9-15-13 Sermon

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WHY IS LIFE IN THIS WORLD SO HARD?

The Invisible War - Part 5

09-15-13 Sermon

“Why is life so hard?  Why do we suffer?”  Job 7:1 (CEV)

I.   THE CAUSE:    __________________________________________________________

            “Sin came into the world because of what one man did, and with             sin came death.”                                                Rom.  5:12

            “ALL of us have strayed away like sheep.  We have left God's path to             follow our own paths.”            Isaiah 53:6

            “No one can say, "I am innocent; I have never done anything wrong.”  Proverbs  20:9

3 kinds of rebellIon

            __________________________________= missing the mark; falling short, not measuring up

            __________________________________ = going beyond the set boundary

            __________________________________ = intention to hurt, damage, do evil

   “I acknowledged my sin to you, and did not cover up my iniquity.  I confessed my transgressions and you forgave my guilt.”         Psalm 32:5

                         

II.     THE DAMAGE: _____________________________________________

                                   

            1.            NATURAL _______________________________________________

                        “Creation was condemned to lose its purpose...”  Rom.  8:20 (GNB)

                        “Creation is confused...”  Rom.  8:20 (CEV)

                        “All of creation groans with pain...”   Rom.  8:22

             2.            PHYSICAL ______________________________________________

                        “No one can control the wind or stop his own death.” Eccl.  8:8 (NCV)

                        “Our physical body is becoming older and weaker.”  2 Cor.  4:16

                        “Everyone dies because all of us are related to Adam, the first man.” 1 Cor.  15:22

3.              EMOTIONAL _______________________________________________

      “Everything under the sun is meaningless, like chasing the wind.  What is wrong cannot be righted.  What is missing cannot be recovered.” Eccl.  1:14-15 (NLT)

           

4.              RELATIONAL ______________________________________________

      “I saw all the people who were mistreated here on earth.  I saw their tears and that they had no one to comfort them.”  Eccl.  4:1 (NCV)

       “...they suddenly felt ashamed of their nakedness.  So they strung fig leaves together to cover themselves up.”  Gen.  3:7

            “I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”  Gen.  3:10

5.               FINANCIAL & VOCATIONAL _________________________________

      “Here is a terrible thing that I have seen in this world: people save       up their money for a time when they may need it, and then lose it all in some bad deal and end up with nothing left to pass on to their children.”      Eccl.  5:13-14 (TEV)

      “I hated life, because the work I did under the sun was meaningless to me....  So I turned in despair from hard work.  It was not the answer to my search for satisfaction in this life.”  Eccl.  2:17+20 (NLT)

6.              SPIRITUAL ________________________________________________

            “I am like a caravan, lost in the desert searching for water.”  Job 6:18

      “They've refused for so long to deal with God that they've lost touch not only with God but with reality itself.”  Eph.  4:18 (MSG)

WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?

              I MUST_________________________________________________________

      “Jesus said, ‘In this world you WILL have trouble.  But take heart!        I HAVE OVERCOME the world.’”       John 16:33

             I MUST _________________________________________________________

      “Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world.  If you follow me, you won't be stumbling through the darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.’”  John 8:12

WHY IS LIFE IN THIS WORLD SO HARD?

The Invisible War - Part 5

09-15-13 Sermon

We’re still in a sermon series called The Invisible War.  We’re looking at the three enemies of your soul: the old nature within, the world around, and Satan and his minions against you. 

We spent about four weeks looking at the battle inside.  Why do I struggle with what’s inside of me?  Why do I do the things I don’t want to do and don’t do the things that I want to do and why is it such a battle inside of me?

Now we’re going to move to the second phase as we look at How do I live in a broken world? 

Before we can look at God’s strategy for you to succeed and survive and actually be fulfilled in a broken world, we need to look at what happened first.  I want us to deal with this question this week: Why is it so hard?  Why is life so hard in this world?  Everything seems to be a battle.  Nothing is easy.  It’s a question that was actually asked thousands of years ago by a guy named Job.  In Job 7:1 he says this, “Why is life so hard?  And why do we suffer?”

