This morning we start a new series on We've got Questions. And while I was working as an educator, there was every once in a while that there would be a question that I was that was asked, that I would say or think to myself, something like this. Boy, that's a really question I wouldn't ask. But I came to realize if somebody's asking the question that I wouldn't ask, then somebody else is asking it as well. Rarely did questions only stick with individuals.
If one person was asking, then multiple people were asking, Maybe we asked the question, well, why do we ask questions? And while there might be some of those questions that I wouldn't ask yet I know are being asked by others, there's also a series of questions. The fact that we ask them shows that we are curious. Then we've got things we want to know. Of course there are gotcha questions.
There are questions that people ask not to engage in conversation but to shut them down. Of course that happens. But through the Christian faith, we have seen the value of question asking in faith development.
Tradition after tradition, all within the Christian faith develop catechisms that are formed on question and answer. One of the reasons it's so valuable to develop questions is because sometimes there are questions that I haven't even thought to ask. In the midst of catechism, questions are given because sometimes there are questions of faith that people might not even think to ask unless they are given to them. They're not just after the answer. They need to be told, what are the good questions as well.
The fact is, question asking has been around from the very beginning in the story of the Jewish people. Moses, pouring out his heart to the Jewish people just before he knows his own life will come to its end, gives them the book of Deuteronomy. And in it, he's got this phrase here. In the future, when your son, we could add daughter, when your children ask you what's the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws? The Lord has commanded you, and he goes on to give an answer.
But the fact is he just presumes that questions will be part of their faith. Questions will be part of how they raise their children, of how they form their community. If we don't allow for questions, then we shrivel up. Two things. We cap two things.
Number one, we can cap the richness of a person's faith, the depth of their faith. If some things are just off limits, then you've put limits on how deep a person's faith can go. If some questions are off limits, You've also put a box around how deep or how meaningful their community can be as well. Questions are necessary for community and for faith. They're not against faith.
They are necessary for it. They're not a rejection of community. They're necessary for it. The questions that we've developed for this coming. This coming series, Pastor Rob did a great job of developing as he invited and acquired questions from our students.
We've got some amazing students who ask some really great questions. I saw the stacks of note cards on his desk and in the youth ministry suite, Pastor Rob having somewhere around 60, 65 questions. Bring them in and start putting them in stacks. Which questions are kind of like the others, and then coding them so that we could put them into a series of manageable questions. If our students are asking them.
I realize a couple of things. Number one, if our students are asking them, then we better have some answers for them. If we want them to grow in community, if we want them to grow in depth of community in our church, then we need to entertain and bring in their questions. If we want them to grow in their faith, we need to give thoughtful answers to them. Number two, I realize it's not just students who are asking them.
If students are asking them, then many of us are as well. And these are not questions that I would not ask. These are questions that I think percolate and run throughout our whole church.
So here's the first one. If God is perfect, then why isn't the world? If the Creator is perfect, then why isn't the Creator's creature perfect? If God is perfect, then why isn't the world? And let me give a couple of answers and then kind of spin it back to something of a challenge for us.
The first answer is this. God cannot make a perfect world. And sometimes we're like, what do you mean God cannot make a perfect world? God can do whatever God wants to do. Now, that is true.
God can do whatever God wants wants to do. And yet God cannot do some things. Sometimes we've got nonsense that we will just bring to God. Like questions like, can God make a stone so big that God could not lift it? Well, it's just a bit of a nonsense question.
It's more of a conundrum of words rather than an actual question of God. This one, I think, is a question of God. If God is perfect, then why isn't the world? And yet I want to start by saying God cannot make a perfect world. And because God alone is perfect in perfection, this gets into this subject of God's attributes or qualities.
Well, what are attributes? Attributes of God are the qualities of God. And God's qualities are perfect or complete. You might know somebody who's got a number of qualities. They are generous and they are kind and they are honest.
But you know what? They are just cowardly as all get out. A number of good qualities and yet they're missing some. Not so with God. God's not missing any qualities, any attributes that we would describe as good.
God has got them. God has got every good quality. And beyond that, God's qualities cannot be improved upon. God does not grow as we grow. God does not improve.
God does not get stronger. God does not get better. God is perfect. His qualities cannot be improved upon. You might know somebody who is generous and maybe there's sometimes you like to be a little bit more generous.
You might know somebody who is courageous and yet there might be some things that would make their knees shake. You might know somebody who is intelligent and yet there's things they don't know about. In other words, they've got characteristics or qualities that could improve. Not so with God. God's qualities are complete and God's qualities are perfect.
