I Don't Understand
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Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
This is not the message I planned to preach
Mark DiQuattro - led Bible study, brilliant man loved the Word and loved God, was loved by all
Wednesday night, I received a call from Joe that Mark had taken a turn for the worse. My wife could tell from my end of the conversation that it was not a good phone call that I was on.
When I hung up, she asked me what was wrong, and I said through my tears “Mark is not doing well. I don’t think he’s going to make it.”
And she kind of sunk in her chair and closed her eyes and said softly “I don’t understand.”
When I got the call on Friday and I called my wife to let her know, she again could only say “I don’t understand.”
When Joe spoke words of encouragement to the men’s group yesterday, he said “I don’t understand, but I’m trusting God.”
Those are three words that define life in a fallen world as a Christian perhaps better than any other: I don’t understand.
And I don’t understand. I don’t understand why things happen the way they do. I don’t understand why God heals some but not others. I don’t understand why God allows some suffering to happen but steps in and stops other suffering.
Like the prophet Jeremiah or Solomon in Proverbs ask, I often find myself wondering why sometimes the wicked prosper and yet sometimes the righteous suffer.
How many times have we all struggled to understand how God could allow situations to play out the way they do? Especially when someone we love is sick, or gets hurt, or worse…
And yet we come here every week and we say “God is good…all the time.” And I have no doubt that we mean it when we say it. God is good all the time.
But how do we reconcile the goodness of a sovereign God with a dear brother in Christ who has faithfully served God getting so sick and being taken away?
How do we reconcile God’s goodness with all that we have been through as a church in recent history?
How is God good all the time, and yet a brilliant preacher of the Gospel like Ed Banghart, who loves God so much is stricken with a disease that leaves him unable to speak well enough to preach?
How is God good all the time, and yet a good man like Dean Temple, a steadfast believer - an elder, a lover of God and a pillar in our church - is taken away and leaves a hole in our church that can never be filled?
How can we still believe God is good, when we don’t understand why He allows such suffering - such loss - such…bad?
Well, we can. We can know that God is good all the time even when the sufferings of this world escape our understanding. Even when the loss of a Christian brother leaves us shaking our heads in bewilderment.
We can say at the same time: “God is good, all the time” - and - “I don’t understand”.
And it’s okay to do that. We can say both of those. We can say those things together. Because they’re both true.
God is only ever good.
We don’t understand why He works the way He does.
And I want us to see that this morning. That even when we don’t understand, and we hurt, and things are bad - God is good.
So let’s start at the beginning.
In the beginning, God was good. He had only ever been good. And then, He created everything. And He was still good. And so was His creation. The book of Genesis tells us seven times that creation was good.
The light was good, the seas and land were good, all the living creatures were good. When it wasn’t good that man was alone, God made woman, and then it was very good. It was the only time in the history of the world that the expression “it’s all good” was actually true.
But we are told about another good - and it’s also the first time we’re told about bad. We are told of a tree in the Garden of Eden. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It could just as easily be translated the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.
And when the tree is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it isn’t speaking of knowing good and evil in the purely intellectual sense. It wasn’t like Adam and Eve couldn’t understand the concept of evil. They had perfect, unfallen minds. They got the concept.
This, is talking about knowing evil. Knowing bad. Being acquainted with it. Having a first hand experience with bad.
You see, mankind had experienced good. Adam and Eve only ever experienced good before the Fall. And when God said:
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
He was saying that disobeying Him would result in two things. First, Adam and Eve would now know evil - they would know bad - because they would have experienced it for themselves.
Second, along with that bad, will come the ultimate bad: death. Death would enter the world if they sinned against God and ate of the tree.
And we all know what happened. Adam ate of the fruit of the tree, and sin and death entered the world. And evil - bad - entered the world. And the world went from good to bad. From how God created it, to how we made it.
So in the opening chapters of Genesis, we see two things presented to us very clearly. First, we look at Who God is, and at everything God made, everything God did, everything God gave to us, and all we see is that God is good.
Second, we look at what mankind did, and we see that sin, death - and all the bad - that wasn’t God. That was us. God was still only good.
Now, let me make a very important clarification. I am not saying that the bad things that happen to us are because of our own sins. Not at all. Physical and mental illness are no more the direct result of our own sins than a three year old breaking his arm is a result of his sins.
The point is that since sin has entered the world, the world is broken, and so are we, and so we now break. Once mankind in Adam sinned, the toothpaste wasn’t going back in the tube, bad was here to stay.
