs the question "who or what initiated the big bang?" A car has a working engine, a healthy battery, a properly connected electrical system to start the engine, and a tank full of gas has the necessary conditions for running. Yet there are parking lots full of cars that have the necessary conditions for running but are not running. Although they have the necessary conditions for running they lack the sufficient conditions.

Cars that are moving down the street have necessary and sufficient conditions for running. What do the moving cars have that the parked cars do not? They have drivers. And what is a driver? It is a being that is not part of the car, but has the power to start the car, and that does not rely on the car for its existence. Who knows maybe they even built the car.

The universe needs a driver, an intelligent agent that is capable of choosing whether to create the universe or not. This necessary and sufficient cause of the universe is what we call God.

In theological circles there is an old saying that says, "we stand on the shoulders of giants" this is to say we glean from the great works of those who have gone before us and this has certainly been the case as I have gathered material in addressing the topic at hand. Booth Larry Kirk and Dr. Tim Keller have helped aid me in this endeavor. This is not to say that I haven't had my own bout with suffering. In all honesty when Larry approached me and requested that I speak on the issue of evil and suffering there was reluctance, an emotional recoil from exploring what C.S. Lewis dubbed "The Problem of Pain."

It's been over seven years now since Kelli and I lost Jonas Zachary Seibert. It's strange the things you remember, Kelli and I had just finished eating at Burger King, on the way home she began complaining that her stomach hurt, those of you who eat fast food might not find that a strange thing. However when the pain intensified we went to the hospital and were informed that at only 26 weeks she was in labor and they could do nothing to stop her contractions and from further dilation. In the early hours of the morning on the following day she gave birth to our second son. The doctors rushed our baby off to I.C.U. and told us that the crying he made was a good sign.

Kelli told me to go home and get some sleep and that she would call me as soon as she heard anything. I went home exhausted and collapsed on the living room coach. It wasn't long before the phone rang. My wife Kelli on the other end in a very calm and collected manner simply told me that Jonas had died.

I don't remember the drive back to the hospital I honestly could not tell how I got there. When I arrived I was taken to the room in which Kelli was staying. When they asked us if we would like to see our son for the first and last time nothing could have prepared me for the flood of emotions I was about to feel. As they placed our child's lifeless body in my arms I became angry, irate, infuriated with God, but then a stronger emotion filled me, deep, deep, deep sorrow, a sadness I had never felt before.

I remember at first I could not cry I could only moan beneath the weight of this horrendous hurt. But then came the tears, then came the questions. "Why?" "Why did this happen?" And then "How?" "How could You God allow this to happen?" We were left with that ever potent combination of suffering and silence. As one writer put it "The problem of pain is a question mark turned like a fish hook in the human heart."

  This is the Dilemma. Suffering seems to be the Achilles heel of the Christian faith. If God is good and loves people, it's reasonable to believe that He wants to deliver people from evil and suffering. If God is all-knowing it is reasonable to believe that He knows how to deliver people from evil and suffering. If God is all powerful, it is reasonable to believe that He is able to deliver people from evil and suffering. But evil and suffering exist.

 Daily our media drags us to God and forces us to inquire of Him the meaning behind so much suffering and evil. This is particularly fresh on our minds as just over a week ago in what has been called the largest school massacre in American history. A single gun man armed with two hand guns  walked through the halls at Virginia Tech killing 32 people before turning the gun on himself, leaving the family and friends of the victims as well as countless others awed and asking that age old question "Why?" "How could God allow this?" the Greek philosopher Epicurus said over two thousand years ago,

"Either God wants to abolish evil and cannot, or He can abolish evil but does not want to. If he wants to and cannot, he is impotent. If he can and does not want to, he is wicked.

This was the response of Jobs wife to the unfairness he faced. Her counsel to Job was simply "Curse God and die!" Why hold on to a sentimental belief in a God when so much in life conspires against it?

This is a pretty formidable argument. What do we say to it? How do we address this intellectual conundrum? I would like to propose that, though we won't get all of the answers we would like, there are clues that have been given to us, that may help aid us in our pilgrimage in understanding the problem of pain. What this text will show us is that in the midst of our suffering if we trust in God's promises we can live lives filled with hope.

