The Questions Of A Man In Agony

I have really entitled this message tonight the questions of a man in agony the questions of a man in agony and somehow when you are going through a time in your life of either emotional physical or spiritual trauma some kind of pain your questions become very very meaningful at least to you and hopefully to those who are giving you a hearing let me take you to the Word of God in the book of Job and I'd like to read for you just a few verses beginning from verse 9 of chapter 2 because this question is not foreign to the Bible in fact if biblical scholars are right job is one of the oldest books in the Bible and it is one of the oldest questions therefore raised I don't think it is accidental that God takes a good man one of the most upright men of his time and unfolds the question of evil from his framework he doesn't raise the question from some derelict he doesn't go to some staunch skeptic or somebody who doesn't want to hear the truth he puts the question into the mind of somebody who is genuinely seeking and in chapter 4 chapter 2 and verse 9 after he's lost everything he's lost his health he's lost his wealth he's lost his children and now his wife comes to give him some advice and in verse 9 she says this his wife said to him are you still holding on to your integrity why don't you curse God and die he replied you are talking like a foolish woman shall we accept good from God and not trouble in all this job did not sin in what he said when jobs three friends eliphaz the temanite bildad the shuhite and zophar the name of theit I've always said these boys didn't get their names from a baby book I've never met an elephant build a door as ofer but here it is when these three boys heard about all troubles that had come upon him they set out from their homes and then and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him when they saw him from a distance they could hardly recognize him they began to weep aloud and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads then they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights no one said a word to him because they saw how great his suffering was the best thing these three men did was remain silent for seven days I strongly suspect as they were moving in the direction of job they had all their philosophical problems sorted out you see it is very easy to give an answer to somebody when you yourself have not gone through that particular situation answers are easily forthcoming when you're giving counsel to someone else the people who find it easiest to raise children are those who are not raising their own the best advice you can give anybody is what to do with their own sons or their own daughters until you run headlong into it in your own situation so these three men are riding for a long period of time they prepared all of their answers for job and all of a sudden when they see that he is covered from head to toe with sores and this is one of the things he says he says to God if you would only remove your hand of heaviness from me for one solitary moment so I can swallow once without pain I will be grateful to you if you'd remove that hand of heaviness so I can swallow just once without pain I would be grateful to you this is a good man he's a godly man he believes in the sovereignty of God but he's puzzled about where God is in his personal suffering and that's what I would like to deal with tonight how do you explain the existence of evil in a world where God is supposedly all-powerful and loving let me read for you a few ideas first this comes from the British historian Paul Johnson who has written a book called intellectuals he deals with the life of men like Shelley men like Karl Marx men like Bertrand Russell and some of the renowned thinkers of years gone by and he ends that whole book with this paragraph I think it is fascinating possibly overstated but the principle idea is so clear we must be able to come to grips with it one of the principal lessons of our tragic century which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed and schemes to improve the lot of humanity is beware intellectuals not merely should they be kept well away from the levers of power they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice beware committees conferences and leaves of intellectuals distrust public statements issued from their Surrey dranks discount their verdicts on political leaders and important events for intellectuals far from being highly individualistic and non conformist people follow certain patterns of behavior taken as a group they're often ultra conformist within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value that is what makes them amass so dangerous for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies which themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action above all we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget that people matter more than concepts and must come first the worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas the worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas I've read Bertrand Russell I've read jean-paul Sartre I've read Karl Marx as many of you have I've seen what it is some of these men are trying to propagate it was the philosophy of a Sartre that ended up with the slaughter of millions of people in Cambodia as they outworked his atheistic existential philosophy and then sought on his deathbed disavows much of what he believed you see Welles himself writing the mind at the end of its tether once upon a time talking of a utopianism when his old own life is collapsing before him he says all of these ideas I had are really not holding very much intellectual strength anymore some of the intellectuals of our time and years gone by have made this generation and other generations believe that it is impossible to sustain the idea of God when there is so much of evil and suffering in this world some of them were themselves instrumentally involved in propagating a lot of evil but they have convinced this generation and generations gone by that it is not possible to think of an all-loving