Recently, someone asked us this question about God,
"How can God hear and answer
prayers of so many people
at the same time?"
I immediately thought of that
old movie by Jim Carey,
"Bruce Almighty."
Have you seen it?
He tries to play God.
And he sits down at his computer
to answer all the prayers that
have been prayed to God,
and he's overwhelmed with this massive inbox.
And so he just clicks, "Yes."
Whenever I think about that,
how can God listen to
not just two people, or 200 people,
but millions, if not
billions, of people at the same time,
my answer is . . .
I don't know how,
but I love the fact that I don't know how.
In my little brain I can't
grasp how you could
grasp all those prayer requests
and somehow answer them
and send out angels and run the universe
to bless all the people
who call on your name.
But that's what I love about God.
He's not me.
He's not like Mike, but
a little bit stronger.
Or like Mike, but
a little bit smarter.
Or like Mike who can listen to two conversations.
He's God.
Isaiah chapter 43 has this great verse:
"Holy One"
means the one that's set apart;
the one who is unlike anyone else.
And God gives us this great word of comfort.
He doesn't just say,
" I am the Holy One" but "I am
your Holy One."
I'm the one who's using my perfect
knowledge and perfect presence
to listen to you,
to care about you,
and to
give exactly the help that you need
at just the right time.
So, take great comfort.
God is listening to every syllable that you say,
every prayer that you pray,
in Jesus name.
And he promises if you
call upon him in the day of trouble,
he will deliver you.
Isn't our God incredible?
We received an amazing question this week
that said,
"If God is omnipotent,
why did he take six days
to create everything?"
Well, just in case you didn't take Latin
in college,
omnipotent
means "all-powerful."
So, the person is asking,
"If God is all-powerful,
why did he take so long
to create the universe?"
And the Bible's answer to that question is . . .
I don't know.
You're certainly right.
God could've said,
"Let there be everything."
And everything could have existed
in a millisecond.
So why didn't he?
Well, it's a little bit of conjecture
so don't write this as a note
in your Bible.
But I wonder if God didn't
want to take a little bit of time
to enjoy the glorious creation that he made.
Don't we struggle with that in our culture?
We're doing, and doing, and doing,
and creating, and creating, and creating,
and working, and working, and working,
and we don't always stop
to take a deep breath
and look around and enjoy
the universe that God made just for us.
Psalm 19 says,
"The heavens declare the glory of God."
Romans chapter 1 says,
"All of creation is revealing
God's divine nature."
How beautiful and powerful
and enjoyable he is.
I even look back at
Genesis chapter 2. It says,
Maybe God wanted to set a pattern
that we would stop,
take a break,
take a rest,
look around,
and realize that our God is powerful.
Our God is loving.
And, most importantly, God gives us
deep rest in our soul,
by the free gift of grace,
through his Son, Jesus Christ.
So, take a breath.
Take a break.
And enjoy all the things
that God has made.
I got a really
vulnerable and honest question
from someone from our church.
She wrote this:
"I've been diagnosed
with clinical anxiety and depression.
My doctor says it's brain chemistry,
yet I know the Bible says
worry and despair are sins.
I know that God loves me
and forgives me and I trust in him,
yet these horrible feelings
still overwhelm me
and now I feel guilty and anxious
about feeling guilty and anxious.
How can I escape from this vicious cycle?
As a pastor, I know so many people
in our church who struggle with
anxiety and depression.
And they know enough verses
in the Bible to realize that
God doesn't want us to worry,
He wants us to
trust in him and lean not
on our own understanding.
Philippians chapter 4 says,
"Don't be anxious about anything."
And 1 Peter 5 says,
"Cast all your anxiety on God
because he cares for you."
But there's a problem, actually.
The devil knows
how to make us think about the
wrong passage
at the wrong time.
Did you know that?
The devil is okay if you remember
a Bible passage,
as long as it's not the right one.
Here's what I mean.
There's some passages in the Bible that
tell us what we should do --
what we call the law of God.
Don't be anxious.
Don't worry.
And there's a whole
other group of passages that
we call the gospel--
the promises of what God has done for us.
He loves you.
He forgives you,
even after all your sins
and worry and anxiety.
What happens after we realize
that we are sinners,
is that the devil wants us to think,
"Well, what can we do to fix it?"
Don't be anxious.
I feel bad about being anxious.
Well, don't be anxious.
I feel even worse about being anxious.
Well, don't be anxious!
Until we're just crushed
and we think that we're such a failure,
that God must be mad at us.
The truth is that once we
realize that we've sinned,
it's time to stop thinking about
these passages
and to think about these passages.