His perfection is perfect. And some of these qualities God can indeed share with us. We could name things of God. God is kind. God is generous.
God is intelligent and rational. And God can share many of these things with us. He can make us to be kind beings. He can make us to be rational beings. He can make us to be way beings that reflect him.
And yet there are some things that God or God cannot share with us. There are some communicable attributes and there are some incommunicable attributes. In other words, God could not make an eternal being. God could not make a being that like him is from everlasting. The fact that it is made means that it is different from God in that way.
Some attributes God can share and God some attributes of God God cannot share. God cannot share his perfect perfection with us. Now that's not the most helpful answer, but it does start to frame the answer that we'll start to get to. Because the truth is also that God chose not to make a perfect world. Because God chose to make a world in love and for love.
And love is one of those things that cannot be forced. We look around the world and we see a world that God chose to create. Scripture calls a good world. Indeed, when God saw the whole of it, he said, it's very good. It bears all the needed characteristics of a world that will create us to be Whom God wants us to be.
That gives the possibility for us to grow into the kinds of beings that God intends. So we look around our world and we see things like justice and freedom, order, beauty, and at its pinnacle, love. This is the world that God chose to make, susceptible as it is to imperfection or to moral evil. If we are to be beings capable of love, then there's also the opportunity for us to be beings capable of wrong, of withholding love. Love requires there to be freedom.
Love cannot be coerced, can't be forced to. It can't be confused. This is why St. Augustine said that love and knowledge go together. We cannot love that which we do not truly know. And love cannot be mechanical.
Love is not something that machines are capable of. It requires freedom, it requires knowledge, it requires order. A way that we may love truly, yet with the choice to withhold our love as well. So with these two kind of framework answers in place, that God simply cannot make a world that is perfect as God is perfect. And God chose to make a world where there is suffering possible.
Maybe beneath that question is one that's a little more personal. Why doesn't God just make the world better? Why doesn't God just make it a little bit better? Why? Why doesn't God just do something that would ameliorate it, make it a bit better, relieve some of the suffering and violence in it?
Now let me start with a theoretical answer.
If God intervened at every moment that we asked him to, at some point the world would cease to be a place where beings of love could be formed. It would no longer be a world conducive to forming beings in his image and likeness. If God did everything for us, we would not be beings capable of growing in love.
At some point, when my children ask for my help, I have to say no in order for them to become the beings I want them to be. My 5 year old gets this so well. Not really.
Sometimes you wonder where the line is drawn, dad. Would it really break the fabric of our home if you were to put those dishes in the dishwasher on my behalf? Dad? Would it really disrupt the order of the whole universe? Would I not become the person you want me to be if you were to pick up that towel from my floor?
And I don't know where that line is drawn, but I do know that at some point, if I just do and do and do for them, they will not grow in capacity to do for themselves. Likewise, they will not grow in the ability to do then for others, at some point If God is to intervene at every moment that we ask, if God is to make the world better in every moment that we ask him to, it stops being a place conducive of forming us, allowing us to be beings marked with love.
I don't know where the line is always in my home, let alone with the world. So while the theoretical answer is true, it also takes on that existential weight that we bring to God. God, would it really break the order of the universe if that person was healed? God, would it really disrupt the order of things if that debt was forgiven? God, would it really completely disrupt and upend your intentions for your human race that you created in love and for love, would it really disrupt the.
The whole thing if you just set that relationship right without their cooperation?
There are personal ways that we ask for God, God, would you just make my world better? And one of the reasons it's so difficult to address a question like this, if God is perfect, then why isn't the world? And you give an answer like, God creates a world where suffering is possible because. Because God intends it to be a world marked with love, where people can grow in love, is because my life has not been marked with suffering that some of yours has been. And some of the prayers that you have prayed, God, why wouldn't you make this part of the world better?
God, couldn't you make that person better? Some of the suffering that you have gone through is suffering that I have not and do not know how I would respond if I did. That question of if God is perfect, then why isn't the world, whether fast or slow, eventually makes its way into our hearts? God, why didn't you make them better? God, couldn't you have done that differently without disrupting the order of things in this world?
Yet, while my suffering might be different from yours, we've all brought that question to God. And you know what I found that God sometimes does with that question. Sometimes in God's loving and gracious and patient way, he just turns it back to me, why aren't you making the world better? Why aren't you doing something about suffering that others are going through? You've got resources, time and abilities and those things, why aren't you doing something about it?