all-powerful God and therefore God is jettisoned reasonable people can no longer believe in him but ironically it was GK Chesterton who became a Christian after reading the skeptics he did not read any defence of the Christian faith all he read were the atheists and the skeptics and their barrage of words and their attacks upon the Christian faith and he said if this is as powerful as their arguments ever get they are dreadfully weak and that turned him to the structures and ultimately to his personal commitment to Christ and Chesterton put it in these words as I said to you earlier on today one of them at least he said my problem in LA with life is not that it is irrational nor that it is rational but that it is almost rational it is not completely nonsensical it is not totally sensible but somewhere in the middle it you seem to come up with an answer the worldview begins to take hold and suddenly find you've got to back off a step or two but just certain also went on to say this and I think it is important he said belief in God becomes difficult the tendency is to turn away from him but in heaven's name to what when belief in God becomes difficult the tendency is to turn away from him but in heaven's name to what and I remind you ladies and gentlemen it is one thing to hit away at the idea of God try to knock off its foundations it's another thing to come up with a meaningful answer of your own so let's look at how job dealt with it and then begin to see whether or not his answers work out now here he is sitting down in a pile of ashes as it were completely broken and all of a sudden these three men Elif as Bildad and Zophar come they want to talk to him but they recognize the better part of wisdom they had better wait and listen first and after they've listened for a whole week gradually their answers begin and the first answer comes from the oldest and he necessarily is the kindest the older you get I think the most sense you gain along the way about how to deal with people in their predicament he's the oldest and the kindest but listen to his fascinating response now picture yourself in job situation I want you to picture yourself now having lost everything you have lost everything health wealth family and then Elif as a friend of yours starts to give you this speech and I quote it now verbatim don't tell me how you immediately react to think of how you possibly would react he says this job a spirit glided past my face the hair of my face stood up and the spirit stood still but I could not discern its appearance a form was before my eyes there was silence and then I heard a voice coming can mortal man be righteous before God can a man be pure before his maker how do you like that for a first solution you're in pain and then this grand speech a spirit glided past my face the head my face will have stood up and all of a sudden the spirits stopped and then a bird emerged from this apparition that was taking place can a mortal man be pure before his maker and can a man be righteous before God you know the moment I read that I wrote something in the margin of my Bible let me tell you why I wrote it many years ago I was doing a graduate level course in philosophy by a man who got PhDs the way you and I would get a jug of milk I think he had about three doctorates and seven or eight degrees and a very very confidently arrogant man he was so intimidating in the classroom that nobody ever dare say a word you were not even sure you'd get your name right if he asked you to give him your name so nobody said anything by the third or fourth day he realized nobody was going to interact in this class so he changed the rules of the course he made it this he said the good the grade is going to be divided this way 50% for the answers you give me in the examination I give you at the end of the term and 50% for the questions you ask me in class during the course of the term that finished it I was ready to be buried Barak pronounce the last rites and leave so I spent half the night in bed thinking up some extraordinary question that would wow this man and that would at least guarantee me 50% of the grade well most of us spent so much time thinking up questions we really dense didn't spend enough time preparing for the answers we were going to have to give him you know you can make prayer illegal in schools as desperately as you want but as long as there are examination said somebody there will always be prayer in schools even seminarians who have a battle with their devotional life prayer the most theologia logically rich prayers minutes before a philosophy of religion examination all of a sudden can't and everybody doesn't mean a thing it is whether the sovereign God will enable you to remember what you're supposed to remember and when I looked at that examination paper I nearly died I said that's it this is finished I'm gonna make an absolute fool i sat there and openly prayed I said Lord I really need you but every time I open my eyes the fellow on my right kept writing away he didn't stop I said something is wrong this fellow is working away like a like they're like just a train tearing down the tracks going on and on asking for more piece of paper and going on and on I said this is this is terrible terrible absolutely terrible you see he made one fundamental mistake he had emotionally not graduated from junior high yet where you did what you call euphemistically padding you know what padding is where you write everything that you think is remotely connected with the subject on hand and somewhere in the volume of words you are sure you will hint in the direction of the answer well the day we got our answer papers back I will never forget it happens to be one of the funniest one lines I have ever read only I had to wait to go back to the apartment before I could DAF died with laughter because wasn't very polite to laugh and I saw it I asked him if I could see his grade he had failed miserably got a big big duck a big zero and so I said do you mind if I see what he's he said I don't understand what he said here I shouldn't laugh this is awful but there was one statement made in red ink and