The author of the book of Hebrews says this:
I would say to this woman,
and all of you who are
struggling with anxiety and depression,
you probably know that you've sinned.
That you don't trust God enough.
So to fix your thoughts on Jesus.
Look at the cross
and see the Jesus who loves you,
even though that you've worried.
Worship the one who adores you,
despite your anxiety.
Think about the gospel.
Actually, when I responded to this woman,
I, I said,
"What if on your phone
you kept a little file of gospel passages?
God loves me.
He loves the world.
He forgives my sins."
And when you feel that anxiety,
instead of looking at yourself,
where you'll always see weakness,
you look to Jesus
and find all the strength that you need.
How do you stop the vicious cycle of guilt?
You turn to the God
of amazing grace.
The other day I got a really deep
theological question.
See if you can figure it out with me.
"God could have chosen to redeem
man by any method of his choosing.
Is there any indication of
why he chose to accomplish this
by sacrificing his son?"
That's a good question.
Christians always talk about,
"Jesus died for me" or
"He died for my sins."
But why?
Why did there have to be a cross?
Why did there have to be a son of God,
giving his life and rising from the dead
so that you and I could be
brought back into the presence
of our Father in Heaven?
The book of Hebrews
gives an answer to that question
when it says this,
If you've read the Old Testament,
you know it was a graphic book.
Animals being brought to church
and slaughtered.
And maybe you read it and you say,
"Well, that's not very nice to animals" and,
and, "Why would God do that?
Why kill bulls and goats
and lambs and
call that worship?
What does that have to do with Jesus?"
And the answer is,
is pretty profound.
The answer is, because
your sin
is that bad
and your God
is that good.
When we see
grotesque sacrifices
and, most importantly,
when we see Jesus being tortured,
and in agony on the cross,
we're reminded that sin, to God,
is that bad.
There's no such thing as a little sin,
a little bit of gossip,
a little bit of lying,
a little bit of selfishness.
A little bit of trying to get my way
in marriage.
A little bit of greed,
a little bit of judgment
when I see people who look like that
or act like that.
But that's so bad to God.
It's like an animal whose
throat is slit and it bleeds out
on the floor of the temple.
It's like the Son of God on a cross,
crying out, "God, why have you forsaken me?
Why did you abandon your own son?"
Your sin, did you know,
is that bad.
The wages of sin,
the book of Romans says, is death.
Yet, at the same time,
it proves that God is that good.
If that's what it would take to save you,
that God would love you so much
that he would, he'd give up anything,
even if it was the only son
that he had, he was willing
to do it because he's a God of grace
and a God of mercy.
A God who wasn't going to wait until
you were good enough to save yourself.
You couldn't.
And so that same passage from Romans
says, "the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God
is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord."
So, why did God choose
to sacrifice his only son?
So that we would know how bad sin is,
and how incredibly good
our Father in heaven is, too.
We have a tough question to try
to answer today.
The question is this,
"If God knows everything,
why did he create the world
and let us sin?"
If you make it to the third chapter of the Bible,
you will be confronted with
some very reasonable,
logical questions
that are pretty tough to answer.
Why did God let that happen?
If he knew that Satan would
fall as an angel from heaven,
why did he create him?
Why was there a tree in the middle of
the Garden of Eden
where Adam and Eve could sin?
Why didn't God start over?
We think of all the pain that sin has
caused in this world,
and it seems only logical to ask,
"God, why didn't you do it differently?"
And to be honest,
the Bible doesn't give an answer
to that question.
We might be really curious,
but part of Christianity
is being humble enough
to realize that
God is God
and he doesn't have to give me
every answer, even though I'm curious.
God gives me what I need to know,
not everything that I want to know.
Some Christians, over the centuries, though,
have posed this as a possible solution.
The fact that love isn't true
unless it's freely given.
It's what some people call
"the problem of free will."
For example, if you have a phone
that you can talk to and I say,
"Siri, find me the nearest pizza place."
I don't think that she loves me
when she responds.
She has to. She's programmed to.
She's a robot.
But if I asked my wife
to give me a hug and she does,
well, she had free will
to give it or to not give it.
And so I feel the love from her.
In the same way, God
could have made us robots
who would never disobey him,
but that wouldn't be true love.
Instead, he gave us this incredible free will
that can be abused,
but that can show him that we love him
with our whole heart, our whole soul,
our whole mind,
and our whole strength.
Maybe that's why God
let things happen as he did.
In the end, though, we trust his grace,
his mercy
and the love that he showed us
at the cross of Jesus Christ,
which will one day
undo all the things
that make us ask tough questions like this.