This weekend I want us to look at the reasons, the results, and the right response to the difficulties you face in life. I want to begin by first looking at the cause, the reason.  Why is it so difficult to live on this planet?

    I.         The Cause:

The Bible says rebellion against God broke everything.  Rebellion against God has broken literally everything in life.

It all started back with the first couple – Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden.  When God created the world everything was perfect.  It was paradise.  And Adam and Eve had no problems, no pain, no sorrow, suffering, sadness, sickness.  No trials, temptations, troubles.  No defeats, distractions, discouragements, despair, depression.  It was all perfect.  It was paradise.

But one day Adam and Eve decided that they wanted to do what they wanted to do.  God had said, you can do everything you want to do in paradise but just not one thing.  And what does man want to do?  Immediately do the one thing that God says don’t do. 

Why did he even give them a choice?  Because without a choice they can’t choose to love God.  If you’re forced to love God, if you have no choice, then it’s not real love.  Adam and Eve said we know better.  And they chose to do the one thing God said don’t do.  And the Bible says this, Romans 5, “Sin came into the world because of what man did, and with sin came death.” 

Not only did Adam and Eve make that choice, I’ve made it and you’ve made it and everybody else in the world has made it.  We have all said I don’t want to do the right thing; I want to do the easy thing.  We’ve all said I don’t want to say the truth; I want to say what’s convenient.  We’ve all said I don’t want to be what God wants me to be; I want to be what I want to be.  I want to be my own boss.  I think I know what will make me happy more than God does.  We’ve all done this.

The Bible says in Isaiah 53, “All of us have strayed away like sheep.  [You don’t have to teach a sheep to stray.  It’s natural.  It’s in their nature.  They’re actually prone to wander.]  We have left God’s path to follow our own paths.”  That means we’ve all done our own thing.  We’ve all said, many times in our lives, God, I’m going to do what I want to do even though I know what you said to do is the right thing, I don’t want to do the right thing.  I want to do what I want to do. 

And the Bible says in Proverbs 20:9, “No one can say, ‘I am innocent; I’ve never done anything wrong.’”  So we’ve all broken God’s laws.  We’ve all done wrong things.  We don’t measure up to our standards, much less God’s.  And we have all not done what God told us to do.  The Bible calls that rebellion.

I don’t want to go too detailed into this but there are three kinds of rebellion and you need to know this so you know these terms.  Because one of them is real familiar but the other two may not be as familiar to you.

The first one, you know this one.  It’s called sin. 

That’s a very common term.  What’s the middle letter of the word “sin”?  I.  And that’s what sin is all about.  I want what I want and I want it now.  I’m going to be the center of my own life.  I am in charge.  Sin is all about I – me, myself and I.

But actually the word “sin” means “to fall short.”  It means “to miss the mark.”  It’s actually an archery term.  It comes from shooting a bow and arrow.  Sin is actually an archery term.  It means you’re missing the bull’s eye.  It means you fell short.  It means you didn’t reach the goal. 

Sin means I don’t measure up to God’s perfect goal for me.  I miss the mark.  I fall short.  I don’t quite make it.  I’m not perfect. 

There’s a second word that’s just as important.  It’s called transgression. 

Transgression is the exact opposite of a sin.  It doesn’t mean you fall short.  It means you go too far.  It means you go past the boundaries.  You break the law.  It is an intentional, deliberate, disobedience.  Sin can be “I just didn’t measure up.  I wasn’t good enough.  I wasn’t perfect.”  But transgression means “I intentionally break the law. I go past the boundary.”

There’s a third word.  It’s called iniquity. 

