WHY GOD LETS PEOPLE SUFFER
Lesson 2 - TO TEACH US ABOUT HIMSELF
Memory Verse
TO SHOW US WHO HE IS: Job 40:8 Will you condemn me that you may be justified?
Discuss questions from Lesson One:
1. Have you ever encountered someone you considered to be suffering, who did not agree? Have you ever felt you were suffering when someone else made light of it? What is suffering to you?
2. If God has appointed the time for everything (Ecc. 3:1-8) and God causes all things to work together for good (Rom. 8:28), does this mean God controls everything? Do we have a free will?
3. Look back in your life to a time you suffered. What did you learn about God in time?
TO TEACH US ABOUT HIMSELF
I. Without the Bible, universal, general knowledge of God
A. Psalm 19:1-2
The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
Day to day pours forth speech,
And night to night reveals knowledge.
B. Different cultures = different beliefs
Prov. 21:2 Every man’s way is right in his own eyes
C. Atheists - 2.5% of population. Answers in Wikipedia 2011
D. 20 questions with Will
II. Can only know God through Scripture
Isaiah 55:8 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord
III. Learn from People in the Bible the suffering God will cause or allow when
we refuse to accept Him as the Bible reveals Him.
A. Job
1. In Ch. 24, Job complained his suffering was not fair when evil seemed
to go unpunished. How many of us are dismayed that evil seems to
flourish when seemingly righteous people suffer?
2. In Ch. 38-40 God reminds Job that compared to His righteousness, no
one is righteous. We have no righteousness of our own!
Romans 6:22-23 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; 2for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Psalm 14:10, 53:3, Romans 3:10 There is no one who does good, no not one.
3. Job is restored only after acknowledging God is beyond human
understanding and that no one can attain the righteousness of God.
4. Different ways to refuse to acknowledge God
-Like Job, blame God
- Not acknowledge him in our day to day lives ex. Man I met who couldn’t
figure out why he didn’t get his latest promotion, even after he prayed.
Yet, he hadn’t thanked God each time in the past that he was promoted.
You arrive safely in the car, for example, do you thank God for you
safety?
B. Jonah
1. Living in the age of the prophets, he knew a lot about God from the
Scriptures. Yet, he did not accept God for who Genesis-Chronicles showed
He was.
a. Ready to forgive a repentant heart
b.All powerful, all knowing and ever present
2. Jonah tried to run and hide from God, but God is omnipresent and all
knowing
2a. The boat, the storm, the fish.
2b. Ps. 139:7-10 Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
3. We are told over and over in the bible that God is in the business of
forgiving.
Is. 1:18 “Come now, and let us reason together,”
Says the Lord,
“Though your sins are as scarlet,
They will be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson,
They will be like wool.
Col 2:13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the
uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having
forgiven us all our transgressions
1Jn:1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us
our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
In the 4th chapter Jonah was so unhappy that the people repented and God
forgave them that he sat on a hill overlooking the city and asked God to take
his life. Instead, God caused a plant to grow by Jonah to shield him from
the heat and sun. Then God wilted the plant. When Jonah protested, God
replied, “You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work an
which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished
overnight. 11“Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in
which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference
between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?”
4a. Jonah wanted justice, not forgiveness for those in Nineveh. They were
terrible people who did terrible things without seeming to feel an ounce of
guilt. Much like many, many of us.
-Public outrage after serial killer Ted Bundy confessed his
sin and accepted Christ, just before his death in the
electric chair.
-How many of us feel about the people of Islam who are
happy to kill any people who have not accepted their
faith.
4b. We are commanded to forgive. God sacrificed His son that we could
be forgiven.
-Matt. 5:44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for
those who persecute you
- Matt. 6:14 For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your
heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15“But if you do not forgive others,
then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
-Rom. 12: 17-21 17Never pay back evil for evil to anyone.
Respect what is right in the sight of all men. 18If
possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with
all men. 19Never take your own revenge, beloved, but
leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written,
“Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. 20“But
if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty,
give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning
coals on his head.” 21Do not be overcome by evil, but
overcome evil with good.
Between the horror of my brother forcing himself on me for many years,
a husband and a husband who left me for another woman, I had anger
enough to consume me. I have been able to forgive not only them but
also all those who have caused me pain over the years, only by
remember what it cost to enable me to be forgiven. Christ had to die,
to be separated from His Father, to forgive all the things I did and do,
think, and feel that do not honor God. With the Spirit’s help, I forgave
them.
C. Saul/Paul
Saul was a Pharisee. He believed the oral traditions were as sacred as
the Bible and that fellowship with God came with obeying their rabbi’s
interpretation of God’s word, not with following God’s
commandments in the Bible, which was complete by the time of Paul.
To Paul, only in rigidly following the commandments, even routinely
without thought was all that counted. The heart attitude was
irrelevant. Love of God was required, but not love of people, even
though God said repeatedly throughout the Old Testament that He
didn’t even want the sacrifices if their hearts weren’t turned to Himself
Ps. 6:16-19, Ps. 51:17, Is. 1:14, Amos 5:21 Ho. 6:6.
Job did not believe that God should allow the unrighteous to
flourish. Jonah believed that God should not forgive all who come to
HIm in repentance. Paul believed the only way to God was through
what people did, not their heart attitude.
So, on the road to Damascus, Paul was struck blind and told to go to
Damascus to tell what Jesus told him to. He could not see, eat or drink
for 3 days. Acts 9:1-9.
The most important lesson Paul and Jonah learned, the central lesson
of this book, is that when God moves beyond our ability to understand,
we must trust Him. When we condemn God because we do not
understand, we show we have not learned the lessons for which Paul
and Jonah had to suffer. We have the Bible to show us that God is
trustworthy. They had to suffer, but we can study the Scriptures and
learn from others who have studied the Scriptures.
We all, at times, are like Jonah, vainly denying God’s sovereignty over us, limiting God to our own understanding and demanding explanations of God. Some of us are like Paul, hardening our hearts and allowing ourselves to be blinded to who God is and what He wants of us. If you are like Jonah or Paul and have closed your heart to the truth of who God is, beware and be aware that God wants you to know who He is. He will even let you suffer, if that is the only way you will learn.