When I started to put those questions together, the question that we can bring to God, why aren't you making the world better? And then maybe the question that God brings to us, why aren't you? My mind goes to Jesus teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, specifically this teaching on love. Jesus says this you have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
Then Jesus goes on to describe what God's action towards those who love him and those who don't looks like. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. God's disposition is the same. God's providential care is the same. God shines the sun and sends the rain on the good and evil alike.
God is faithful to himself and as a result, faithful to all his creation. If you, says Jesus, if you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors like that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that.
Be perfect, therefore, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Notice that Jesus doesn't say if you get enemies, but just presumes that that will be part of the world. The brokenness, the fallenness, the disruption in the world will result in enmity. It will result in people being at odds with one another. Whenever I was in college, I saw an opportunity to make somebody's life a little bit more difficult.
So I took it. On a weekly basis, we would have to go through room checks. And it was a great series of accountability because it paired, as you might be with somebody else. You didn't want the person who was less neat and tidy to be the one whose practices and habits ruled the room. So on a weekly basis we would have room checks to make sure for at least that series of time the room was neat and tidy.
Up the hall from me was a friend of mine named John. And John actually had a room to himself, and his room was always in pretty good condition. But one day, whenever room checks were coming through, it just didn't meet the standard and that our resident director thought needed to be met. So he comes to John's room, he finds it just slightly out of order, and he gives him a series of things to do. You know, do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, then come and find me and I'll recheck it.
So indeed, John goes to get to work, and he does the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. He puts it back in order. Everything is ready for the resident director's inspection. And then naturally, because the resident director had other things to do, John had to go and find the resident director wherever he was. And that's when I saw My opportunity to make John's life just a little bit more difficult.
So I went in and disrupted his bed and disrupted his shelves and disrupted a little bit of his clothing that was on hangers and drawers and just made sure to leave it in the condition that John had not left it in. Resident director comes along, finds the room in disarray as it is. John, what are you doing? I told you that this is worse than it was before. I don't know what happened.
It was clean, it was neat, it was tidy. Whenever I left it, Resident director's like, well, get it cleaned up and then come and find me again. So John comes out of his room frustrated. He's like, who? Who would do that?
I was like, I know, man. That's not cool. You don't mess with another man's room right before room inspections.
I think it was Jason that did it.
So naturally, John is kind of frustrated with Jason. Two, three days pass by, and Jason is studious at work in one of our lounges doing work, focused head over book. John sees his opportunity, goes to his room, grabs some kind of powder, brings it down, sneaks up on Jason and just douses it from behind with the powder on his head. It erupts into some kind of wrestling match. There's, like, white powder flying all over the place, wrestling back and forth, shoving one another through the lounge.
And at no point did either one of them ask, why are we doing this? Nobody asked, why did you mess up my room? And nobody asked, why did you douse my head with baby powder? And the rest of us just kind of let it happen.
Now, that wasn't the most serious event, but there are some things in life that reflect that. We don't know why we're at odds. We don't know why we've got enemies in the world, but have them we do. At one point, maybe we knew what had gone wrong. At one point, maybe we knew what the problem was, what the disruption was, what the injury or harm was.
Sometime we knew what it was, but now we've just forgotten. And we don't bother to ask, why are we at odds?
Sometimes, whenever we just settle for enmity, frustration, bitterness, unforgiveness, violence, we don't take Jesus at his word that we can be perfect. In what sense? Not in the sense of God's perfect perfections, but in the sense of God's heart being the same regardless of who he encounters. God was at odds with the world and the world, says Paul. Enmity with God in our own minds.
And God Overcame it in Christ. God help us to take Jesus at his word, that we too can be perfect. Not in God's perfect perfections, but having a heart of love towards friend and enemy alike. And sometimes it does take us asking the question, why am I at odds with this person? Why is there conflict?
And sometimes that's a person you can ask directly, like, listen, there's something just between us. Do we even know why? And sometimes it's not a safe person, Sometimes it's not somebody that you can ask that directly of. You need some kind of support sometimes professional, to go and say, like, this conflict exists. I don't even know why.
I don't know what to do with it. My encouragement to us in this, in our desire for the world to be better, is to take Jesus at His word that we can be made better.
God created a world where enmity is possible, where conflict is possible. How do I know? Because enmity and conflict is in the world. Yet the wider context of that is so that we can be beings who are marked with God's perfect love. Indeed, so that we can be beings who can express God's perfect love.