And so even those who worship God, and whose hearts are for Him, and who are obedient and submitted to Him - who are good Christians like Mark Di Quattro - they suffer bad. They even suffer death. Just ask Abel when you see him.
And I can look back and I can say “Adam, I don’t understand, dude. You had everything. It was all good. Why would you want the one thing God said you couldn’t have?”
But then I think about it. And I have to actually give Adam some credit. Because he ate, immediately realized his sin, and was ashamed. I don’t think just anyone would have reacted that way.
I know myself. I’ll speak for me. If that was pre-conversion Lee, I would have rationalized how eating the fruit wasn’t really sin, probably had more, and would have tried to play it off like nothing happened, even if I had to debate God on the matter.
I would have convinced myself that it was still all good.
But now, knowing Christ, I don’t have to try to convince myself that it’s all good. Circumstances aren’t always good. Outcomes aren’t always good. And fooling myself into thinking it’s all good is not very becoming of a believer. That’s what unbelievers do.
They take the truth that deep down they really know - that God is, that He’s good, and that we’re all sinners - and they push it down even further and convince themselves it’s all good.
But since God saved us, we know what a fallen, broken world means for us. It isn’t always all good.
It isn’t good right now that our brother is gone.
But we know God still is. He is good.
Even though the sin, and the death because of sin, is bad.
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
We all sinned in Adam. Mankind as a group fell into sin. The whole human race became sinful.
And all that bad spread to all of us. It still does.
And again, the bad that happens to us or those around us is not necessarily because of our own sins - but because mankind brought sin into the world and the world is fallen.
So that means that while we can’t understand why the particular bads happen to us or around us, we know why bad happens.
Sin came into the world, and death through sin, and death spread to all men.
The world is broken. We are broken.
And that’s bad.
But God is good.
He was good at the beginning, and He is now, and He always will be.
And nothing shows us how good God is, like what He did to save us from sin and death - to save us from ourselves and what we earned - what we chose.
He created everything good, we ruined it, and He determined to fix it. At a great cost.
Let’s go a little further into that Romans 5 passage. We saw that in Adam we have all sinned. We have become sinners - and remember, we aren’t sinners because we sin, we sin because we’re sinners. It is about who we are. It is about what we became even though God created us good.
We aren’t sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners. And we aren’t broken because we break - we break because we’re broken.
We, like the world, are fallen. And death has spread to us all.
BUT, God is so good, that He did something about it. He sent His Son:
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
I mean, think about this for a second. We sinned in Adam. We here sinned. All mankind has sinned. Paul makes that clear not only here but in the first few chapters of his letter to the Romans.
God made everything good, and gave us everything good, because He is good - and we went and created bad and ruined it. And what does He do? He gives us a gift.
And it isn’t like the trespass, Paul says. It is not equivalent. God didn’t reset things and give us another chance. He didn’t bring us back to our original footing before Him. He gave us something even greater.
This gift isn’t that thing that we all do at Christmas when we buy gifts for everyone we know when if we wanted whatever it is we’re getting we would have it but we all give each other something that we don’t really want anyway.
And we do it because we know they’re getting us something, so we all spend a lot of time thinking about what might be a good gift and then the money to get the gift - and so are they - when in the end we are all giving each other something we don’t really want.
We give those gifts to make things equal. Equally needless, but equal.
The gift of God is anything but equal to what we’ve given Him. We sinned. We rebelled. And He gave us the greatest gift ever given. A gift that is without equal.
If many died through Adam’s failure - and Paul is speaking of those who are not in Christ. The fact of the matter is that all died through that failure. But that’s the point. Many died - but not all will - because of the gift of God.
And the death that many die; much more have the grace of God and the free gift by that grace abounded for many. Much more. This gift has abounded much more. What God did is so much more. His gift is so much more.
And it is so much more than the results of that first failure. The free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. In other words: the gift of God makes even death pale in comparison.
Because that gift is Jesus Christ. Who He is. What He’s done. What it means for us. That is the gift of God.
And here is where we really need to say: I don’t understand. We sinned. We earned death. We broke God’s good creation.
And yet He sent His Son to die for us.
I don’t understand. God sent His Son for me? When my heart was for anything but Him? When all my deeds were like filthy rags? When I didn’t want Him? God gave His Son for me??
I don’t understand. Why would God give something so great, to someone so bad?
You see, I can say “God is good” and “I don’t understand” all at the same time, and mean it.
Because the gift and what it means has abounded so much more than the trespass and what it caused. What God gives us is so much greater.