In order to answer this question we must first look at how not to face evil and suffering. Often it is the case that when we suffer evil or catastrophe, we tend to want to abandon God, to forget God.  It's a very natural response; most of us have done it. But,

1. Abandoning Belief In God Doesn't Help Anything.

The Apostle Peter had the problem of pain, and suffering in mind when he wrote his first epistle. Peter is addressing a people who had suffered a great deal and were about to suffer more. But look at verses 6 and 7 and notice what he says,

⁶In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷ These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Essentially what Peter is saying is that pain and suffering should do the exact opposite; he is saying suffering should increase faith. It's a mistake (though a very understandable mistake) to think that if you abandon your belief in God it somehow is going to make the problem of evil and suffering easier to handle or understand. If we abandon God then,

A.  Suffering And Evil Becomes Senseless.

Making this point one of atheism's champions, Richard Dawkins of Oxford and author of the best selling book "The God Delusion" argues…

"In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music."

In sharing this quote with Dennis Kiggins he quickly responded "And he expects to get paid for writing that?" In other words if Dawkins publishers stopped paying him, issued a lawsuit, and he was fired, he might feel it unjust, even wrong. But in order to be consistent with his world view he would have to simply say he had been issued no wrong and had just fallen on some bad luck.

Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.  Clearly understanding the issue and addressing the problem of evil and suffering in his own day makes this point in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail,

"If there was no higher divine Law, there would be no way to tell if a particular human law was unjust or not."

In other words If there is no God or higher divine Law and the material universe is all there is, then violence is perfectly natural, its how we got here, the strong eating the weak! And at this point,

B. Suffering And Evil Are Reasonable.

 If there is no God and we are here purely by accident, how does one determine weather any human act is right or wrong? Our brain is a result of an accident therefore our logic (if you can even call it that) is a result of primordial random mutation, through natural selection, and natural selection equals violence, and violence is perfectly natural. But this view robs life of any ultimate value, it cheapens our suffering and in the end our death.

Jean Paul Sartre understood this. In his signature essay on existentialism he wrote,

"If God does not exist there is no longer a possibility of any good existing. It is nowhere written that one must be honest or must not lie sense we are now on the plain were there are only human beings."

 Or in the words of Dostoevsky,

 "If God does not exist then everything is permitted."

You see if there is no God then you may have feelings about right and wrong, what is just or unjust but that's all they are, just feelings.

When you operate according to this world view you must be warned this model does not come fully loaded, there are no brakes, there's no telling were it stops, you can't create exceptions when this view is inconvenient or politically incorrect. Imagine telling a raped woman, the rapist merely danced to his DNA or informing the victims' families of the Virginia Tech massacre, that the gun man who killed their children was merely dancing to his DNA. Few would make such repugnant remarks. Dawkins and others like him are forced to crawl back into the cave from which they evolved during times of suffering and evil because their naturalist world views offer no quarter for people in pain.

So you see abandoning your belief in God does not help in the addressing the problem of evil and suffering, at best it brings about more questions. Why? Because we are moral beings and,

C. Our Suffering Matters.

I f you really are struggling profoundly with the question "How could a good God allow suffering" at the moment your being hammered existentially by some particular instance of evil, philosophical arguments may fall short. After all who wants logic when the heart is broken? Who wants a physiological treatise on the calcium component of the bone when the shoulder has come out of socket? ( How many of you have been dumped?)

You may be asking a different set of questions. Why doesn't God provide the financial and relational support my family needs? Why has God allowed my marriage to grow so cold?  Why is God allowing my child to rebel? Why does God allow me to keep having this sickness? The questions could go on and on and to these questions we must look somewhere else. We must not abandon our belief in God but,

2. We Must Look Into The Past.

Look at verses six and seven with me again.

⁶In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷ These have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Notice how Peter employs the analogy of fire with our suffering. Peter likens our trials to a furnace in which you put gold through.