Iniquity.  This one is not used at all in English today.  But iniquity means “intention to hurt.”  Intention to hurt somebody, intention to damage, intention to do evil.  Maybe because you’re mad or you’re jealous or you’re envious or you’re bitter or you’re prideful or somebody has offended you.  You want to hurt them back.  That’s not a sin, that’s not a transgression – that’s an iniquity.  It is an intentional desire to hurt somebody else.

When Hitler and the Nazis killed six million Jewish people in the death camps that was not a sin; that was not a transgression.  That was an iniquity.  They intended intentionally to hurt those people.  They wanted to kill them.  They wanted to eradicate that entire race.  That was evil.  That was iniquity.  It wasn’t just not measuring up.  It wasn’t just going too far.  It was intentionally meant to hurt.

David, in Psalm 32, talks about all three of them.  He says “I acknowledged my sin [circle that] to you, and did not cover up my iniquity. [circle that]  I confessed my transgressions [circle that] and you forgave my guilt.”  He said it really doesn’t matter which one it was, whether I didn’t measure up or I missed the mark or I went out of bounds or I intentionally hurt someone, you’re still going to forgive me if I confess it to you.

So why is life so hard?  Why do we suffer?  Why is everything a battle? The answer is rebellion against God broke everything.  That’s the reason.

What’s the result?  What’s the damage?  The damage, friends, is significant because it’s in every single area of your life. 

 II.         The Damage

Nothing works perfectly.  Because I have made poor choices, you have made poor choices, the entire human race has made poor choices…

Everything’s broken and nothing on this planet works perfectly.  Sin has damaged everything.  

Sin has ruined everything.  Sin has destroyed everything.  Sin has corrupted and spoiled everything.  Sin has injured everything, every relationship, every idea, every dream, every human body.  Everything has been touched by this damage.

The Bible is very specific and it mentions six dimensions of your life where sin has damaged stuff in your life and it’s not perfect.  If you expect it to be perfect you’re going to be severely disappointed.  These six areas or dimensions of your life are talked about intensively in a book called Ecclesiastes.

1.  The first result, the first damage is natural disasters and deformities.

The world has natural disasters and deformities.  Not because that’s what God wants but because that’s what sin does in the world.  The environment has suffered from human sin and human poor choices and we’re on a broken planet.  It’s not perfect anymore.  We’re not living in Eden anymore.  As John Milton wrote in a very famous poem – paradise was lost.  We don’t live in paradise.  We live on a broken planet.  And as a result we have hurricanes, and typhoons, and whacky weather and earthquakes and droughts and floods.  The world was broken when sin damaged everything.  So now we have all these natural disasters happening all around us. 

The Bible says in Romans 8:20, “Creation was condemned to lose its purpose…”  Everything on this planet has lost its original purpose and that’s why we have to get it back.  It has to be restored. 

In the CEV version it says “Creation is confused.”  When you look and you see the birth of a pair of Siamese twins who are joined at the head, that’s confusing.  You go, “What was God thinking there?”  That wasn’t what God wanted.  That was never planned.  It’s a result that everything in the world was damaged including your DNA, your parents DNA, their parents DNA and everything else.  Have you figured this out, your body doesn’t work right?  If everybody’s body worked perfectly there would be no need for doctors. 

So we have defects and disabilities in animals and in people.  There are emotional disabilities, there are mental disabilities, there are physical disabilities.  Every one of us has defective parts of our minds, our bodies and our spirits, because sin has broken everything.  Creation is confused. 

Romans 8:22 says “All of creation groans with pain…”  That means the earth needs salvation, not just people.  The environment needs to be saved, not just people, because it’s all been damaged by poor decisions and rebellion against God.

2.  The second damage that is done is physical decay and death.

Physical decay and death.  There was no death on this planet until sin entered the world.  There was no decay on this planet until sin entered the world.  It was perfect.  It was paradise.  But now, because sin has entered the world, there is decay and death.