God created a world with the conditions for it to become the world that God desires. Which is what? A world of free creatures who may be simply and completely love.
That we may be perfect with a heart filled with love, regardless of who the other is. Just as God is perfect, of course, that's not the world we live in. We have acted against all aspects of the created world. Where there was justice, we have sown injustice. Where there was order, we have sown and developed chaos.
Where there was beauty, we have skewed it and twisted it. Where there was love, we have hated. Or as Scripture says, we have rebelled. We have acted against not just the creation, we have acted against the Creator. That's why I love Jesus teaching in Matthew 5, keeping in mind that the One teaching us is not just one like us, although Christ is, but is God, who took on flesh to teach us, the Son, who is perfect like the Father, sharing all attributes of the Father because they are of the same essence with the Holy Spirit.
The One who is perfect like the Father, took on our limitations, giving up the rights of divinity, giving up his omnipotence, his omniscience, his omnipresence, to take on our limitations.
The Son of God takes on flesh to suffer like us. And in some ways he does spare us from suffering. In some ways God does. And we will often never even know the suffering that God spares us from. And Yet God does not spare us from all suffering.
Instead, in taking on flesh in the Son, God allows it for our sufferings to be like his, just as the sufferings of the Son are what achieved God's oneness with us. What a miracle it is when God takes the sufferings that we have gone through, the enmity that we have suffered, that which has not been what we've desired. The times when we have put up our hands and said, God, why didn't you make that better? How miraculous it is when God takes our sufferings and uses them to minister to another, to bring healing to another, to make us one with another. How amazing it is that God can take our sufferings and use those very things to expand our heart, to use those things that the enemy meant to for wrong, to use them for that which God intends, which is to make our hearts perfect in love.
How can we be made like the Father, perfect in love as he is perfect in love? By being made like Jesus. The Son of God takes on flesh in Jesus of Nazareth so that we may become like Jesus and so reflect God in the world. We can be made perfect like the Father in His indiscriminate love, loving friend and enemy alike, loving the righteous and the unrighteous alike. Because we can be made like Jesus.
Sometimes we don't take Jesus at His word. We just say like it's always going to be, we're never going to do that. We can't live up to that. God couldn't do that in me. We put that into the category of God could not make me perfect in that way.
And yet that's what Christ says. Our hearts can be perfected in love. And Peter says it like this. His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these his glory and goodness, he has given us a very great and precious promise so that through them we may I love this.
Participate in the divine nature. Whenever your heart is filled with love for another and that love is expressed in to the other, it's participating in the very life of God. When you truly love another, you are experiencing God's life and love towards them. That's participating in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. So Peter says, for this very reason, because we can participate in the divine nature, that of love.
Make every effort to add to your faith, goodness to goodness, knowledge to knowledge, self control to self control, perseverance to perseverance, godliness to Godliness, mutual affection. If we take God's question to us, why aren't you making the world better? Maybe this gives us a bit of a roadmap. If I've got faith in God, well, what does it mean to add goodness? If I've got goodness that I'm well disposed to others, what does it mean to add knowledge so that the goodness that God has placed in me can be lived out skillfully?
To knowledge, can I add self control so that I keep from doing that which I don't want to do, as Paul says, and do that which I do want to do? To self control, can I add perseverance so that I'm not just in self control for periods of time, but over and over and over and over again so that I'm consistent, just like God is consistent. That kind of incremental pathway, that step by step, that kind of point of growth after point of growth, do you see what Peter leads it to? The finality of it is love. See, while we might look to God and see all kinds of different characteristics or all kinds of different attributes, and indeed from our perspective, that's what it looks like in God.
They are all fused together as love. So Scripture teaches, God is love. No wonder God intends for us to be beings who are perfect in love, not in our own capacity, not in our own abilities, but completely and utterly and always dependent on God, the Son taking on flesh, the Spirit sanctifying us. We require God to be the beings he intends us to be. And yet, while we might look at Peter's kind of incremental step by step or list after list, God at one point promises to perfect this world.
He's committed to perfecting the world in us, to sanctify us, to set us aside, to empower us, to transform us, to change us. God indeed, is that so that we may look back in our lives and realize, I'm not the same person I was. And thanks be to God, well, you're all happy. I'm not the same person I was a little while ago either. God can do that for you.
Such that those who are near to you are thankful to God that you're not the same person. God can bring that transformation to you. And yet, even if we were all completely set aside for God, we could not bring the kingdom of God on our own. We could not bring the kingdom of God moment by moment or step by step with just making things a little bit better. At some point we require the in breaking work of God to perfect this world beyond our cooperation and against all our rebellion, we need God to perfect the world.