One time in the Bible this literally happened. In the book of Daniel chapter three you may recall the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar decides to erect a great image and demands that everyone bow down and worship it. But three young men won't do it. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refuse to worship this false God. Nebuchadnezzar finds out about this and in a furious rage commands Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego be thrown into a furnace that is heated seven times more than it was usually heated. In fact the men that throw these three young men into the furnace are killed as they do so it is so hot. After they are bound and are thrown into the fire Nebuchadnezzar looks into the furnace and is amazed at what he sees. And verses 24 and 25 of chapter three say,

²⁴ Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, "Weren't there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?"  They replied, "Certainly, O king." ²⁵ He said, "Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods."

Who was that in the furnace with them? As we know only three came out of the furnace unharmed. Well one thing we know is that in the book of Isaiah,

A. God Gives His People A Promise.

Isaiah 43:2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the river, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.

Notice the promise is not if you believe in me you won't go through deep waters or fiery trials. Christian or non-Christian trials and tribulations are a given. The promise is when you go through trials. Gods promise to His people is I will be with you!

But how do we know God's promise is true, how do we know God will walk with us in our affliction. God makes good on that promise in the New Testament.  It's not until you get to the cross that you realize God's talk is not cheap. Verses 10 and 11 tell us,

¹⁰Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, ¹¹trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

B. God fulfills His Promise.

Christianity teaches that in the person of Jesus Christ, God became vulnerable and subject to suffering and pain and even death. God took his own medicine so to speak. The English Author Dorothy Sayers wrote,

For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is-limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - God had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. ...He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death.  When He was a man, He played the man.  He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worth while.

If you are suffering under political in justice, we see God the subject of unjust suffering and death being lynched. If you have lost a loved one, we can look upon the cross and see the father losing His only Son. Or maybe you look around and see a world full of war and famine, aids and poverty and you find yourself screaming out at the pain "why God, why God" look to the cross and there is Jesus screaming out in pain "Why? Why?" He suffered everything we have suffered and much, much more.

So let's take this question to the cross and ask, why is there is evil and suffering? And even though the cross cannot tell you the answer to that question, it can tell you what the answer to that question is not. Its not that God does not love you, it can't be that He doesn't care. We are asked to trust in His perfect plan.

C. We Must trust That God Knows Best.

What if you stood at the foot of the cross in front of this apparently senseless act of violence and tragic waste of life, and you said, "I can never, ever trust God again after an event like this!" And what if you went home and completely renounced all belief in God saying, "This proves that God is either a monster or indifferent or He doesn't exist"? If you did that, you would have been missing the greatest display of God's love.

Imagine a bear in a trap and a hunter who, out of sympathy, wants to liberate him. He tries to win the bears confidence, but he cant do it, so he has to shoot the bear with a tranquilizer. The bear, however, thinks this is an attack and that the hunter is trying to kill him. He doesn't realize that this is being done out of compassion.

Then in order to get the bear out of the trap, the hunter has to push him further into the trap to release the tension on the spring. If the bear were semiconscious at that point, he would be even more convinced that the hunter was his enemy who was out to cause him suffering and pain. But the bear would be wrong. He reaches this incorrect conclusion because he is not human. We can do the same thing when it comes to our suffering. (Noah Allergies)

Helmut Thielecke was a Christian pastor during the Nazi regime in World War Two. He saw and experienced a lot of suffering. He wrote that it was the reality of the cross of Christ as a promise and assurance of the goodness and love of God that helped people through this intense time of suffering.

He points out that a fabric viewed through a magnifying glass is clear in the middle and blurred at the edges. Life, he says, is like a fabric. 

There are many edges which are blurred, many events and circumstances we do not understand.  But they are to be interpreted by the clarity we see in the center. For us the center is the cross of Christ.  We are not left to guess about the goodness of God from looking at the isolated circumstances of life.  He has clearly revealed his character and dramatically demonstrated it to us in the cross of Jesus Christ.

So in order to understand how to handle the problem of suffering and evil we must not abandon our belief in God, but we must look back to the cross of Christ. And thirdly,

3. We Must Look To The Future.

³Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, ⁵who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

Look at what he is saying in verse 3. You can't go through the furnace of suffering with out a living hope. What a living hope? A living hope is something that is active, dynamic moving and powerful. What is this hope in? Verse 4 says it's an inheritance. An inheritance is a certain wealth, and where this wealth kept? Verse 4 tells us it's kept in heaven for you.