this is what the professor said this is not right this is not even wrong this is not right this is not even wrong you see if anybody says something you can react two ways you can say this is right or you can say this is wrong but if it if anybody has said something purely purely nonsensical then it does not even rise to the dignity of an error because to tell somebody something is wrong is to assume that something's been said a spirit glided past my face and the hair on my head stood up and the spirit stood still and a voice emerged can a mortal man be pure before his maker can a man be righteous before God I had to put these words down saying Elif as I hate to say this but somewhere in my mind that he liked saying this is not right this is not even wrong how do you falsify that how do you falsify that if I told you before I came here I looked outside my window and saw some elephants sitting on a barstool sipping a strawberry milkshake and it is just reading today's USA Today or something like that at the same time and you say are you sure and I say yeah you said do you mind if we come and see it and I say to you know as soon as someone else comes poof it disappears and you still get into your car and come there and then knock on the hotel room and say Ravi I've got some news for you there's no elephant outside your window and I'll say to you you've just proved my point there's nothing you can do to falsify what I've said to you when I have setup a case so completely unfalsifiable because you have got nothing with which to demonstrate what I have said to you is wrong ladies and gentlemen when you are suffering with untold agony for somebody to come up with some strange experience of a phenomenon such as this even if it is true at that moment becomes so seemingly irrelevant and may I suggest to you there are millions of people all over the world today who are following somebody who said he went up somewhere up some mountain and saw some angel and some message was given and it was etched in some way and all I say to you is how do you prove that person wrong now experience is valuable but it needs to be put in perspective and Joad listens to him and job's response is one of a plea job basically says this in chapter 6 and verse 24 and onwards he says your speeches are heartless men you would even cost Lots upon orphans you fellows have no sympathy for me and then he says this to God teach me and I will hold my peace and cause me to understand as good as your comment was a leaf as I wish God would speak to me you seem like a heartless man you would even cost lots before orphans and the next one comes on his name is bill dad he's a little younger and he refers to job as a windbag and he says this inquire I pray thee of the former age and applied I self to that which the fathers have searched out they shall utter words out of the past I paused for a moment because I come from a culture with a heavy value in tradition and it's much of it is oral tradition what did your father's say about it what did your ancestors say about it and there's a tremendous reverence for words uttering uttered out of the past and I don't want to demean them one bit but here you are now in your situation and I say to you listen to what Augustine says to you and then I say something like this Augustine basically says the acts of freedom are not the same as the facts of freedom evil is like is like a parasite if you take a good piece of metal and rust on it if you remove the rust the good metal still stands if you remove the big good metal the rust no longer exists how comforting is that to you all of a sudden I've given it a parasitic kind of a definition they are philosophically powerful arguments now I want you to follow me and I want you to listen to me very very carefully this is a linchpin argument for the secularist and I don't want to dwell on it but it is imperative that you understand where I'm taking you from here because time and time again the intellectuals have spoken out and you hear the Bertrand Russell's and thus arts and the Stephen Jay Gould of modern time the paleontologist from Harvard and so on all of their arguments seem to inveigh against Christian dogma science has destroyed the Citadel's and the bastions of anything religious only last week I think a major newspaper carried the publication of a book saying the same thing let me take you for a moment to a dialogue I had at the University of Nottingham in England I finished my lecture and I didn't even have time to take a breath or two to give the ground rules for the questions and generally I say something like this I will answer any question of yours and I'll do my best to answer it as best as I can if you allow me to do two things first reserve the right to ask you to defend your own question within your own worldview and then secondly ask you to answer your own question from within your own worldview you'd be shocked how many co hands go down let me tell you how it happened at Nottingham this is the way it went a follow shot up out of his chair and he said ah there's too much of evil in this world therefore there cannot be a god there's too much of evil and suffering in this world therefore there cannot be a God so I said remain standing for a moment let's interact on this when you say that such a thing is evil aren't you assuming that such a thing is good he said yes well what else can he say you know I mean he's got to say something you know ah yes there's such a thing is good I say when you say this such a thing is good aren't you assuming the such a thing as a moral law that you recognize on the basis of which you differentiate between good and evil you have to admit that much because when Bertrand Russell debated the Jesuit priest Father cobblestone cobblestone Frederick cobblestone is the author of the books on philosophy a master philosopher of years gone by and cobblestone looked at Russell and he said this he said mr. Russell do you believe in such a thing as good and bad or right and wrong Russell says yes Co Poston says you differentiate between good and bad and Russell says the same way I differentiate between blue