Sermon Tone Analysis

Why Do We Suffer?

MI: The Purpose of Suffering is more contentment in God and Less satisfaction in self and world.

Intro:

Well good morning church.

My name is Zach Klundt and I am the director of student ministries here at Bethel and it is a privilege to be speaking to you this morning.

If you are new with us we are in a series called Reasons to Believe, Rational Answers to a Reasonable Faith.

This is the 5th message of this series and next week our new senior pastor Chad Torrison will be here to talk about Why live for Christ now!

But let me just give you a brief recap of where we have been.

Pastor Mike covered is there such a thing as truth

Pastor Weston covered why do Christians have a strange view on sexuality

Pastor Kevin spoke on why would a loving God send anyone to hell

and Weston spoke again last week and covered a tough issue addressing hypocrisy in the chruch.

And this week, I will try to follow in their foot steps as we address another tough topic, “Why do we suffer?”

This question gets ask by believers as well as those who do not believe in Jesus.

This question of why do we suffer is often used by those outside of the faith as a reason to no have faith.

As some will state I can’t believe in a God who allows suffering— therefore I do not believe in God.

And the deal with suffering and the questions as to why do we suffer can be answered easily.

We may not like the answer but it is simple.

Suffering exist because sin entered the world.

As Romans tell us that Through Adam sin entered the world.

If you recall God created everything perfect and there was no suffering, there was no pain, no death, but when Eve took that bite of the fruit and gave some to her husband— through their disobedience sin entered into the world that was perfect and good, and it left it broken, painful and full of suffering.

And we are still dealing with the ramification of that choice today.

Suffering exist because sin does.

Now suffering is not a cause of sin, as that can be a common misconception.

When have heard it said that I am suffering because God is punishing me for sin in my life that I have committed.

We do understand that sin rather does have consequences that does cause as pain and agony and yes we may suffer because of what we decide.

But God is not punishing us because of sin.

While we could close the good book and pray and you could be on your way.

As we answered that question why do we suffer?

It’s Sin.

But this does not always help us in the midst of suffering.

This does not help the one who lost a loved one.

Who is homeless and jobless and is wondering where their next meal will come from.

This does not help us wrestle with our suffering.

And we live in a world that is full of suffering and every single person goes through it.

We all suffer.

It does not matter your gender, your race, whether you are poor or rich.

It does not matter suffering will hit our lives.

While you may not be able to control some of the suffering that you go through you can choose how you respond to it.

I want to share with you a story.

Me: Miscarriage of 2018:

In 2018 my wife and I were praying if we should have another child.

At that point we had two incredible kids and we thought hey let’s add one more the mix.

And it took us a month to get pregnant and we thought that this was 100% in God’s will for our life.

I mean it was so clear— we were overjoyed!

Then about 6 weeks later, we found out that we lost the baby.

And let me tell you that was really hard.

We felt like God was blessing and giving us this go ahead to have a child.

And when we realized that we lost the baby, our world just stopped.

It came out of nowhere and it took time to heal.

And as I was studying suffering this week I came across wise words form John Piper who said this:

There are two ways suffering can be used:

1. Suffering can be used by satan to destroy your faith or keep you from having faith.

or

2. Suffering can be used by God to build up your faith.

Suffering is a battle for your heart.

And at the risk of sounding dramatic, we felt this:

We felt like out soul was hanging in the balance with how do we respond to this suffering.

I mean we did not choose this.

In reality I would choose to not suffer if that was the choice.

Anybody else?

We: We avoid suffering because we do not deem it as good.

If it was up to us none of us would choose suffering.

Why?

As As Paul David Tripp writes in his Book Suffering,

“When we suffer we don’t see it as any kind of good.

So we begin to question whether God is good— as He is the one who allowed it in the first place.”

We don’t choose to suffer.

And sometimes you don’t get a choice it just happens, cancer hits, you lose a child, you get hit by a drunk driver and are paralyzed, and the list goes on but sometimes we do have a choice right and in that choice we always choice comfort over suffering.

Here is what I am talking about.

We move into safer neighborhoods.

We by the a/c unit and then we keep our houses at a comfortable setting.

We avoid dark streets.

We take aspirin when out body hurts.

When the rain hit we scatter inside because nobody wants to be wet.

We drink only purified water.

We do a ton of things to not suffer.

We choose peace, safety, and easy over suffering.

And while we can’t control the uncontrollable, how do we handle the ones we can control?

If we see suffering as a pain or not good then we fall into the lie that suffering is meaningless and is an inconvenience.

But church this morning I want to share with you that God has a purpose for our suffering.

God: God tells us suffering does have a purpose

Here is what I believe about suffering, that I want to show you today.

The Purpose of Suffering is more contentment in God and Less satisfaction in self and world.

Suffering is about us becoming more content in God and less satisfied in our self and the world we live in.

And this morning— I am not here to argue why there is suffering in the world.

But what I want to give us is wisdom on how we can suffer well.

And I know that sounds crazy.

Suffer Well?

You maybe are asking yourself why does that matter.

Because how we suffer carries more weight then answering the question of why do we suffer.

If you have been a believer for any length of time you can see suffering all over scripture.

From Genesis 3 on.

Suffering is not surprising to a believer and this should not surprise you when it happens to you because everyone suffers.

But how we handle suffering says a lot about our faith.

So this morning, I want us to look at 2 Cor 1.

And as we turn there.

Let’s get everyone up to speed on what is happening.

Paul is the author of this letter.

God has continued to use Paul in huge ways ever since he was blinded on the road to Damascus.