1/23/2021 "Suffering and the Justice of God" Saturday Worship
Notes
Transcript
The Perspective of the “Friends”:
God justly punishes evil people with
suffering, therefore Job is evil.
4 Is it for your fear of him that he reproves you
and enters into judgment with you?
5 Is not your evil abundant?
There is no end to your iniquities.
Job’s perspective: I am innocent, therefore God is unjust.
Job’s perspective: I am innocent, therefore God is unjust.
22 It is all one; therefore I say,
‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’
23 When disaster brings sudden death,
he mocks at the calamity of the innocent.
5 If indeed you magnify yourselves against me
and make my disgrace an argument against me,
6 know then that God has put me in the wrong
and closed his net about me.
There are three ways God uses suffering.
There are three ways God uses suffering.
1. God uses suffering to bring us to repentance.
1. God uses suffering to bring us to repentance.
2. God uses suffering to remind us of our mortality.
2. God uses suffering to remind us of our mortality.
1 There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?
3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?
5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
3. God uses suffering to strengthen our faith.
3. God uses suffering to strengthen our faith.
2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,
3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Is this justice? Yes!
Is this justice? Yes!
16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
God is just to allow us to suffer, because adversity prepares us for heaven.
God is just to allow us to suffer, because adversity prepares us for heaven.