How to Make Sense of Your Suffering | Part 1

Why did we experience so much suffering? Listen to Adrian Rogers.

What causes all of this confusion, this disease, this war, this strife, this this suffering?

Why is it here? God made a perfect world, but Sam entered into that world. Why did God allow that? Why did God even create the potentiality, the possibility of Sam? How could a good God allow such things? Isn't that a hard question?

Welcome to Love. Worth Finding. Featuring the comforting and convicting words of pastor, teacher and author Adrian Rogers. Romans Chapter eight is a passage for anyone who knows sorrow, pain and disappointment.

It's for anyone who is experienced. Confusion or frustration, fear.

There are three key words in this passage we can use to make some sense of suffering. And those words are bondage, liberty and hope. Now, what do these mean to our faith? How do they correlate? If you have your Bible handy turn to Romans, Chapter eight will begin in verse 18 as Adrian Rogers shares part one of how to make sense out of suffering.

Find Romans Chapter eight. And in just a moment, we're going to read vs. 18 and 19. Let me ask you this question.

Do you know sorrow, suffering, pain, disappointment, fear, frustration, confusion? If you don't just wait a while, you will.

You will not escape. The age in which we live is filled with sickness, war, hate, riots, sorrow and confusion.

And man doesn't seem to be able to do anything about it. He longs for a better day.

And it gets worse. Man's golden dream turns to rust.

Man's millennium turns to pandemonium.

What does the Bible have to say about all of this? We'll look, if you will, now in verse 18. The apostle Paul has been doing some figuring the word reckon.

Here's a book keeping term.

And he says four.

I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us for the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the manifestation of the Sons of God.

Now, there's some things you'd better get in perspective, because if you don't get them into perspective, you're going to get in trouble.

You may get into doubt or you may get in to rebellion when tragedy hits you and things don't work out the way you think that they ought to work out.

When that person who is Dear Stone Earth to you is being consumed by some greedy malady, you may lift a clenched fist in the face of God in defiant rebellion and accuse God of unfairness or lack of love.

Or rather than being filled with rebellion, you just may be filled with doubt and you say, Where is God?

I mean, if God cares.

Doesn't he have any power to do anything about it? Or could it be that he has the power and he really doesn't can.

Or could it be that there is no God at all?

Now, we might as well be honest, a lot of people are facing these kind of questions and how are we going to deal with this?

Well, the apostle Paul has already dealt with foris by divine inspiration.

And Paul has been doing some divine calculation. And so he says for I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

It's a bookkeeping term. Over here is the suffering. Over here is the glory. And Paul says, I'm not in the red.

I am in the black.

Now take your Bibles and I want you if you don't mind writing in your Bible to underscore our circle. Three words. Look in verse twenty one and find the word bondage. He says, for the creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption. Circle the word, if you don't mind. I've circled it and read in my Bible the word bondage and then go down a little further and circle the word liberty because the creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. And then go over, if you will, a diverse twenty four and circle the word hope for we are saved by hope, but hope that is seen as not hope for Watermann. See it. Why death and yet hope for. But if we hope for that which we see not then do we with patients wait for it. Now you see the word hope. All right. Now take these three words. Get them in your heart.

Bondage, liberty and hope.

Then you're going to understand about suffering. And you're going to learn to make sense out of suffering. And you're going to find out that there is a God and that this God is a good God.

Now, let's think, first of all about the word bondage and bondage deals with yesterday's curse. If you got that. Yesterday's curse.

Folks, look around.

There is something desperately wrong in our world. And what is it?

There is a curse on our world. Began in verse twenty four. The creature. And that literally means the creation. Everything God made was made subject to vanity. The word vanity means senselessness, futility. That which does not seem to add up for the creation was made subject to vanity. Not willingly, but by reason of him who had subjected the same and hope. Now that speaking of God, who who made it all where it seems to be filled with confusion because the creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption.

Now what is the bondage of corruption?

And how did it come? What causes all of this confusion?

This disease? This war? This strife. This this suffering. Why is it here?

Well, because of a curse that's own mankind. It's here because of sin.

Because of sin. You can't give it any other word than that. One short little three letter word sin.

God made a perfect world, but sin entered into that world. Adam Sand.

And when he did, he dragged all of creation down with him.

Now, that brings us a real question, why did God allow that? I mean, if God is a good God, why did God even allow Adam to sin?

Why did God even create the potentiality, the possibility of sand? People say if God is a good God, why doesn't he do something?

Do you think about God made everything right. Sin is something. So somebody says, God may. God is the author of everything, suffering is something. So God is the author of Suffering.

You see our minds work, and when we say that we get ourselves into a problem. All things have come from God. Sin has come from God.

Now there's evil and pain and paying and moan and groan and woe. Then it must have come from God.

How could a good God allow such things? Isn't that a hard question?

