Welcome to Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. We're glad you've joined us for today's program. Here at Connect with Skip, we love helping you understand God's Word and apply it to your life through clear, practical Bible teaching and real encouragement. And if you'd like help to keep growing in your walk with Jesus, sign up for Pastor Skip's free weekly devotional. You'll receive biblical insight, teaching highlights, and exclusive resources designed to help you stay strong in your faith.
All delivered right to your inbox. Signing up is quick and easy, and you'll be glad you did. Go to connectwithskip.com and join the list today. That's connectwithskip.com. Before today's teaching, stay with us for a special invitation from Pastor Skip Heitzig.
Have you ever dreamed of visiting Israel? Leni and I want to invite you to join us for a life-changing journey through the land of the Bible in April of 2027. You can walk where Jesus walked. You can worship on the Sea of Galilee. You can celebrate baptisms at the Jordan River, and we're going to share communion at the empty tomb.
You'll also have the option to attend. The Epicenter Summit in Jerusalem, where I'll be speaking alongside of Joel Rosenberg, Greg Laurie, and Graham Lotts, Jack Graham, and more.
So join us April fifth through April sixteenth. You can learn more today at ConnectWithSkip dot com slash Israel.
Now let's dive into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. You can imagine how. Puzzled, some were in a community when they opened up the newspaper and saw in the little want ad section, the lost and found section of the want ads, an ad that read the following: Lost dog with three legs, blind in left eye, missing right ear, tail broken, recently injured. Answers to the name of Lucky.
Sometimes we feel about as lucky when we struggle with suffering. Imagine what this would be like. You get up tomorrow and you want to go to Starbucks bright and early and make it there first before all the selfish people get there. And so you're driving down the street, you're breaking the speed limit by let's say twenty, twenty-five miles an hour. You're just zipping by and.
As you go down the road, you notice out of the corner of your eye that police officer, and he sees you, and so you look at the police officer, and you're amazed as he smiles and waves at you, and you make it there without a ticket, and you wonder, and you say, "That's strange." But let me ask you something: If you're in line at Starbucks after that happened, would you be like filled with remorse? Would you be there going, "That wasn't right"? I deserved a ticket. I'm going to turn myself in after I have this cup of coffee. Nah, you kidding?
You'd say thank you, Jesus. But if you're on your way to church and you break the speed limit by five miles an hour and you get a ticket for that, that's when you go, God, I can't believe you'd allow that to happen. I was wanting to serve you. You see, suffering in our world. Makes us want to avoid it at all costs.
Suffering in our personal world makes us want to question God's love. Most people would probably look around the world and say, "God did a pretty good job in making this universe, but He made one mistake, and that's pain." He allowed so much pain and suffering. I remember reading that sentence in a book I read years ago by the great author Philip Yancey. The book is called "Where Is God When It Hurts," and he begins in the first chapter with that idea that most people would say God made a good world with one mistake, and that's pain. And I thought about that this week because.
I read an interview, an article where he was being interviewed. Philip Yancey. He's written a new book. It's called Why, the question that never goes away. And in this interview, he was talking about how he received a phone call to go back to the East Coast to speak to the parents of Newtown, Connecticut, after the Sandy Hook shooting, where twenty-six people were gunned down—twenty children, six adults.
They wanted him to come and talk to them about pain and suffering and God, and something dawned on him because he had been researching for his new book and he had been reading some of the books of the new atheists, like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, all those New York Times best-selling atheistic authors. And so here he is on the phone, being asked to speak to the Sandy Hook school parents. And it dawned on him. He said, "There is a question that's much harder than 'Where is God when it hurts,' and that is 'Where is no God when it hurts.'" And he explains this: the atheist will tell people that the universe is random and there's just sort of this blind indifference, rather than a meaning and a purpose behind it. And he said.
I notice that these atheists are never asked to speak at such places like Sandy Hook Elementary School, because whatever they would have to say would never be of comfort to the parents. Can you imagine somebody standing up saying, "Well, the universe is random; bad things happen. Get used to it. Your children don't live anymore. That's just what happens." There's no comfort in that.
Now they ask a pastor, they ask a Christian author like Yancey to speak at those places, because the Christian will stand up and say, "What happened was tragic, should not have happened. We should be angry at that kind of evil.
However, we believe there is a good God who will make all things work together for your good if you trust Him, and there's hope in that." And you see, that's the reason I've always loved being a pastor. I love walking through the gamut of life experiences with people, from birth to marriage to raising children to getting sick and even death. I get tickled at the fact that somebody walks up to me and says, "Will you dedicate my baby?" Oh, and by the way, you dedicated me when I was a baby. I love being able to see that cycle. And we see a lot of death and suffering along with joy.
And when we wonder why, Peter is a good guy to ask because Peter writes about suffering no less than twenty-one times in this letter.
So, since he's already discussed it and we've already studied it, we're going to look at something else. It's what I call the do's and don'ts of suffering. Two things not to do and two things to do. Don't be surprised by suffering. Don't be scared by suffering.