Ecclesiastes 8 says “No one can control the wind or stop his own death.”  We know that death is inevitable but we sure try to stop it.  We go to great lengths to postpone the decay too.  Oil of Olay – lotions and potions and make-up and Botox and surgeries.  What are we trying to do?  Delay our decay.  That’s what we’re trying to do.  Delay the decay.

You’re going to die one day.  I’m sorry.  I’ll tell you in a minute why that’s good news.  But in the meantime, I hate to tell you this, you are declining.  It’s called aging.  The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 4 “Our physical body is becoming older and weaker.”  Would any of you like to give a testimony on this verse?  A personal life experience?

The fact is, over time, parts of your body start to sag.  Many of us men, we get furniture problems – our chest drops into our drawers.  Many of you, your teeth shine like stars – they come out at night. 

Why is all that happening?  Because sin broke everything.  1 Corinthians 15:22 says this, “Everyone dies because all of us are related to Adam, the first man.”

That’s the bad news, but actually there’s some good news in this.  I’m glad that I’m not going to live forever in this world.  Because to live in this world forever, with rape and molestation and corruption and sin and sorrow and sadness and greed and power plays and people misusing each other and abusing each other, that would be hell!  And God doesn’t want you to live forever on this planet.  He wants you to live forever, but he wants you to live forever in a perfect place.  Not on a planet that’s been broken by sin.  He says I want you to live forever, I just don’t want you to live in that place forever.  I want you to live with me in heaven forever.

Here’s what the Bible says, here’s the good news.  1 Corinthians 15, “Our earthly bodies which die and decay are different from the bodies we’ll have in heaven.  They’ll ever die.  The bodies we have now embarrass us, [Some of us, we’re very embarrassed by the bodies we have now!] for they become sick and they die.  But they will be full of glory when we come back to life again.  Yes, they’re weak dying bodies now.  But when we live again they will be full of strength.”  That’s the good news.

There are natural disasters, deformities.   There’s physical decay and death. 

3.  The third damage is the area of your emotions. Sin causes emotional distress and disappointment. 

Emotional distress and disappointment.  Solomon writes a lot about this in Ecclesiastes.   He writes, “I tried everything, nothing worked.  It’s all meaningless.  It’s all one big disappointment.”

Ecclesiastes 1:14-15, “Everything under the sun is meaningless, [It’s a big disappointment, it’s unfulfilling.] like chasing the wind.  What is wrong cannot be righted.  What is missing cannot be recovered.”  What is he saying in this verse?  He’s saying that as a human being it seems pointless, because I cannot change the past and I cannot control the future.  What’s past is past.  All the stuff that I’ve done that’s wrong, I can’t undo it.  I can’t unscramble an egg.  All the stuff that was done wrong to me, I can’t undo that. 

And I can’t control the future.  You cannot control the things that are going to happen to you.  There’s a lot that’s going to happen in life that you have zero control over.  In fact most of the important things in your life you have no control over.  Like where you would be born, who you were born to, what your natural gifts were, when you were born to live, when you die.  You don’t know all that.  Most things are out of your control.  God’s saying you can control some things but you can’t control most of the things in your life.  The world cannot be fixed by human effort alone.

Can we go out and do good in the world?  Yes.  Should we?  Yes.  Should we relieve pain?  Of course.  What we do is relieve hurt, to heal people, to help them make it through.  But we’re not kidding ourselves.  We’re not going to bring the kingdom in on earth.  This is not heaven.  Heaven is there and we are here.  Our ultimate job is to get people into the perfect place, not try to make the world a perfect place.  Relieve pain, yes.  Make it better?  Yes.  Expect it to be perfect?  No.  Because he says it can’t be done.  It isn’t going to happen.  The damage is too deep for repair. 

Because that damage is so deep you get stressed out.  You get stressed out because things don’t work right in your life.  And you don’t have enough time to get everything done you need to do.  Things get in your way and all of a sudden you have delays and difficulties and dead ends and all these things.  And not only that, you have disappointments.