And if we can - and we should - look at what God for us and say “I don’t understand” and see how good He is through the gift He gave us, and marvel at the good He graciously gives to sinful people and glorify Him for it…
…then when we see the bad that befalls someone good, we need to do the same. We can say “I don’t understand”, but we need to remember Who God is, and what He has done, and marvel at Him, and glorify Him, and say even through the pain “God is good.”
We can think of our dear brother in Christ who has suffered and died. A man who has given so much for the kingdom. Whose heart is for God. Who obeyed God and sought Him. And yet who suffered bad.
We can think of Mark and what happened and say “I don’t understand” but still say “God is good.” Because:
Romans 5:16–17 (ESV)
The free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
The gift that God has given to all who believe in Him. To me…to you…to our brother Mark - it is not like death. It doesn’t even things out. It is far better.
Because the goodness of God far surpasses the bad we suffer in this world. And the bad we suffer is because of our failure in the Garden. Because of sin: death reigns in this world. And unless the Lord returns, we will all reap the fruit of that bad - we will all experience death. We all earned the knowledge of that bad.
And the Bible nowhere promises that suffering - and death - will be avoided by God’s people. It is a reality we all know.
But what He did is so much greater than this world. In this world, we will have tribulation, suffering, pain, death. But we can take heart, because the gift of God - Jesus Christ - has overcome the world.
And whoever believes in Him, even though he will die, yet shall he live.
But none of us are guaranteed another minute in this world by God. Listen, for all I know, we're mere hours away from Joe, Eric, and Dave having to make 30 phone calls each to let everyone know that Pastor Lee has gone to be with Jesus.
And I don’t say that to be dark - and I know some of you are thinking “don’t say that” but I don’t believe saying it makes it any more likely. I say that, because that is the reality we live in as God’s people. We live in a world of death.
But according to Paul here, we also live in a greater reality. We live in the reality of the life that Jesus Christ gives.
So when I taste death, those who remain may say “I don’t understand.” But better all say “God is good.”
Just like we can think of Mark, and say “I don’t understand” - and I don’t. But brothers and sisters, God is good! Mark has received his gift. What he has now is so much greater.
Because God is good.
And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
God is good because of the abundance of His grace. God is good because of the life He gives. God is good because of the free gift of righteousness. And those like Mark who have received this grace and this righteousness will reign in life through Christ.
You see, through one act of disobedience, we in Adam brought sin and death into the world. But when God said “you shall surely die” - He wasn’t talking in purely physical terms. We didn’t just affect the physical creation. We affected the spiritual creation.
And because of sin, not only does man die physically. He dies spiritually. He earned it, and he will die spiritually…UNLESS he has received the abundance of grace that is the free gift of Christ’s righteousness.
As I said, we sin because we are sinners. The result of that one trespass includes the many trespasses Paul talks about. And that one act of disobedience back in the Garden made us all sinners. One act of disobedience. That’s all it took.
But God is so good, He sent His Son so that His one act could make us righteous again. It could overcome the first trespass. It could over come our many trespasses.
His one act did this.
And that one act, was obedience. He obeyed to overcome our disobedience and provide us something so much greater.
When the Father sent the Son to take on flesh, He obeyed.
He then obeyed the Law of God perfectly. And not the mechanical understanding of the Law that the Jews had where they physically carried out the letter of the Law. He understood the spirit of the Law, and He carried out the spiritual requirements of the law.
And when the Father told the Son to speak the truth of Who He is and what He came to do - even though it would lead to His death the Son obeyed.
And when the Father told the Son to take on the sin of the world, He obeyed.
And when the Father told the Son to carry that sin to the cross and suffer death on that cross, He obeyed.
And when the Father called Him out of that grave on the third day, Christ obeyed, and walked out justified in all He did.
And because of His act of obedience, Paul tells us we have been made righteous. We - sinners who have earned death - we share in that justification.
This is talking about a change to who we are.
We were made good by a good God. Then we were made sinners by one act of disobedience. But by Christ’s obedience, we are made something new - something different. We are reborn as those righteous before God.
And brothers and sisters, here is where the rubber meets the road. If we sin because we’re sinners and not the other way around, what does it mean that we have been made righteous? That we are righteous?
Well, it means two things. First, it means that - just as our sins don’t make us sinners - that acts of righteousness we do can never make us righteous. God doesn’t count us righteous because we do righteous things.
No, we are only righteous because God has made us righteous through Christ the righteous. That is the gift of His grace. That is the gift that is so out of proportion with everything we have ever done. God has made us righteous.
So second, it means that now that we are righteous, what we are should determine what we do.
So what will we do?
