Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
Why doesn't God fix the world?
Really easy one today.
Very easy. So buckle up for the next three hours while I spin my wheels trying to approach this one. Okay.
To do my best to, you know, let's say, answer the question. We're going to start in romans, in chapter 8, the apostle Paul's letter to the church at Rome. And he says, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. That word glory is going to be important today. So remember that for the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.
For in this hope we are saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Glory and hope. Glory and hope. Let's pray today. Father God, we thank you again that we get to be unified in this moment to hear from you.
Pray that no matter where we're at today, your Holy Spirit would speak to us exactly how we need to hear it. That we would be encouraged or inspired or enlightened or shown a revelation, whatever we need today, Lord, I pray that your voice would be that for us.
We trust in you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
I told you guys last week I took a few weeks off to coach my son's Little League all star team, which was so fun. And really, over the last couple months, there's been a lot of good for the Fleming family.
Sometimes in big moments, right, it's coaching and winning a tournament and hugging my son and spending time with the family in that way, even the travel that we've gotten to take. And for those of you who don't know, my wife and I and my kids have been in our trailer in our front yard since October. Now we're gonna kill each other soon.
And so some of these little tournaments and driving and staying in hotels in the Dalles actually sound Amazing.
So we've gotten to do a lot of that, even seeing some family. Got to hang out with my Aunt Kathy over in Newburgh. And my family's a big card and board game family.
So I've gotten to like watch my kids play board games with family members that I grew up playing with. And they were playing this board game called Naked Mole Rats in space.
Anybody else? Yeah, I didn't think so. I'm not sure where this came from or if Aunt Kathy made it herself, but that's what they play when they go to Aunt Kathy's and got these cute little naked mole rats as the characters. And you're on a team and you're trying to get past the snakes and onto the escape. I can describe it in more detail if you want. I know you're interested.
And then we went to the Portland Zoo the next day and we saw real naked mole rats. And my daughter thought those were a lot less cute than the board game characters that she's been playing with.
Kind of gross and weird looking.
But it's these kind of moments that have happened in here. My wife and I are about to celebrate our 15 year anniversary, which is amazing. And yeah, thank you. Appreciate that.
It's these moments that kind of make up, I don't know, there's beauty to it.
And I grew up thinking, and still think inside the Christian faith that we talk about the death and the resurrection of Jesus and how it's victory over sin and death. And Jesus even says in the process on the cross that it is finished. The finished work of Jesus belongs to us now, to those who follow after him. And it's in these moments that I can really feel and experience that victory.
It's listening to my kids really belly laughs. You guys have a family member that you know when they've shifted gears into the biggest laugh possible. You know, my son, who's a pretty cool kid, laughs like when he's really laughing. When I was a kid, we used to watch the Princess Bride a lot. Not just to watch the movie, which is amazing and epic, but to watch my dad laugh at the movie that was maybe the most entertaining. These are holy moments. They're beautiful moments where it's easy for me to believe in the victory of Jesus, but kind of right alongside those. Over the last few months, you know, things have been less than perfect. I referenced our house project, which continues to go slower than humanly possible.
I've been losing my hair at a far more faster rate than I had been earlier in my life. You guys the last two months I was hanging out with a friend who is a beautiful person and he went like this with his hand through his hair. Have you seen beautiful people do this? It's pretty cool.
And I kind of mirrored it for some reason I did that and it sounded like I stepped on bubble wrap, you know, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. All the follicles just slamming shut, locking me out forever.
You guys, I would be shaving my head right now if Evan wasn't already shaving his head. Okay? But what you do not need is west side church is two pastors, two white middle aged pastors shaving their heads. Have you been to the cult off of Shevlin Park Road? Yeah. Great music out there at that cult.
Two weirdos leading the charge.
I've re encountered some insecurities that I thought I kicked. You know, some feelings that I remember having from even college about what people might think or say about me. And I ruminate on those and can't sleep and then wake up in the middle of the night and can't sleep again and thought have I gotten past all of that? And I look at the state of the world sometimes I think of the stories of children in Gaza that just want food, that are being shot or stampeded on, on their way to or from the food.
And I think this cannot be a real thing in our world. That can't be a real story.
Children and families lost in floods. And we this last week had a friend that we discovered we have a friend through. My son plays hockey. It's his teammate's younger sister who's seven, died tragically in a freak accident all of a sudden over this last week and we're fielding phone calls and trying to comfort and see what we can do again. A seven year old.
And these are the moments where I asked this question that presented at the beginning of this, not in a philosophical way or to try to spur on conversation at lunch, but I asked this with real genuine vigor. And that is, why haven't you fixed this yet? God, like I understand, I could see the glimpses and there's these beautiful and wonderful times. But there are so many ills in this world, so much suffering still.
Where are you at?