The fact is, human beings have the amazing ability to overestimate how happy we’re going to be with a person, with an event, or with a possession.  We always over estimate how happy it’s going to make us.  If I could just get that car I’m going to be happy the rest of my life.  Then you get it and you’re happy for a while but in a while you’re not happy any more.  Why?  Because it’s the same old car! 

The truth is, if we’re honest, we’re not just disappointed with events that happen in our lives, we’re not just disappointed with people in our lives, we’re not just disappointed with possessions in our lives.  But if the truth were known we’re disappointed with ourselves.  We think, I thought by this time in life I’d be better.  I didn’t think I’d still be struggling with these particular sins.  I thought by this point in life I’d be a lot more financially secure.  I thought by this point in life I’d have my career on track.  I thought by this point in life we’d have kids.  I thought by this point in life I’d be married… You’re actually disappointed in yourself.

Why?  Because this is not heaven.  Everything on the planet is broken.  Nothing works perfectly.

The fourth damage is in relationships.

4.  Sin results in relational distance and discord. 

Relational distance and discord.  In other words, you have conflict with people.  In a perfect environment where there is no sin you’re not going to have any conflict.  But in a marriage where you take one person who’s imperfect and another person who’s imperfect, two imperfect people cannot make a perfect relationship.  It is impossible.  One sinner marrying another sinner cannot create a perfect relationship.   One sinner befriending another sinner cannot create a perfect relationship. You’re going to have problems in any relationship. 

Solomon mentions this too.  In Ecclesiastes he says, “I saw all the people who were mistreated here on earth.  I saw their tears and that they had no one to comfort them.”  How did it get so messed up? 

Again, you go back to the first couple, to Adam and Eve.  Adam and Eve rebelled and when they said, we’re going to do the one thing that God said not to do, it not only disconnected them from God; it disconnected them from each other.  It is interesting to me that when Adam and Eve got disconnected from God by blowing it and sinning, what’s the first thing they did?  They made clothes.  They sewed fig leaves together.  Notice this verse, Genesis 3 “… They suddenly felt ashamed of their nakedness. So they strung fig leaves together to cover themselves up.”  Out of whack with God, out of whack with other people.  Genesis 3:10 later God said, What are you doing?  You’re wearing clothes.  Adam said, “I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” 

How is it being disconnected from God disconnects me from you and causes me to want to cover up?  How is it that when I’m out of whack with God all of a sudden I’m out of whack with you and I want to pretend and cover up my faults?  How is it that when I’m out of whack with God I am ashamed of my sexuality?  How is it that when I’m out of whack with God I don’t really want you to see the real me?  I don’t want to be exposed and I don’t want to be vulnerable.  Because if I’m not right with God, then I cannot be right with you.  So we cover up and we sew fig leaves.

Sin always makes you defensive.  Sin always makes you distant.  And sin always makes you demanding in a relationship. 

5.  Sin results in Financial and vocational difficulties.

Sin has damaged this area too.  It’s damaged the area of your finances and the area of your career.  Sin has done that.  How do economies get broken?  It’s real simple.  By ignoring the biblical principles of finance that God has said in his Word.  God has given us the principles for money management in the Bible.  They’ve very clear.  The principle of accounting – keep good records.  The principle of spending – budget your spending.  The principle of saving, the principle of giving and tithing.  The principle of investing, the principle of being satisfied with what you have.  I could go on and on.  There are many principles of finance in Scripture.

Here’s what Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, “Here is a terrible thing I’ve seen in the world:  people save up their money for a time when they may need it, and then they lose it all in some bad deal and end up with nothing left to pass on to their children.”  That’s because the world is broken financially too.

Then in life work is not meaningful, it’s not purposeful, it’s not satisfying because it’s broken.  Ecclesiastes says, “I hated life, because the work I did under the sun was meaningless to me…  [It just felt I was punching my time card.  It was meaningless to me.]  So I turned in despair from hard work.  It was not the answer to my search for satisfaction in this life.”  He said, I thought if I just had a really good career and succeed in my career then I’m really going to be satisfied.  Then he goes, that doesn’t satisfy me.  It’s broken too.