Paul is telling us that that even though we earned the bad, God gave us the incomparable good gift of righteousness through His Son and His obedience. In light of that reality in which we live, what shouldn’t we be willing to do for God? What shouldn’t we be willing to give to God?
And this isn’t to pay Him back for what He’s done - we can’t do that. His gift is so much greater than anything we can do. That’s the point. And thank God for that!
Because that means that there is nothing we can do to erase what God has done like we did in the Garden. No! This gift is so much greater than the trespass.
It means that no matter what we’ve done in our life, the gift make us righteous and we will live.
It means that when we stumble and even when we fall, and we disobey, the gift is still greater.
It means that when we walk through the valleys of our faith - some of them seemingly so long - the gift is still greater.
It mean that when we suffer, and we hurt, and even if we die, the gift is still greater.
And based on the gift He has given us, and knowing it is far greater than anything we can do and anything we can offer to Him, how can we withhold anything from Him?
Listen, at time like this, when a loved one suffers. When the reality of death smacks you in the face and in the heart. When, because we don’t understand, we are shaken to our core. It is times like these that we tend to realize, as we say, “what’s important.”
All of those little annoying inconveniences of life that we think are so big, at times like this, they shrink down to just that - little inconveniences. All of the unimportant things our fallen hearts exalt - at times like this - they fall by the wayside and we realize how unimportant they really are.
And we see what is truly important. We see what the “big things” really are.
But if these “bad” situations - where we don’t understand why God allows a good man to suffer - and He takes a good man too soon as far as we’re concerned - if that makes us turn our eyes to the big things…
…then how much more should knowing even in a time like this that God is good, turn our eyes to the most important thing.
To the one thing that is unequaled in this world. To the thing that is greater than even suffering and death in this world.
We should turn our eyes to the unsurpassed gift of God to us, His Son, Jesus Christ.
He suffered and died so that what He gives us would be far greater than anything.
But the gift is greater still. Because Paul is talking about suffering in this world and how the gift of God is far greater than that. This is what he says right before our passage:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Because of what Christ has done, we rejoice in our sufferings. He’s saying, we get to say “I don’t understand” and “God is good” all at the same time.
Because God uses even the circumstances we don’t understand to make Him our hope.
Because in times like this, when we don’t understand why, we need hope. And because God is good, we have hope.
He is our only hope in life and death.
He is our hope because of what He has done.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
So brothers and sisters, I want to exhort you this morning. I want you to do three things.
First, understand that it is okay to say, “I don’t understand.” And this won’t be the last time we say it. But it’s okay. We can hope in God even when we don’t understand.
Second, understanding the gift of God - understanding that the gift of Jesus Christ far surpasses everything - every bad, every sin, and even death - understanding that gift, we must never cease to say that God is good.
Third, I want to end by telling you a story about Mark. I am giving this third hand, but as the men in the men group were reminiscing about Mark, they all said the same thing about him. He was seriously ill about five years ago. It looked bad. But God healed him. He gave Mark five more years.
And after that brush with death. Mark determined that, knowing death can come at any time, and knowing how good God is - Mark determined that he would do everything he could for the kingdom for however long God would give him on earth to do it.
So he became bolder in sharing the Gospel. He became more courageous in boldly insisting on doctrinal purity no matter what it would mean for him. He became very willing to graciously and lovingly correct his brothers when they went astray.
And to a man, everyone in the group yesterday, said that Mark never wavered from his determination to do these things. And he poured himself out so that in everything he did, God would be glorified.
And I thank God that He gave Mark more years, and allowed me to be impacted not just by his ministry, and not just his friendship - but by his unwavering love for God, and his desire for God to be glorified in his life and in this world.
So I exhort you, knowing what we deserve. Knowing that life is short and another day is guaranteed to none of us.
And most of all, knowing that God is good. So good that He gave us the gift above all gifts in Jesus Christ. So good, that on top of that he gave this church the gift of Mark DiQuattro for all these years.
I exhort you. Determine to do whatever it takes to impact this world for Jesus. Just like Mark taught us to.
So if you have been trying to earn God’s favor with works of righteousness, stop. His gift of righteousness is far better. This morning, turn from your sin, and take His gift. Turn your eyes on the biggest thing - the only thing that will matter when you leave this world - Jesus Christ - Who is far better - and live.
And if you have already been given the gift - then you can say even at times like this that God is good. And you can know that who God has made you is a gift far greater than anything this world has to offer, and you can determine to boldly be who you are in Christ.
Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
Because of what He did, we live. Now let’s live because of what He did.