At best, God, you are. You're really late to all these situations. At worst, you're ignoring us and you don't hear us, you know, even saying today about the goodness of God. And there are so many moments and encounters that I've had with God recently where I go, I wonder because this is hard and seemingly Impossible and certainly the worst of things is to lose a child.
We live in this world with disease and war and loneliness and addiction and death.
And we all know it's certainly not just me. And maybe you've had a similar last couple months where it's been complicated. There's been some goods and some bads, some worst of things.
You know that we're not immune to suffering as Christians, but the thing that we have to wrap our minds around is that maybe discovering the answer to this question of why hasn't God fixed everything? Maybe that is a good question to ask. And by the way, all these questions that we've been talking about and asking and big ones that you have in your own personal life, you should continue to ask those questions and bring them before God. We're not a church that is embarrassed about asking the difficult things and not having answers. But I wonder if maybe the more pressing thing at hand for us is not to find an answer to why hasn't God fixed all this yet?
Have a firm response, but instead we need to understand where we are in our context and then discover what to do from there.
It's a little bit like Frodo's conversation with Gandalf in the Fellowship of the Ring, where he holds the ring of Power. And he says, I wish this thing never would have come to me. All this weight and all this responsibility. And Gandalf's response is so wonderful. He says, everyone says that, everyone feels that way.
But that's not for you to decide.
Instead you have to decide what to do with the time that has been given to you.
And that is the job of the church. That's the job of Westside Church. That's our job here today. While we can continue to ask all the questions. And I would encourage that, I would encourage us even more so to decide what to do with the time that has been given to us in the context that has been given to us and in the joys and the sufferings that have been given to us.
My contention today, because I believe it's what Paul is writing here in Romans chapter 8, is that our job is to hold on to something that we have been given. In the middle of all this, that is extraordinary. And that extraordinary thing is hope.
Again in verse 18, he says, I consider our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us, that we are called to have hope in the present sufferings because of the glory that will be revealed. There's a lot of kind of pop philosophy that goes around today that talks about this idea of being present. We want to be present in moments because we don't want to miss something beautiful and wonderful. We don't want to miss time with our kids or our loved ones or our spouse. We don't want to miss a beautiful sunset or sunrise. We want to live. We want to be present in the moment because we don't want to just blow past everything that is good about this world. And that is true. But I want to encourage you that Christianity invites us not just to be present inside of that beautiful space, but inside the suffering and the sorrowful space as well.
We're actually called to those places not just to endure them ourselves, but to jump into the fray with other people who are experiencing that suffering and to be present in those moments. Why? Because we are the bringers of hope in the middle of all circumstances, in the midst of life, joys, and we can foresee the coming sorrows. Christianity actually enlivens, it encourages, it empowers.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: People to, to sit in the middle.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Of all of these things, greatest sorrow and to offer a taste of a coming joy.
And so this is Paul's message that we are groaning now, finding ourselves in suffering now, but we're groaning towards something.
We're groaning toward redemption, we're groaning toward glory that we haven't quite had our hands on just yet.
Well, be sure that Paul doesn't minimize suffering. He endured shipwrecks, he endured stonings, he lost friends, he endured imprisonment, torture.
Yet he says that whatever we face is nothing in comparison to the glory that is to come. Paul offers us really this opportunity to look at a metaphor, almost like an old fashioned scale, right where there's a platter or plate right here and a platter or plate right here. And then you put one item on this side and another on the other and you can see which one outweighs the other.
And Paul's offering us this invitation to take all of our sorrows and sufferings, every bit of it, right.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Sometimes I feel like I have so.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Much invested in this Christianity thing that I really need it to be right. And so what I'll do is I'll grab a small fraction of my sorrows and sufferings and put it on the plate, feeling like I need to give Jesus a head start because I need him to prove that this glory is heavier than my sorrow. So I'm only going to offer up a few of those sorrows.
It's kind of an intimate process to say I'm going to give all these.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: Things to you, all these questions and confusions and anger. I'm going to give all of it up to you.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: And yet that's Paul's invitation, because Paul.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Is contending and saying all of those sorrows and sufferings, no matter how great.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: The loss of a loved one, the loss of a child, the loss of.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: A relationship, in a divorce, everything that you could possibly, possibly imagine, the worst things of this world, throw them all.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Onto your side of the scale, because ultimately the glory of God will outweigh all of those things.
It's a beautiful and difficult picture because we have to have faith. Of course, that is the truth.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: But in the meantime, as we pile.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: On every difficulty that we've endured in.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: This life, it feels like so much.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: How could we possibly get out from underneath this weight? And how could the glory of God possibly outweigh it? And yet that is the promise that God has given us.
On one side, we can put all of that weight of present sufferings, cancer, broken relationships, the loss of a child. And now on the other side, God pours his glory out. That is coming.