And God says, indeed, I will do that. We pray thy kingdom come.
We kind of live in the midst of that anticipation. C.S. lewis describes that kind of moment of anticipation that we're in like this. He says, a new nature is being not merely made, but made out of an old one. We live amid all the anomalies, inconveniences, hopes and excitements of a house that's being rebuilt.
Something is being pulled down and something going up in its place. If you take the time to look back and see, how are you different? How is your life different? How is your spiritual life different than how it was before? And you see God's transforming work in you.
You're the evidence of what God is doing in this whole world. You're the evidence that God is perfecting the world and one day will do so at Christ's return. You're the evidence of it. We can't control it. We can't do it in our own power.
We can't do this in our own strength. But one day, the world as God intended it to be, will indeed be the way it is. God will perfect the world in love.
When Moses was pouring out his heart to the Jewish people, and he said, when your son asks you, what's the meaning of these things, the answer that they were to give was their story. We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and on it goes.
God can give direction and answer. We can reflect upon that question. If God is perfect, then why isn't the world? We can reflect on it theologically, that God alone is perfect in his perfections. We can reflect upon it theologically, and God has set up a world where we can be formed as beings in love.
We can hold on to the promise that God is committed to perfecting this world. And yet the best answer that we can give to this is, just as the Jewish people were given a story, we're given a meal that points to the suffering love of God that God indeed uses to fill us up, to sanctify us, to set us aside by the Holy Spirit.
In the end, God's best answer to why is there suffering in this world? Is to say, I've suffered right along with you, in fact, in a way that we could never even fathom. So this morning, as we take communion, allow that to be the clearest answer that God has. I've suffered with you and for you and on your behalf. In just a few moments, we're going to celebrate communion.
And before we do so, I'm going to pray a couple of prayers. The Apostle Paul taught us not to receive communion in an unworthy fashion, which essentially means don't take communion. Hypocritically, if you're not in relationship with God, don't take communion. And if you're harboring lack of fellowship with one another in the church, then don't take communion. So I'm going to pray two prayers.
First, I'm going to pray that if there's anything between God and us, that God would make that clear to us, that God would make it clear and evident to you. And if nothing comes to mind and your heart is open to hear from God by faith, then thanks be to God that you are living in right relationship with Him. I'm also going to pray for God to make real and clear to us that there's something between us and a brother and sister in the faith. And if there's something that comes to mind that God will make that real and clear. And if we say God, it's my intention for that to be made right.
In as much as it is within my power, I intend for that to be made right. Then receive communion, asking God to nourish you, to build you up, to give you the strength to make things right as it is within your power. And if nothing comes to mind, thanks be to God that you are living in right relationship with with one another in faith. Would you pray with me?
Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for the gift of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
And in accordance with your word, we ask that you would speak with us even now so that we may receive communion in a way that is worthy of your grace and mercy. Heavenly Father, if there's anything between you and me and you and anyone in this room, our hearts are open. We ask that you would make that clear to us even now.
Father, if there's anything that you have placed your finger upon in our lives, we turn from it. Friends, if the Lord put something your heart that you know is wrong, we confess it and turn from it. And by faith we make resolute commitment to follow after God.
And if nothing came to mind, Father, we give youe thanks that we may be in faithful relationship with youh because of the work of youf Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we now open our hearts and by faith we are attending to youo Holy Spirit. If there's anything between us and a brother and sister in the faith, would you make that clear to us?
Father, if you have Placed your finger upon something in our lives, something that is harbored between us and another. Would you give us the strength and wisdom to know how we may make that right because of you at work in us?
And if nothing comes to mind, thank you, Father, that you are a God who not only restores our relationship with you, but our relationships with one another as well. Thank you, God, for the unity that you give us. And now we ask that you would make this bread and cup to be for us the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we may feast on him by faith, your Holy Spirit, nourishing our spiritual lives by faith in him. In the name of Christ, O Lord, we pray. Amen.
I invite you to take the cup peeling back the top layer with the bread. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it. He said, this is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
And in the same way, after supper, Jesus took the cup and he said, this is the cup of the new covenant given by the shedding of my blood for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in remembrance of me.
Heavenly Father, we now ask that you would seal in the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ by the power of your Holy Spirit, that we may feast and be nourished by Christ and Christ alone, saying now the prayer that he taught us, saying, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.