6.  Sin results in Spiritual discontent and darkness.

There are not only emotional, relational, financial, vocational, physical consequences to ignoring what God says.  But there are spiritual consequences.  There is discontent and darkness.

Job says it like this in Job 6, “I’m like a caravan, lost in the desert searching for water.”  I haven’t the slightest idea where I’m headed, where I’m going.  I’m in the middle of a dry desert.  I don’t know which way I’m going and I’m thirsty.  And you start looking for all kinds of things to quench that thirst.  Looking for God in all the wrong places.  What does that do?  It leads to more darkness, and more discontent, and more discouragement.

The next verse says this “They have refused for so long to deal with God  that they’ve lost touch not only with God, but with reality itself.” 

And friends if you don’t believe that, turn on the television.  A lot of television has lost total touch with reality.  They’re not only out of touch with God; they don’t even know what life’s all about.  They haven’t the foggiest idea of what life’s all about.  They’re spinning around in circles, making little tiny things enormous issues.  They’re majoring on the minors.  They don’t know what life is all about.  They are out of touch and they are in the dark.

And friends, that is not a pretty picture, what I just shared with you.  That’s why you need a savior.  Because there’s no way you can undo all this damage in the world, in your family, or in your own personal life by yourself.  You need a savior.  If you didn’t need a savior for all of these things, believe me, God wouldn’t have wasted the time sending Jesus as your Savior.  He sent him to save you and begin the restoration process in these six areas.

We’re in the dark he says.  We’re totally in the dark.  So what do I do?  There are two things you need to do:

·      I must accept Jesus as my Savior. 

That’s the starting point.  In the weeks ahead we’re going to talk in detail about the answers to how to get along in a broken world.  But the first thing I’ve got to do is I’ve got to accept Jesus as my Savior, because he’s the only one who can help me undo some of the damage on this side of heaven.

John 16:33 Jesus says this “In this world you will [circle “will.”  Not might, not it could happen.  You will, you can count on it.  You will …] have trouble.  But take heart! I have overcome the world.” 

In the next few weeks I’m going to teach you how Jesus helps you overcome the world in all of these areas that have been damaged in your life.  But first, you’ve got to accept Jesus as your Savior.

·      The second thing I have to do is this, I must follow his light.

I must follow his light!  Because a lot of times I’m in the total dark about what I should do with the damage that’s been done in my life.

The last verse, John 8:12, “Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world.  If you follow me, you won’t be stumbling through the darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.’”  We will get into this more in future messages, but note here that Jesus says that to avoid stumbling through the darkness you have to follow him.  It is not enough to be a fan of Jesus.  It is not enough to just believe that Jesus is the savior of the world and the Son of God.  You have to follow him.  You have to let him lead you through life.

Prayer:

      Father, we look at the world and we are disappointed so much of the time.  We’re disappointed in the events of life.  We’re disappointed that things don’t go the way we want them to.  We’re disappointed with other people.  And we’re disappointed with ourselves.  Help us to realize that this is not your plan; this is not your goal, but that you want to restore that which was broken. 

Now you pray.  In your heart say, dear God, I admit that I have rebelled against you.  I’ve done things that I wanted to do instead of what you wanted me to do.  I’ve gone my way.  I’ve gone days without even talking to you.  I’ve been disconnected from you so I’m disconnected from other people.  I have sinned and transgressed and I’ve hurt other people.  Nothing works perfectly in my life.  I ask you to work on these areas in my life.  Jesus Christ, I affirm you once again as my Savior.  Just say that: Jesus, I affirm you once again as my Savior.  If you’ve never asked him to be your Savior say, Jesus Christ, I ask you to become my Savior today.  I pray this in your name.  Amen.