and green proper senses wait a minute you differentiate between blue and green by seeing don't you how do you differentiate between good and bad Bertrand Russell the great mathematician philosopher said I differentiate between blue blue blue good and bad on the basis of feeling what else oh wait a minute wait just a minute Copa Slim was very kind I would have been impelled within me to look at Bertrand Russell and say to him excuse me mr. Russell in some cultures they love their neighbors in other cultures they eat them both on the basis of feeling do you have a personal preference can you imagine an answer as bankrupt as that so I said to the man standing up and you say that such a thing is evil you said that such a thing is good he said that is right I said when you assume that such a thing as good you're assuming that such a thing as a moral law on the basis of it should differentiate between good and evil he said I suppose so I said but if you assume a moral law you must posit a moral lawgiver and that soon you're trying to disprove and not prove if there's no moral lawgiver there's no moral law if there's no moral law there's no good if there's no good there's no evil what is your question I'll never forget how the roof nearly came down in British appreciation of humor because this fella stood there looking rather disheveled and he said what then am I asking you and I wasn't gonna tell I wasn't gonna tell I know what he was saying if this to take would go away I'd write another chapter on the problem chapter on the problem of pain but you see he was trying to deal with it philosophically and I was trying to demonstrate to him that the problem of evil cannot be defended logically the very problem is illogical in a world of time plus matter plus chance we spell pain differently to what the animals do we spell it with moral connotations and you cannot have moral connotations if there is no moral lawgiver it is important that we understand that the very question begs a definition and there is no point of reference there is no measuring stick there is no absolute centuries ago in India the principle of sati was carried out meaning when a husband died a woman had to toss herself into the flames and burn herself to death because she had nothing worth living for now that her husband died and some missionaries including men like William Carey were involved in the removing of that that practice within the land what is a modern cultural Authority going to say why do you take your Western values and go there and superimpose it upon someone else there is no self-evident moral law within ourselves Immanuel Kant tried it and said it became wrongheaded the latest book written by Scott Peck the author of the people of the lie and the road less traveled he has just written a book that came out two months ago called a world waiting to be born and somewhere around page 40 or so he makes this comment he said I wish I could write a book on ethics and morality without using the word God in it he said but I have given up it cannot be done any more so you'll have to bear my burden with me as I try to bring God if you don't like it just stick with it nevertheless see I say to you you cannot dispel it so logically it is inescapable that if good exists if evil exists then good does so the answer becomes not how you solve the problem of evil in a world where God is but how you resolve the problem of evil and here Bildad says why don't you look back upon the ages now ladies and gentlemen let me tell you something here the advice is good but it's not good enough I'll tell you why a few years ago my three children Sarah Naomi and Nathan were with us my wife Margie and I we were driving from Toronto back to our home in Atlanta and we stopped in Akron and Sarah had just gone through very very critical inner ear surgery the surgery was risking paralysis of the face because she had had a growth against the skull wall unknown to us some years before that had to be removed and now in a second procedure they had to go very deep once again so the girl was travelling Sarah was traveling with us with her left ear completely bandaged up and I there she was in a lot of pain and as we were driving she felt one good one morning with some friend with some relatives we went out to a golf course and we were playing having a great time all of a sudden my little boy Nathan came running he ran and said daddy daddy please come Sarah's hurt she's hurt badly daddy please come and I thought maybe somehow she had injured her ear but when I ran towards where she was she was bent over covering her right eye and the blood was just pouring out of her face and what had happened her cousin inadvertently not realizing she was over his shoulder with a big wool of wool ooh I earned club had just taken a full-blooded swing and caught her on the right eye my wife literally began to faint she could not stay up on her feet anymore it was a gory gory site we saw our little girl just crying out daddy please help me and as I looked at that face I had to shut my eyes I was sure as surely as I am here tonight that was the end of her right eye all of a sudden we found ourselves in an ambulance and I looked at my girl pitifully there bandaged up in her left ear clutching on to her right eye about to go through major major eye surgery you know what hinder Vani Johnston Flint helped me it gave giveth more grace all the cliches that you learn over the years bring a certain amount of help all the Augustinian arguments and all are able to come but only so far you still feel like the loneliest human being in the world and you say God are you really in this so you see for me to say to you listen to the words of the ages may bring you a certain point but it stops short let me give you a simple analogy suppose I were to say to you that you would write poetry like Joni Eareckson or you would do art like Joni Eareckson if you are willing to become a quadriplegic would you consent the answers are fine but they somehow seem rather distant don't they to the situation that is on hand so Elif as finished and God had said j-job it said God would you teach me when