Tag: Trusting in God

Why Do We Suffer?

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This week we are in the third part of our teaching series, Confident in the Face of Hard Questions. This will be the most emotionally challenging stop on our journey. This week we are going to tackle the question of why there is suffering in the world created by a supposedly good God. This is a deeply emotional question with intensely personal elements to it. You have perhaps asked this question yourself. You certainly know people who have even if you didn’t know that about them. The answers to this question won’t be easy, but they are good. Let’s dive in together to see what the Scriptures have to say about it.

Why Do We Suffer?

There is a humanitarian crisis unfolding right now in Gaza. There’s an ongoing one in Ukraine. China is still keeping millions of Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps in the Xinjiang Province even though that has dropped out of the news. That is in addition to that nation’s ongoing and vigorous persecution of Christians…who make up a larger percentage of the population than Chinese Communist Party members. Azerbaijan has launched a genocidal effort to exterminate or otherwise forcibly relocate all of the Armenian Christians in a disputed border region between the nations, leading to massive suffering on the part of tens of thousands. Muslims in Pakistan are becoming more and more aggressive in their persecution of Christians in the nation. So are Hindus in India. The two nations don’t like each other, but they both agree that they hate Christians more. A category five Hurricane hit the Pacific coast of Mexico last week from which the recovery efforts have only just begun. A shooter in Maine just last week murdered 18 and injured another 13, some critically. Several people in our own community have had their lives disrupted just recently by unexpected, unwelcome, and scary news that bodes for a very difficult road stretching out in their near future. 

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 15:25-27

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“So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he threw it into the water, the water became drinkable. The Lord made a statute and ordinance for them at Marah, and he tested them there. He said, ‘If you will carefully obey the Lord your God, do what is right in his sight, pay attention to his commands, and keep all his statutes, I will not inflict any illnesses on you that I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.’ Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy date palms, and they camped there by the water.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever had a teachable moment? It doesn’t really matter right now if you were the student or the teacher in it. Teachable moments come along every now and then and bring with them the opportunity to impart possibly life-changing information or wisdom. Israel’s experience at the waters at Marah provided just such an opportunity for the Lord. Let’s take a moment to think through what God had to teach them, why it mattered, and why it points to something important about the nature of our relationship with Him.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 14:29-31

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“But the Israelites had walked through the sea on dry ground, with the waters like a wall to them on their right and their left. That day the Lord saved Israel from the power of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. When Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and believed in him and in his servant Moses.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What did it take for you to finally believe in God? If you’re not there yet, what would it take? For Israel, it took a pretty impressive display of power. Today, let’s recap this last part of the story, talk about what God was trying to accomplish here, and why believing in God is something worthwhile.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 14:13-14

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“But Moses said to the people, ‘Don’t be afraid. Stand firm and see the Lord’s salvation that he will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians you see today, you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you must be quiet.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There are all kinds of stories about fighting against the forces of darkness and evil. Spiritual warfare is a common theme, especially in the horror genre. And in pretty much all of our stories about fighting spiritual forces that are opposed to God, the battle always goes about the same way. We do all the work. Yes, God may give us a little bit of help in the form of a powerful weapon or talisman or something like that, but the victory is always ours. We achieve it. We save ourselves. This makes for a fun story, but in terms of an approximation of reality, it really doesn’t come close. What we see here is a much better picture of how our biggest battles are really won. Let’s talk about what’s happening here as Moses tries to reassure the people in the face of what appears to them to be their impending doom.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 3:18-20

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“They will listen to what you say. Then you, along with the elders of Israel, must go to the king of Egypt and say to him: The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Now please let us go on a three-day trip into the wilderness so that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God. However, I know that the king of Egypt will not allow you to go, even under force from a strong hand. But when I stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all my miracles that I will perform in it, after that, he will let you go.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Every now and then, a line from a movie will become immortalized into our cultural memory. A particularly popular film might give us several of them. Consider the Star Wars franchise. Its most famous line, of course, is, “May the Force be with you.” Another line that is nearly as common in the various Star Wars properties is, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” That line seems appropriate for this next part of the story. God here is telling Moses what is going to happen next. And while the people of Israel are going to accept him and his mission, the king of Egypt is not. In a bit of ominous foretelling, we are given a glimpse of the great conflict that is coming. This morning, let’s introduce a theme that we are going to come back to several times in the coming weeks.

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