It's so weighty that even the heaviest weight can fly up like a feather.
So when we suffer, don't ignore the pain, don't present only a fraction of it, but instead our offer yourself up in faith to the process of the scale.
Suffering is real, but the glory of God is even more real.
It's thick and it's dense and it's rich and it outweighs the worst of things.
And so Paul says in the process of this, creation itself is groaning. He uses this word, groaning, as if in childbirth, not dying, but waiting to give birth to something new.
This is radical vision that creation isn't abandoned and then we retreat off to heaven, right? Heaven's not a bunch of puffy clouds and angels and bows and arrows. And, you know, some of you familiar with some of this imagery, or did you not have the same wallpaper in your bathroom that we did?
Just a bunch of cupids up there. Not sure why it became a wallpaper.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: But instead, creation is awaiting liberation.
And the sound of that waiting liberation is found in hope. And the sound of hope sounds like groaning.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: Paul says it doesn't sound like music.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: On the way to this incredible climactic moment. Instead, it sounds like groaning.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: I've been lucky enough to be in a lot of weight rooms with people that can lift a lot of weight in my life. I've even been around people that are, like, trying to break state or national or international records.
And if you've never been in a weight room. When somebody is trying to break a record or even break their own personal record, I highly recommend doing it at least once. That might be the only time you want to do it. But just to paint a little picture for you, you can tell when this is about to happen, when somebody's about to do a big lift. And I love. I love watching people try to go for the squat, where they put the bar on their back. You got to go down to parallel, and then push the weight all the way back up. There's just something so primal about it to me that I really enjoy.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: And you can tell about two minutes.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Leading up to the lift, because the music kind of goes up. And then there's usually a group of guys that are the most intense guys in the gym that start screaming at each other and hitting each other, getting each other fired up. And I was never one of these guys. You guys. I love sports. You guys know me. I played football. And you could keep the teammates as far away from me as possible. The ones that wanted to switch, smack me in the head with their own head. Not my guys. On game day, I want to catch touchdowns, not break my skull. That was kind of how I felt about it.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Now you can be in this weight room, and the fever pitch just starts happening. All of the energy. And you'll even see, like, one of these guys would, like, get his belt on, you know, which goes around your.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: Stomach, and then it's so tight to support your core, and then everything's just kind of pouring over it, you know? And he put the belt on, and.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Then back up to a friend, and.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Then a friend would take both hands and just slap him on the back as hard as possible.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: And I'm like, oh, this is a lot.
I hope I don't try to break any records, because I don't want somebody to hurt me, you know?
And this guy would go up and get in the squat rack and get.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: And all of a sudden, the weight is bending the bar over his back, and he goes down. And you hear the sounds of everybody in the room, as well as the person that's lifting. When it's on their way up, it's.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Come on, you can get this. And the guy's going in the neck and the veins and everything, and it's all the noise. And the best, though, is when they fail, because really suddenly, this person who, for the last two minutes has been turning themselves into the Incredible Hulk turns right back into the manager of the.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Flower shop that's around the corner, you.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Know, when they decide they can't do it and they're halfway up, it goes from to I can't do it.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: I just can't make it.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Who is that guy in there?
Everything changes. The sound changes, the groaning goes away.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: And it gives way instead to hopelessness.
Now, I don't know if this is a great metaphor, but you're going to remember it for the rest of your life.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: That sound, that in between sound, that halfway up feeling on a deep, difficult and heavy squat that creates that groaning, that straining sound that sounds really painful and something like we don't want to experience, and oftentimes we don't, is the same thing that is expressing hope. When it comes to our faith in Jesus here in this present time, when we go through the difficulties and the sufferings that and the pain and all these things and we decide to jump up and we address injustice, we encourage those who have lost loved ones and children. When we stand in the gap for people that we know that Jesus loves, that so much of the world is forgotten, that is a groaning and a straining. That doesn't just prove that the world has gone into a difficult direction, but instead it proves that hope is still alive for what Jesus can do with this world.
That's the entire idea behind it.
And so if you feel this pain like I do, and it feels so difficult and not just inconvenient, but the worst of things, and you feel this straining, your stomach hurts and your heart begins to pound. This is the sound, believe it or not, of hope.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: So we're not meant to abandon that hope and move instead into indifference, abandoning the world to say, well, it's just simply going to be how it's going to be.
Powerful people will drive it this way and war will continue to happen in this way, but instead we continue to be a people even in the midst of hopelessness that bring the groaning sound of hope, then we are doing the work of the Lord.
When we care for creation and we fight injustice, or we mourn the brokenness of this place, we're not working against God's plan, but we're aligned with it.
Creation itself, the world that we stand on as well as our souls, longs to be made new.
So what should we do in the middle of this incredible tension?