Bildad finished job says is there no umpire between us he says look I am looking for somebody who can bridge the gap I'm tired of listening to these boys I want somebody to bridge the gap can you hear me God that's my question to you are you aware of what I am saying to you is there an empire somebody who would arbitrate somebody who'd be completely objective and say job you got a legitimate beef I hear where you're coming from he says is there no umpire now comes the third and his name is so fair and he's the youngest and the rudest and he basically says this in Chapter 11 he says you know job it is more possible for a donkey to give birth to a human being than for you to listen to wisdom is that nice how to win Jews and influence Greeks authored by so fair it's no possible for a donkey to give birth to a human being than for you to listen to wisdom and you know what job's a joke was not to be let down by his own ideas and he said you know fellas before you came here I had a lot of problems now I have one more when you boys die wisdom is going to die with you do you notice what's happening anger I've been angry with God ever been angry with somebody who comes and tries to put their arm around you to help you in a time of need have you ever within yourself said I want to explode I cannot contain my finitude any more and job responds by saying if a man dies will he live again that's my question to you God if a man dies will he live again ladies and gentlemen listen to me please pain is a process don't try to shortcut it pain is a process and one of the things the process does as difficult as the seams is it forces you to finally ask the right questions first he says teach me then he says is there not an empire finally he says he finally he says of a man died will he live again is there a perspective that we have here that I don't have that I desperately need so he finishes with these three men and all of a sudden as the arguments unfold in Chapter 38 you begin to get God himself speaking and all of a sudden as God's voice breaks forth here is the grandest surprise of them all you expect God is going to start giving job the answers now but do you know what God does he asked job 64 questions back to back he is forcing job to open up within his modest stock of certainties may I repeat that for you he is forcing job to open up within his modest stock of certainties he says job since you are the kind of person who only believes in that which your ABS please sure about will you now answer me and I will question you how certain you are of things you claim to be a conviction in you number one job where were you in the foundations of the earth were late can you explain how a baby is conceived in its mother's womb by the marvelous union of man and woman can you tell me how it is that even the animal takes care of its young where were you and the sprawling mountains were put into the place and the valleys and the Magnificent rivers were put Whitten within their courses and he talks about all of the planetary bodies he says can you now explain to me how all this marvelous world that you look at came into being would you explain that to me first and all of a sudden job says you know there's quite a few things I do not comprehensively understand that I have just taken for granted you see God is like the Sun you cannot look at it but without it you can't look at anything else that's what Chesterton said God is like the Sun you can't look at it but without it you can't look at anything else he said to the modern skeptic his God is like the moon completely screw table and study aboard a telescope he said maybe that's why the moon is the patron body of all lunatics he says tried to reduce this try to reduce this into some explainable quotient formula I remember when I was in my mid-20s preaching in Vietnam and I was preaching in the city of dalat up in the highlands there and in a little village where there were tribal people they were mostly illiterate and I recall going through an interpreter trying to preach to them the most basic truth most of them didn't have any teeth in their mouths and they looked like they came from a completely different world to mine but there they sat and night after night packed to capacity and I was talking about creation one day and I gave them the simple little illustration I'm sure you're familiar with it but I learned something like this about a fellow who sat under a nut tree once and pretending to be quite the master of engineering skills and structural engineering and so on he said you know God you really are not very smart when I think of the way you've made this world a huge tree holding little nuts and a small plant holding huge watermelons it just doesn't add up a big tree small nuts small plant huge watermelon and as he waxed eloquent against God's inability to do things reasonably suddenly a little nut fell and hit him on his head and he said thank God that wasn't a watermelon you know what I liked about that a group of villagers can sit there and laugh meaningfully because they do not have the same problem we do where we have educated ourselves into imbecility and hence nothing so vulgar left in human experience where you cannot fly in some professor from somewhere to justify it let me tell you something I took a few courses at Cambridge University some time ago and my professor of quantum physics was a man by the name of John Polkinghorne one of the leading quantum physicists of our day and he was going to give a lecture on the first three minutes of the universe how do you like that so we're lecture after lecture we're coming to listen to the first three minutes of the universe and poking horn is a crostinis made his commitment to Christ and I'd never forget him the English have a fascinating way of lecturing most of them don't look at you they look out of the window while you're sitting out there and so here John Polkinghorne is waxing eloquent walking around parading up and down the room and he talks about this in his book one world - he said this to this class here he said you know ladies and gentlemen he said when you realize how exact to every