Do be selective in your suffering, and do be sensitized by suffering. Let's begin with the first. Don't be surprised by it. Verse twelve, First Peter chapter four. Beloved, isn't that a beautiful word?
He's writing to a flock, not an audience. He's a pastor. He's got the heart to say, "I love you," and what's more, God loves you, beloved. Do not think it's strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you. Don't think it's weird or bizarre or unusual when you suffer.
It's not. Suffering is common to all. It happens to everyone.
However, when we suffer, is not one of the first emotions we have. That we think it's strange. No, no, no, no. This shouldn't happen. This is this is not right.
This is unusual. I was reading an article in Reader's Digest a few years ago. Actually, it was called "The Untold Story of September 11th, 2001." It was about Flight 93, that flight that that crashed in the Pennsylvania field. And in the article, it mentioned that one of the passengers aboard that flight managed to make a cell phone call to his wife, and the conversation went like this: "Our plane has been hijacked. There are three men on board who say they have a bomb." They have already killed one passenger.
Please call the authorities. The wife on the other end of the phone said, "The entire conversation, as it was going on, my thoughts were these: No, no, no, this can't be happening. We have good jobs. We have great kids. Things like this don't happen to people like us.
But here it was happening." To her, and you should know if you don't already that this is some people's favorite reason to reject the God of the Bible. You've heard it a thousand times. How could a God of love, who's all powerful, ever allow evil to exist? The formal term for that is called theodicy, and who hasn't struggled with theodicy? Theologians, philosophers, and everyone.
Has struggled with it. George Barna, in a survey some time back, said to people, "If you could ask God one question and you knew that He would give you an answer, what question would you ask God?" Overwhelmingly, the questions were things like, "Why would you allow so much evil, suffering, and pain on Earth?" Now, to make it worse, it's not that just bad people have bad things happen, but so many what we would call innocent people. How bad things happen. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. The Bible is a big book—66 books filled with history, poetry, prophecy, letters, laws, and more.
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Now here's more from Pastor Skip. If only bad people had things happen, I think we would do better with it, don't you? I mean, if only hardened criminals got the broken limbs, if only murderers got the cancer, we could stand back and go.
Now that's that's a a piece of celestial justice. But when the innocent are affected, to many people this backs the Christian up into an impossible corner, and the one who does not love God would look and go, "Aha! I've got you. You can't answer that one." It is a tough one to grapple with, but allow me to just sort of turn that around for a moment. Because whenever you say there is so much evil in the world, or you say why is there so much evil, you only ask that or say that because you have some notion that there is supreme good.
You see, if I if I am in a class and I say this student gets a ninety, and this student gets a sixty, and this student gets a forty, it presupposes there's a real standard of a hundred somewhere. There is perfection by which everything else is measured.
So, if there is no God, then where did we get the standard of goodness by which we measure evil? It's called the problem of good, the moral argument, if you will. C.S. Lewis put it this way: If the universe is so bad, Then how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute the universe to the activity of a wise and good creator? Think about it.
If ninety percent or better, more than ninety percent of all of the people who have ever lived on Earth, usually in more painful circumstances than any of us will ever see, if ninety percent of the people who have ever lived have believed in God, where did that notion come from? Why? There's no God. There's no ultimate values. If there's no ultimate values, there's no such thing as good or evil.
It's a meaningless conversation.
Something else I want you to notice before we jump to the next. Go back to verse 12 and notice the two words "fiery trial." Let me tell you why I think it's important, especially in this letter. I think you'll find it significant. "Fiery trial." Why does he use those words? I think I know why.
We believe that Peter the Apostle penned this letter at the end of 64 A.D.
Now, why is that important? If you know your history, you know that something very significant happened in the middle of 64 A.D. In the summer of 64 A.D., for nine weeks, beginning on July 16th, Rome burned. It burned to the ground effectively, and most people believed it was the emperor's fault. Caesar Nero started the fire.
He had a penchant for building. He didn't like the old city. He wanted to expand it and renew it, but he would never admit to it. But we do know that when the fire was started, he was watching it with glee. And when people tried to put out those fires, the Roman soldiers stopped them from putting it out, and they started new ones.
Well, the population who had lost their homes, their goods, the lives of loved ones, were in such furor that they turned against Caesar Nero, almost in an all-out revolt. He knew he needed to do something, and so he looked for a scapegoat. Who do you think he chose? The Christians. Let's blame it on the Christians.
They weren't liked anyway.
So I'll say they did it, and he said they did it. And to display the idea that he believed they did it, he took many of them and put them on poles with ropes while they were alive, doused them in pitch, and used them as torches to light up the imperial gardens at night. That began a two hundred year reign of terror against the believers that were in Rome. We believe that this letter was written toward the end of that year.
So, when he writes these words, listen to how they would sound to a Roman Christian. Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you.
So, don't be surprised by suffering. Here is the second don't: don't be scared by it. Verse thirteen, he has the audacity to use this word. But rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.