That is what the apostle Paul is dealing with here so that we can make sense out of our suffering. Now, let me back up and tell you that God is the author of everything that God did make everything.

And when God made everything, God made it absolutely perfect. And he made a man and a woman put that man and woman in a perfect environment. Now listen carefully. Listen. And the perfect God gave to man and woman perfect freedom. That's what God made. God made everything perfect. He made a perfect man. He made a perfect woman. Put them in a perfect place and gave them perfect. Freedom. Now, why did he make man perfectly free?

Because what is the highest good love? God is a god of love.

Now, what good is love if there's nobody to love? No love to give and no love to receive.

A song is not a song until you're saying it.

Harpel is not a bell to ring it. Love is not love and to give it and receive it, so God wants love.

So God created two creatures, Adam and Eve, that he could love and so they could love him.

Now, why did God make them free, because forced love is not love, forced love is a contradiction in terms.

God has to give us freedom so that we can love in order to choose good.

We have to have the freedom to choose evil or else the choice to choose good is not a choice at all.

So God made man perfect and God put man in a perfect environment, and God gave that man perfect freedom and that woman perfect freedom.

He gave them the ability to choose. But they chose sin. They chose evil.

And when they did, all of creation fell into a bondage that the Bible calls the bondage of corruption.

Dr. Imadi, hon, the third was watching television. He tells about this.

And it was when there's a disastrous earthquake that hit Mexico City in nineteen eighty five. And the live cameras were there and they were showing the devastation of this earthquake.

And down at the bottom were these words courtesy s.i in courtesy send.

Well, that was the Spanish international network. But this earthquake brought to you the courtesy of San.

That's what is happening in our world. We live in a sin sick world. And San is like a virus. Now somebody says, OK, that's what caused it. Adam Sand. He drug creation down with him. The entire creation has now the curse of sand on it.

But why doesn't God now do something? Why doesn't God just step in. Why doesn't God just kill the devil? Why doesn't God just destroy evil? I mean, after all, if he's God, he could now listen to me carefully. God could not destroy evil.

Without destroying freedom and if God destroyed freedom. God would destroy love.

And if God destroyed love, God would destroy the highest good God could not destroy evil. Without destroying freedom, if we're not free to choose, good, then we're not free. There must be, therefore, the ability to choose. Even God could not destroy evil without destroying freedom. He could not destroy freedom without destroying love. And if God destroyed love, God would destroy the the highest good. Now listen to me.

For God to destroy evil would be evil, for God to destroy evil would be evil, because God would be destroying the capability for the highest good.

And that is for his creatures to choose to love him and to serve him.

Well, then what is God going to do about evil? What is God going to do about suffering? God is not going to destroy it.

God is going to defeat it, to defeat it.

You see, there were two gardens. There was the Garden of Eden. And there was the first atom. And there is the Garden of Gas.

Salmoni and the second hand, the Lord Jesus, the very son of God, took that sin upon himself and carried that sin to a cross. And on that cross died for it.

And therefore, ultimately, God through Christ. And that amazing grace that we sang about will triumph over it all. Now we're thinking about the word Bondie yesterday's curse.

When Adam Sand I said he drug all of creation down with him. What is this bondage that we talk about in versus twenty one and twenty two. Let me tell you what happened to creation. You want to know why today's newspaper reads like it does.

There's a curse. Yesterday's curse is upon everything. For example, there's a curse on the animal kingdom. Now write these scriptures down. Genesis free verse 14. And the Lord God set into the serpent because that has done this. Christ art thou art. Thou art Kirst. Above all cattle. Now the idea is that not only was the serpent cursed, but the cattle.

The animal kingdom is curse.

You look at the animal kingdom in what some call the survival of the fittest is really just creation. Groaning under the curse. When God made creation. When God put the animals in the Garden of Eden, he did not put them in there with the law tooth and fang and claw.

That's the result of the curse of sin. The animal kingdom was cursed. There's a curse on the mineral kingdom.

Listen to Genesis, chapter three, verse 17 and under Adam, he said, Because I was harking to the voice of my wife and has eaten of the tree of which I commanded these saying Thou shall not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground for my sake in sorrow shall now eat of it all the days of my life. That's the reason that we see all of this ecological problem that so many are worried about in politics. The desert, the waste places, the barren land.

All of this is because God says this is the animal kingdom.

Caste is the mineral kingdom. Kirst is the vegetable kingdom. Genesis three, verse 18.

Fawn's also and Thistle's shall it bring forth under the thou shalt eat the erbe of the field.

This world that was meant to be like the Garden of Eden has become a garden of weeds. Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to grow weeds than vegetables?

Not only that, but there's a curse upon the human kingdom.

Mankind man was meant to have dominion upon this earth. Why did God make Adam and Eve and how did he make them?

Genesis chapter one, verse twenty six.

And God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fall of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creep with upon the Earth.