minut detail this world had to be and he says I'm not talking about minutes I'm not talking about seconds I'm talking about micro microseconds like 10 to the power of minus 36 and Hawking says he can figure it out to tend to the power of minus 46 do you know what they're really saying if you take that if you change the decimal point of exactness up to the 36th bit figure if you change that even by the numeral one you foul up the whole process that's how fine-tuned this needed to be and poking horn went on to say just one thing the expansion and contraction precision of the universe in the early moments had to be so exact to the microsecond category and the margin of error so small says he that it would be like taking aim at a one square inch object at the other end of the universe twenty billion light years away and hitting it bull's eye and we have people telling us it's just there says Russell it happened it's just there oh my oh my when I was doing a lectureship at the University of it's Voorhis rond in Johannesburg South Africa and one of my colleagues is here from Janice book I was teaming up with an astronomer or David block who was inducted into the British Astronomical Society the age of 17 David Bloch showed a slide of the slides sent to him binding from NASA David block is a is a Christian and that slide came to him from NASA and in that slide it showed a hundred billion stars and blocks said if you counted one per second you'd be here for 2,500 years I couldn't help but think of the Scriptures and he made the stars also you see the whole issue of design the whole issue of God's perfect design now I understand there are some things we don't understand but you see it is like this if we move with what we do understand some of the incomprehensible become clear let me give you this simple illustration Chesterton move on here Chesterton writes a short story called the magician about a PhD in chemistry who used to see a magician perform and after every performance would explain it away with his knowledge in chemistry finally that magician was getting fed up of this boy's explanations and reductionistic explanations of everything finally the magician irate with him one day said when you left your home this morning what color light was outside your home he said it was a red light he said has it always been a red light he said yes he said young man I want you to run towards your home and as you're approaching your home and you see that light red it'll suddenly change to green just like that and I'll do it and he says no you can't he says you run take off so the chemistry student takes off and he's running he gets as they at the red light within view and as he's approaching it suddenly turns into a green light he can't explain it he runs back to the magician and said how did you do it he says very simple I sent a couple of angels to change the bulb and he says no no no come on don't give me any of that nonsense how did you do it he says I'm telling you I sent a couple of angels to change the bulb and in this parable Chesterton goes on to explain how the scientist is not going to take it in this form this man is not going to take it and he says explain it to me explain it to me and he sits up all night trying to work out his formula our red light turns into a green light without anybody being there and as he's trying to work it out he finally crosses the line and goes into insanity and the only thing he can try to remember is how does the red light become a green light so his sister goes running to the magician and says sir would you please give him the answer he says I've given him Beyonce says no why don't you just say something to him even if it's not true that'll bring him out of his insanity and the magician comes up with some kind of an answer and the man regains his sanity after that just at an ends by saying the irony of this parable is this the fact is he says just when the man thinks he's regained his sanity he has actually become insane while he was insane there was more sanity in his position at that point trying to figure it out that time plus matter plus chance alone cannot help it and I look at a baby born a baby brought into this world nursing at the breast of its mother I look at the beauty of creation as you can step a stop at Cape Point in South Africa and see the swirling waters of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean configure there and create one of the most beautiful sites in the world you'd ever see you can drive past Lucerne and see the marvels of God's creation and I hear God's saying to a man like job job can you believe that I who brought such design out of this world and out of nothing can bring some design out of your life through this pain and through this agony that you're going through ladies and gentlemen let me say it to you the secularists of this world have no uncertainty to you for that do you know what happened to Charles Darwin who came as a divinity student to Christ College Cambridge he came studying for the ministry he gave it all up and when he went into his evolutionary theory Darwin in his autobiography says this one of the greatest tragedies of his life was he lost the ability to enjoy any form of art or any form of music he lost interest in it completely I heard stephen hawking per location chair of mathematics held by him once held by isaac newton give a lecture on determinism and freedom he can't speak as you know he has Lou Gehrig's disease his index finger can only move one millimeter and Caltech has created a computer with the one millimeter movement it gets the words selected then moves it into sentences then through a speech synthesizer he speaks out a man with no voice shriveled up in his chair one of the brightest minds in our world today is considered one of the greatest scientist since Einstein and he ended his whole lecture on determinism by saying we are determined but we since we don't know what we may as well not be and then he said these words and I quote my only fear for Humanity is this if natural selection is true then natural rejection is also true and I we keep from eating each other up