PAIN OF LIFE

Sermon Summary (8/27/17) “The Pain of Life” (Romans 8:28; 35; 37-39; Rev 21:1-5)

I receive a call this week from a friend.  He said that a sermon had changed his life.  Good Baptist sermon, “Everything happens for a reason.”  No!  I don’t believe that for a minute.  We do too many evil things to one another to believe that.  The sermon had been on the Raising of Lazarus.  The preacher had said that God caused the death of Lazarus so that Jesus could glorify God.  A better reading would be that Lazarus died, and Jesus took advantage of the circumstance to glorify God and to demonstrate that God’s ultimate will cannot be defeated.

My friend’s wife had passed away.  It had been evident that God had been working in his life to change him, and he concluded after hearing the sermon that his wife had died for a reason: sothat he would be changed, dramatically changed. No!  No!  It had always been God’s intention that his wife life a long and wonderful life.  But when she died, God took advantage of the circumstances to enter into my friend’s life and change him.  There is a huge difference in the reading.

Rosemary and I are very different people than before our son Jeff died.  God took advantage of the circumstance to walk beside us. 

We have been using Leslie Weatherhead’s little book, “The Will of God” in this sermon series.  He breaks God’s will down into three segments: God’s Intentional Will; God’s Circumstantial Will; and God’s Ultimate Will.

It is God’s intentional will for all of us to life good lives.  But evil exists, catastrophe's happen, disease is part of life.  God takes advantage of the circumstances to walk beside us.  He changes lives and we can see the glimpse of his mighty acts and come to understand that his ultimate will will never be defeated.  And that gives us hope!

We live in an almost, not yet perfect world.  Bad things happen.  Disease happens.  We know that.  But God’s intentional will cannot be defeated.  “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.  Neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:37-39)  Nothing!

Life does involve pain.  God certainly never intended that Jesus would have to die.  It was his intention that we follow him.  But under the evil circumstances, Jesus’ sacrifice was the only answer.  Three days later, the resurrection demonstrated that God’s ultimate will cannot be thwarted.  “God causes everything to work together for good for those who love him.”  (Romans 8:28a)

Nothing can separate us from the love of God.  Nothing!  Amen.