Well, I would encourage you to be honest about suffering.
Again, don't gloss over it. I would hate nothing more than for Westside to be a place where you feel like you have to fake smile in order to come through the doors to feel like you have everything all together and the answers understood.
Remember that groaning is actually a part of this life.
It's difficult and painful, but it's beautiful.
And when we're anchored in this, not just the results, right?
So much of this life in Christianity and our understanding of the world is not about results.
I encounter this every season in baseball with these 10 year olds that I coach.
Baseball is a process sport. It's not like golf where it's a result sport. You can tell if your process was good in golf based on where the ball lands. And in baseball, often you can do the process exactly right and not get a result that you want.
So it's funny, I'm coaching these kids and one of them hits a little number off the end of the bat, swings at a bad pitch and it rolls over by the pitcher. And because they're 10, he trips on his shoelaces and he falls down and the runners save it first and he's smiling.
And then the next kid comes up, does everything exactly right, launches a ball on a line, and of course the shortstop makes a diving catch and that kid is crying.
The first kid totally screwed everything up, but got a result that he thought was best. The other kid went through the process exactly right. But in this moment, the result didn't feel quite as right.
So much of our living in this faith is simply about giving ourselves over to the process again and again and again, being formed in hope, in formation, through the way of the cross and the way of Jesus.
Not every result that we experience along the way is indicative of the process that we find ourselves in with Jesus.
So we give ourselves over to the process, to the process, to the process. And we believe in time, whether it's our time or simply God's time, that the results will be what we hope they will be.
We have to remind ourselves that this moment is not the end of the story when the pain feels most overwhelming.
So we lean into the Spirit.
Romans 8 After this passage that we read will later tell us that the Spirit is helpful in our weaknesses.
We're not alone in our growing, but the Spirit comes to comfort us.
And so we wait with the Spirit on our side in perseverance.
You know, we don't always realize that Jesus is all that we need until Jesus is all we have.
Hope gives us strength to wait in faith, even if it's totally in the dark, making us feel alone.
One day, Paul says, glory will be revealed in us.
Not just to us, but in us.
We shine with the glory of the risen Christ. The world will be made new, and every tear will be wiped away and and every groan finally answered with glory.
NT Wright says this and surprised by hope. He says, we're not just oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff.
We're not restoring a great painting that's shortly to be thrown onto the fire. We are, strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the Resurrection itself, accomplishing something that will become in due course, part of God's new world.
Until then, we groan with hope, we suffer with purpose, we wait with longing, we hope in glory, and we look for Jesus in places that can be uncomfortable.
An example of this is a story that is usually highlighted in your scripture as the Road to Emmaus.
It's shortly after Jesus death and resurrection where he encounters some followers along this road. And it says in Luke 24. Now, the same day, two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.
And as they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them. But they were kept from recognizing him.
He asked them, what are you discussing together as you walk along? Jesus is so cheeky sometimes. Have you noticed this?
What you talking about?
They stood still, their face downcast.
One of them named Cleopas, asked him, are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened here in these days?
[00:24:17] Speaker B: What things?
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Jesus asked again.
Very cheeky about Jesus of Nazareth, they replied. He was a prophet, powerful in the word. Indeed before God and all the people, the chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death and they crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. These two along the road walking with Jesus failed to recognize him. And they still were holding on to the hope, the original hope that so many people had that in the long term was very short sighted, that he would simply come back and he would kill Pilate, he would kill Caesar, and he would retake Jerusalem for the Jews, their Messiah, to gain back the political power that they had once had.
Of course, Jesus came for something far greater than that, for the hope of the entire world, not just one nation.
And the hope that comes from not the political realm, but the realm of the soul.
And so they don't recognize him with this thought on front of mind.
But then something happens a few verses later where it says when he was at the table with them. When Jesus was at the table with them, he took bread, he gave thanks.
He broke it and began to give it to them.
Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him. And he disappeared from their sight. And they asked each other, were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?
In all of this suffering and confusion that these followers of Jesus have, they have difficulty recognizing Jesus until what? Until this moment of the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the wine in a meal together, of course, emblematic of the death and the resurrection of Jesus, his body given for us and his blood shed for us.
I want to encourage you Westside Church today that if you want to see Jesus in the middle of a broken world, and I do think that you'll see him during board games and belly laughter.
I think that you'll see him in hugs with loved ones. I think you'll see him nature and as sunrises and sunsets. But I am confident that we always have the greatest and the clearest picture of Jesus when we see him through the serving and the sacrifice of the cross, communion, the Eucharist.
We should also see ourselves there if we want the world to experience hope. And so many times it seems so hopeless, then we too should be a people willing to be broken and serve and give what we have to the world around us, even when it doesn't deserve it.
This will produce great groanings in us.
But those groanings sound like hope.