But man doesn't have dominion today.

Why? Because of sand man is morally depraved, his mind, like the Earth, has become a garden of weeds. His imagination is evil. Look at the newsstands.

Not since Manhattan Island was sold for twenty four dollars has so much dirt been sold so cheaply.

Man is emotionally disturbed physically disease.

Why do our bodies wear out?

Romans five burst. Well, we're forced by one man's sin entered into the world and death by sin.

You have a polluted gene pool. You have the seeds of death in you. It's caused by sin.

And none of us is immune. Look, if you will, in verse twenty three. And not only they. He's talking about the creatures now.

And not only they, but ourselves also. Which have the first fruits of the spirit.

Even we ourselves grown within ourselves.

Waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body.

Folks, my spirit is safe, but my body is not yet saved. It is not yet redeemed.

Not yet. Neither is yours. We're waiting for that. Now I have the first fruit of the spirit in my heart. When I receive Jesus Christ as my personal savior, Lord, the Holy Spirit came into me.

But I live in a body that grows. And so do you. There is a curse on the animal kingdom. There's a curse on the vegetable kingdom. There's a curse on the mineral kingdom. There's a curse on the human kingdom. And the Bible calls this curse the bondage of corruption. Now, do you have that?

That is yesterday's curse. It happened in the Garden of Eden.

And what we are doing is just reaping the bitter fruit of it today. Yesterday's curse. Bondage. Now, here's the second thing I want you to see.

First of all, the first word was bondage. What's the next word?

Liberty. All right. That, my friend, is tomorrow's conquest. Yesterday's curse. Tomorrow's conquest.

Now, remember, God does not destroy evil. What God does is God defeat evil. Now, look, if you're willing versus twenty one to twenty three a game. Look at it for the creature itself.

Also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption and to the glorious liberty of the children of God. Well, we know that the whole creation, growth and travails and pain together until now.

And not only they but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves. Watch it now.

Waiting for the adoption. To wit, that is the redemption of our body.

There is a better day coming. The whole creation is moaning and groaning and sighing.

Press down with grief and distress.

And to try to save this old world with ecology and politics would be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

But when Jesus comes, he's going to change it.

When Jesus comes, he is going to change it. And this creation is waiting with outstretched arms.

It is called the earnest expectation of the creation.

When Jesus comes, the trees on the field will clap their hands, but pills will skip like little lambs, and the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.

As waters that cover the sea, when Jesus comes, the animal kingdom will be changed.

Listen to the Prophet Isaiah Isaiah, Chapter 11 versus six and following the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kids, the calf and the young lion and the fettling together. And the little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed and the young ones shall lie down together. And the lion surely strong like an ox. Then the suckling child shall play on the whole of the ass, and the weened child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den, and they shall not hurt or destroy.

And all my holy mountain or the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as waters that cover the sea.

And we'll continue with part two of this important message. Coming up on Monday. In the meantime, if you have a prayer request, you want to share with us that love worth finding, it's one of our greatest honors to come alongside you and pray with you. Pray for you. If you can't go to our Web site, home page LWR Forg, scroll down to find our prayer wall. You'll find the option to either submit a prayer request or pray for others. This resource is one of our favorite ways to keep the ministry in the community praying continually for each other's needs. We can't wait to hear from you and how we can help you and pray for you today. Again, go to El WFA dot org and scroll down to our prayer wall.

Now, if you'd like to order a copy of today's message in its entirety, you can call us at one 877 Love God and mentioned the title How to make Sense Out of Suffering. This message is also part of the powerful series Cultivating a Deeper Faith How to Strengthen Your Spiritual Life. If you'd like the complete collection, all six insightful messages call us one 877 Love God or go online to l w f dot org slash radio. Or you can write us at Love Worth Finding Box 38. Six hundred. Memphis, Tennessee three eight one eight three.

Well, thanks for studying in God's word with us today. If you are going through a season of suffering right now, remember this encouragement from Pastor Rogers? God does not destroy evil.

He defeats evil.

Cling to him today and spend some time in prayer and make sure you join us Monday for part two. How to make sense out of suffering right here on Love Worth Finding.

At Love Worth Finding Ministries. Our greatest hope is to continue Adrian Rogers work in introducing people to Jesus and sharing what it means to follow Christ. That's why we're so excited to share about our brand new book, Discover Jesus Without Jesus. We're lost both literally and spiritually. This book gives a clear call to follow Jesus while offering practical steps to learning more about your new relationship with him. If you're navigating new territory or need to refresh your walk with Christ discovered, Jesus provides the tools to use for such a season. They're written for new believers. Discover Jesus is also a resource that pastors, teachers, soul winners and encouragers of the faith can use to motivate others to grow and mature in Christ. For more information about this book or to purchase a copy, go to our online store at LWR Dawg Slash Radio. And thanks for your continued support of love worth finding.