over the next 100 years because on 100 years technology will able to be able to distribute us to other planets and then no one great tragedy or atrocity will Detroit destroy all of us at the same time how do you like that Tennyson said nature red in tooth and claw look at creation again and see the designers hand behind it and you will see he can bring design even are the questions of a man in agony so God comes first as creator and designer secondly and quickly he comes as revealer and comforter he comes as revealer and comforter as he reveals himself in a personal way to job and job needed that personal disclosure you are an individual you are an individual my answers or anyone else's answers are not going to help you but God sees the agony of your heart individually dear dear have you heard the story of a politician was fighting for the underprivileged in his inner city and he was giving speeches and writing slogans and giving all kinds of documents on it and passing laws when a young underprivileged teenager came knocking on his door and said to the secretary I need to see that man for a moment before he delivers this important speech the secretary goes to his boss and says there's a young teenager from the people you're representing who wants to speak to you he says go back to that young man and tell him since I have begun to fight for his cause I have no time for individuals anymore and his secretary looked at his boss and said that's incredible sir even God hasn't reached that stage yet when Salman Rushdie was being hunted by a decree from Ayatollah Khomeini Ted Koppel asked a professor in California how can you do that how can you call for the head of another man and I'm not criticizing the system I'm just trying to tell you what the man answered he said for me and for us the system has to go on the individual is indispensable the individual is dispensable the cause has to go on I couldn't but help thinking of Jesus leaving the ninety and nine to go and pick up the one because the individual is not dispensable and I say to you he comes not only as creator and designer he also comes as revealer and comforter thoroughly and quickly he also comes through as mediator and Savior also comes through as mediator and Savior the poet wrote this for they lie beside their nectar while the bolts are hurled far below them in the valley where the clouds are likely curled round their golden houses girdled with the gleaming world there they lie in secret looking over wasted lands blight and famine plague an earthquake roaring deep and firing sands clanging fights and flaming towns and sinking ships and praying hands here's the point of the poet for they lie beside their nectar while we are clutching our hands in prayer asking if somebody would listen that's a fair enough critique of some mystical religions it's not one of our Lord Jesus Christ who came into this world who fear felt what you feel who walked where people walked who hurt as people hurt tested in all fashion as we are says the Bible apart from sin who went on to two pieces of timber there and as they nailed him to that cruel death ladies and gentlemen I want you to listen how I perceive it in my own mind for as he had saved others himself he did not say there were people whom he had cured of their lameness who came and saw it and walked away he couldn't walk away there were people whose Bligh's had been blinded from birth who need healed who were witnessing this his own eyes unable to keep open with the anguish that was riddling his body he had raised Lazarus himself from the dead and now he himself going the way of the Cross to a painful and a shameful death in the eyes of the people and then finally as if everything else had not been felt enough he cries out in an agonizing moment in the most powerful words I think in Scripture that over the centuries of haunted preacher and everyone who's read it as he cries out my God my God why have you abandoned me ladies and gentlemen I am utterly convinced that the reason he said those words was so that you and I would never have to say them again as he gets close and closer so that you sense his presence even in the darkest night of the soul in your life in my life and I give to you the simple illustration given by Donald great Barnhouse the great illustrator from Philadelphia who lost his wife early in the his marriage and one of his little daughters looked at him and said daddy if Jesus died for our sins how come mommy still had to die and the great illustrator couldn't put it into the context of her mind he waited and on the day of the funeral they were driving in a car in the funeral procession going to the cemetery and it was a bright sunny day and as the Sun shone upon the cars they suddenly had to stop at a light or something and in front of this car where dr. Barnhouse sat with his children was a huge truck and there was a shadow of the truck cast on the sidewalk and the great illustrators mind began to work and he said he said to his daughter he said sweetheart if you had to be run over would you rather be run over by the truck or would you rather be run over by the shadow of the truck she managed a smile and she said daddy I would rather be run over by the shadow obviously because it wouldn't hurt as much and Donald ray Barnhouse smiled and said sweetheart that's what Jesus did for you when he died on the cross the truck of God's judgment went over him only the shadow of death goes over you and me now last weekend I was preaching in Lancaster Pennsylvania along with Steve green who was singing and I told Steve green something I had never told him before my wife and I were there together and Steve had finished singing a beautiful song and we went over to him and said we were having lunch dinner together that night I said Steve let me tell you a story about my daughter and I told him what happened to Sarah with the eye that was hit and my we told him do you know the image of our little girl lying there in bed ear bandaged up I all bandaged up she had a little tape recorder by her pillow and all day long she played Steve green song God and God alone God and God alone your