Paul speaking about this future inheritance says,

1 Corinthians 15:54, 55 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."  ⁵⁵"Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death is your sting?"

Notice what Paul is saying here. In the resurrection there will be a restoration of life. There will be a new heavens and a new earth. Your Body, your loved ones, your homes, all that is good will be restored to you; it all comes back to you, perfected. Paul says that these things will be imperishable, immortal, unspoiled. Paul goes so far to say that suffering and death will be swallowed up in victory.

Think about that for just a moment. Paul says death has been swallowed up in victory. When I take in food and I digest things it makes me bigger, as you can see. The food becomes part of you. So what does Paul mean when he says death and suffering are swallowed up in victory?

Have you ever lost something of extreme value? A couple years ago my family and I were celebrating the fourth of July on the beach with some friends. My son was playing on the shore rolling with the waves and eating sand. Some time had past and I looked out and I could not see my son anywhere. For the next ten minutes my wife and I, along with our friends scoured the beach looking for him. I began to imagine the worst. A deep, deep, deep, feeling of sorrow began to set in and I started to cry. And then I heard those beautiful words, "Saul, we found him and he is perfectly fine" he was oblivious to the fact he was even lost. When I saw him I was so happy that the tears of sorrow turned into tears of relief and thanksgiving. Now I loved my son before that experience but there was a heightened since of love after that experience. The experience of loosing my son had been swallowed up in the experience of having my son. Making me overflow with gratitude and joy at what I had.  Everything sad had become untrue. And that is what God's word is saying here everything old will become new. Saint Mother Teresa said that,

From heaven the most miserable earthly life will look like one bad night in an inconvenient hotel

C.S. Lewis said,

"God whispers in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. Pain is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

In our suffering Kelli and I felt that megaphone of pain. We did not receive an answer to our question of why. But what we did receive was an invitation to believe in a promise. 

Sometimes God gives us promises in the place of explanations because we don't have the capacity to fully understand. We have to look at the cross of Christ and believe in the love of God. The ultimate answer to the problem of evil is found in Jesus Christ who because of His love for us died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead.

 It is possible for you to escape the ultimate suffering of God's inevitable judgment on sin and evil.  It is also possible to have the controlling power of evil broken by entering into a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.   It is possible to know that in a world where there is suffering and evil God is good and can and will "work all things together for good for those who love Him..." 

I have come to believe that all consumers are sovereign. That is to say that the preference and impulse of the average individual in America rules supreme. We the customer can match self-perceived need with a product and if the product fails to deliver we simply take our business elsewhere and with our culture rapidly changing as it does with every nanosecond, I can only imagine how difficult it must be for those marketing to our fickle nature.

I say this because this consumer mentality has infiltrated the church. Theology and sound doctrine are slashed in half making the Christian message affordable for everyone while the worship serves is customized for comfort. Meanwhile....

E-mail/internet,TV, video games,text messaging, and cell phones are ubiquities in our culture, (we are wired). One trend that I find disturbing is that in an effort to make the gospel accessible to the masses we have taken the advantage of technology (a good thing!) but have become more and more isolated from each other. As a result as I see it we are in touch with everyone potently, but we are known by almost no one in particular (Putnam thesis of the 1960s).

David Wells writes in his recent book "The Courage To Be Protestant",

"There is a recent development called "affective computing" in which a virtual person is created by a computer. This person responds to the real person using the computer with expressions of understanding and sympathy, thus giving the illusion of human companionship".

I recently took my son to see the movie "Iron Man", ( a fun movie by the way), one of the interesting aspects of Robert Downey Jr. character was his increasing isolation from people yet close relationship with robots which displayed all the characteristics of a reliable friend, this by the way makes for a very lonely Iron Man. I don't want to read into the movie to much but I did find it interesting that this seemed to be an underlying theme of the movie.

So in a culture where the consumer is the authority as well as increasingly disconnected to people and realationships, how should the church respond?