On their part, he is blasphemed, but on your part, he is glorified. Rejoice! I don't know how that hits your ears, but I imagine for for somebody who was suffering the kind of atrocities they were suffering, they they probably even thought, "Really, you're going to dare tell me to rejoice during this time." But what Peter is saying to them, and I want you to hear it carefully, is that we have no right to expect better treatment from this world than Jesus received from this world. See, that's the the point of his language in these verses. In fact, what Peter does is take suffering and lift it up high, give honor to it, extol it.
You know, we would want to take suffering, and if this were a house, it'd be in the basement. With the rest of the junk, he takes suffering out of the basement, moves it into the great room, and even higher, and says, "Ah, if you suffer for the right reason, it's a position of honor. You are suffering with Christ." When C.S. Lewis was asked the question, "Why do the righteous suffer?" he said, "Why not? They're the only ones who can take it.
They will do it differently than somebody who doesn't have that hope." Now I do want to say that as believers, we're not naive concerning evil. We believe three things about evil. Number one, it's real; it exists. Evil exists. We are not like those who subscribe to what is called Christian Science.
I'm sure you have seen names on buildings or on so-called churches that say Christian Science. It was a Belief system started in the 1800s by a gal named Mary Baker Eddy Glover Patterson Fry. She had a problem with men. She had an even worse problem with doctrine because she believed that evil doesn't exist, pain doesn't exist, suffering doesn't exist, disease doesn't exist. It's all an illusion.
Even death. She had the audacity to say death is an illusion. I've always been mystified by Christian Science. It's sort of like the cereal my mom used to give me when I was a kid called Grape Nuts. Do you remember Grape Nuts?
Ever looked inside a box? Are there any grapes at all? There are no grapes and there are no nuts. It says Grape Nuts. All there are inside are flakes.
No grapes. No nuts. And Christian science, there's nothing Christian about it, and there's nothing scientific about it. And to play some metaphysical game and not call something what it plainly is doesn't help anybody.
So Christians are not naive and go, "Yep, suffering, evil, hardship, pain exist." But we know something else is true. We know that God allows evil to exist. And we believe, at least I believe, that God is in absolute control of the universe that He made. I know not everybody believes that. There's this, there's a teaching out there called open theism.
Some of you have never heard of that, perhaps. Open theism or process theology, which says God is in the process of becoming a better God. See, God doesn't know what's going to happen tomorrow. They say. Thus, he's not in control of it.
So every day he's learning new things. He's a deity in process or in progress.
So today God is a better God than he was yesterday because more things have happened and he's finding out more things.
So that that's how they deal with the problem of evil. They got a God running around saying "Oops!" all day long. No, thank you. Evil exists. God permits evil to exist, but I know something else, and that is God has a purpose in it.
That it can actually be helpful. Can actually be helpful. Peter here says that he is glorified. Really, God is glorified when I suffer, and it can be helpful.
Well, you know that's true. We've studied that, and I hope by now you believe that is true. Does a it does a few things for you. You know that suffering does. It makes you pure.
Number one, it makes you pure. Purifies you like nothing else. We studied it already in depth, but let me just refresh your memory. Back in chapter one, verse six and seven, of First Peter, said these trials have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes, though it is refined by fire, may be proved to be genuine. God, like a goldsmith, pours the gold back and forth in its liquid form and scrapes the impurities off, purifies you.
Second thing, suffering does it humbles you. It humbles you. We who have a tendency to walk in pride are quickly brought down to street level with a period of suffering. Did you know that Paul the apostle, though he wasn't prideful, he had the temptation toward pride, and he admitted that. He saw and heard God speak.
He saw visions from God. He saw miracles of God. And so, listen to this. This is Second Corinthians chapter twelve. He writes, "And lest I be exalted above measure, so filled with pride I couldn't stand it.
There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, which is a sharp, painful stake in my flesh, my body, some physical ailment, a messenger of Satan to torment me. I suppose it would be hard to be around Paul." Talk about a Starbucks buddy. Can you imagine? Here, here's Skip at Starbucks, and here's Paul on the other side. And go, hey Paul, let me show you what I read today in Psalm 23.
You go, that's great. Let me tell you what God verbally spoke to me this morning as I saw a vision of the third heaven.
Okay, never mind. See at lunch. The suffering will purify you. It will humble you. Here's another thing it will do, and we know this to be true.
It makes us depend on God. Like nothing else, it keeps us dependent. Thanks for joining us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. Before we go, remember that your generosity helps share clear verse-by-verse Bible teaching with people everywhere, helping them know God more deeply and live out His truth. And this month, when you give fifty dollars or more, we'll send you Pastor Skip's brand new devotional, Soaring Above It All, as our thanks.
This one-year journey through the Bible will help you see how Scripture fits together, understand its key people, events, and themes, and grow deeper in God's Word each day. Give today at connectwithskip.com/offer or call 800-922-1888. We'll see you next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. Make a connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