heart is too big for a button rustle to satisfy all my words to satisfy but God is big enough to take your anger and God is big enough to show to you that he sent his son to a cross so that you can know you have a mediator and a comforter who comes in and lives within you he comes as mediator and Savior and lastly as strengthener and restorer how he does it is a mystery that he does it is true how he does it is a mystery that he does it is true I mentioned something in the first service this morning that I didn't mention in the evenings in the second service listen to me please the problem we face in the world today is not boredom that comes out of pain but boredom that comes out of being weary of pleasure not being weary of pain I've preached in Russia I've seen elderly woman marred and scarred by beatings I preached in China I've seen one ming dao who was imprisoned for twenty-one years by mao zedong and as i walked out of Wang Ming dowse home he sang for me all the way my Saviour leads me what have I to fear beside and the irony of the question and the problem of pain is that most of the Eastern world doesn't even ask it it is we in the West seeped in pleasure who have created boredom out of our own affluence and impotence out of our own erotomania who seem to wonder where God fits into the problem of pain and I say to you there is a savior there is a savior the some people know it the Chinese people know it by the millions and I remember in Cambodia the day I left Phnom Penh days before it fell sparse kepta clicking at me and saying mr. Zakaria is what we need in our land is a savior and I put my arms around him and said and it begins by recognizing the need in your heart first and as that Savior fills you in the agonizing moments you find listen to me that ultimately the answer doesn't come merely in propositions it ultimately comes in a relationship you can diffuse it physically but meaningfully it's a relationship and on the basis of what you know you learn to trust him for what you don't know let me close with this make three brief applications here it is Malcolm Muggeridge whom I had the privilege of spending a few hours with seven months before he died muggeragem in which stalin Mugler and Moggridge had been through seven decades of an enormous life marvelous man one time editor of punch magazine prolific writer one of the probably the greatest English journalists in the 20th century he knows and through his promiscuous life ultimately came to Christ and here's what he said a decade or so before he died contrary to what might be expected I look back on experiences that at that time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction indeed I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my 75 years in this world and everything that is truly enhanced and enlightened my existence has been through affliction and not through happiness where the pursued or attained in other words even if it were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo-jumbo the result would be to make life delectable but to me would be to make life delectable but to make it too banal and trivial to bein durable this of course is what the cross signifies and it is the cross more than anything else says Muggeridge that has called me inexorably to Christ it is the cross more than anything else that calls me inexorably and I present to you today a God who comes to you as creator and designer as revealer and comforter as mediator and Savior as strengthener and restorer and on the basis of what he knew he was able to trust God for what he didn't know King George the sixth on new on New Year's Eve I think it was Christmas Eve years ago when he didn't know cancer was wracking his body made this powerful statement to the Commonwealth he said I said to the man at the gate of the year give me a light that I may walk safely into the unknown and he said to me buteo go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God and it shall be to you safer than the light and better than the known I said to the man of the gate of the year give me a light that I may walk safely into the unknown and he said to me go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God it shall be to you safer than the light and better than the known here the application's number one while philosophy cannot sustain its sons question it cannot even give its answer because the question is indefensible but the application for the Christian is this the answer is not so much propositional as it is relational this is not to minimize reason it is to only understand that life transcends doesn't violate but transcends mere reasonable statements by themselves it goes beyond it number two God's Way of working is not so much the alleviation of suffering as it is the refocusing of our minds number three through the agony of suffering true friendship is the enduring example of Christ's comfort that's why people still come to church because they know there is a place where an arm will be put around them to express to them the love of Jesus Christ if you have questions tonight and you're not a Christian can I ask you to do something go back home and say Christ if you're real reveal yourself to me or if in your heart you are willing to surviving I think I need to take that step how do I do it wherever you are with a simple faith you can invite him to become the Shepherd of your life confessing your need for him as a sinner if you know him there will be dark nights of the soul but put your hand into his hand it shall be better than the light and safer than the known may God richly bless you and thank you for being so patient and audience you

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Keywords: Ravi, Zacharias, missions, missionaries, preaching, sermon, apologetics, Bible, Christianity, Jesus, Christ, God, Holy, Spirit, evangelism, Gospel, Church, religion, Word, atheism, Creationism, Proof, Logic, Response, Reason, debate, debunk, controversy, dispute, challenge, evidence, refute, Truth, Lord, Belief, Morality, Theism

Id: oJajX6HAE8g

Length: 57min 49sec (3469 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 21 2012