A Good God in a Broken World

I wonder if you could come with me and use your imagination.

Come with me to Fremantle Beach, WA, on the coast there, next to the city of Perth.

And what's unique about this place to go to is the sun is setting.

It's just sunset and it's setting over the water.

And you're marvelling at the truth that people have said, in Perth, the sun's different.

It feels different.

There's something different about it.

And you're thinking, yeah, it's true.

It feels different, looks different.

It's majestic.

It's wonderful.

And you're wandering along the beach and you bump your toe into something and you pick it up and it's a watch.

It's an expensive watch.

And you immediately think, oh, I feel for the person who has lost this watch.

It's one of those special watches that's analog, that has a see-through portion where you can see the mechanisms working.

This watch has been intricately designed and meticulously crafted.

And you've been thinking about the meaning of life while you've been wandering on the beach.

And as you watch the fading sunlight in this beautiful and incredible vista engulf you, you can't help but wonder, which one has been intricately designed and meticulously crafted?

The watch in your hand or the sunset you're experiencing or both?

Welcome to our new course, Let Me Tell You About Jesus.

We hope to spend the next seven weeks exploring the meaning of life and the reality that Jesus Christ gives meaning to life.

We're going to suggest that both the watch and the sunset have been made by a creator.

And that changes everything, that there is a creator who made not only the natural order we look around us, but he has made us and wants a relationship with us.

Today, we begin our first talk and it's entitled, A Good God and a Broken World.

I hope you do have one of the books that we've put together.

And make sure you go to the website to find some other information, either the digital version or look up on Spotify or Apple Music.

Look up Let Me Tell You About Jesus and you'll find it's available and you can listen to the course in that way.

Each Sunday we're going to, Lord, we'll uncover about three sessions from the book.

And so today we start with the text Psalm 145.

Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise.

His greatness no one can fathom.

One generation commends your works to another.

They tell of your mighty acts.

They speak of the glorious splendour of your majesty.

And I will meditate on your wonderful works.

They tell of the power of your awesome works.

And I will proclaim your great deeds.

They celebrate your abundant goodness.

And joyfully sing of your righteousness.

The Lord is gracious and compassionate.

Slow to anger and rich in love.

The Lord is good to all.

He has compassion on all he has made.

The Bible makes a bold claim.

It claims that there is a living God, an eternal good being, a God who created everything.

The scripture teaches that he thought it up, designed it, then created the raw materials to build it.

And then over a short period or a long period, we don't know for sure, he put it all together.

And he hasn't just left it, this creation, alone.

He sustains it and watches over it.

He basically steers creation to a destination, and that creates history when you look back, and it creates the future when you look forward.

But this God is taking the planet and human civilization somewhere.

How does that sit with you?

That there is a God, and the Bible is worth listening to and believing.

Well, if you're seeking the truth about the meaning of life today, or you're going to be speaking to someone who is a seeker, it's great to actually acknowledge there are big questions, aren't there, that we have.

And as Christians, we want to acknowledge that they become roadblocks.

They're significant obstacles, the big questions.

And so on page 11 of the book, in the first supplementary material section, we explore the question, what is God?

Or who is God?

Because we don't want to take for granted that the person we're sharing the gospel with, the gospel just means good news.

We don't want to take too many things for granted, so we start with a supplementary section that talks about some explanations for, is there a God?

I have found over the years, it's not meant to be cheeky, but a good question to ask someone, one on one, who is saying, I don't believe in God.

I often ask the question with respect, could you tell me about the God you don't believe in?

And I'll tell you if I don't believe in that God either.

Because sometimes people have a notion they've created about the type of God the Christians talk about.

That passage I just read out is a beautiful description of the Christian God.

Is that the God you don't believe in?

If you look in the supplementary material, we talk about two classic arguments for the existence of God.

And this is part of our training as a bunch of Christians.

And it's also a way of explaining to those who are seekers, why it's logical to believe that there could be a God.

Number one, the design argument.

You find a watch on the beach, and not that many of us would think immediately that has been produced by random chance.

It's just a typical, normal explanation that you would consider.

I think someone's probably designed that.

And that is the design argument.

You look at all that is around us, and the way it has been intricately fashioned, and put together, as scientists would say, in a Goldilocks fashion, that if a few things were out in the way the world fits into the universe, you couldn't have life on planet Earth.

The design argument is a powerful argument.

And then there's the first cause argument.

If you have a line of dominoes, a logical person would say, where did the first domino fall?

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

So you go back, and logically, when you think about ontology, the beginning of all things, it makes sense to think something was there at the start.

And if there was a first cause that was uncaused, so what we might call an uncaused first cause, that is either eternal matter, non-personal matter, that's just there forever.

It's hard to get your head around that.

Or you have an eternal, relational, personal being that we know from the Bible as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, what we call a triune God.

He always was august and satisfied in his loving relationship that he's always been in.

And out of that, his own perfect relational status he created.

That's the story of the Bible.

So you have the design argument and the first cause argument.

That can be helpful for someone who is wondering, is there a God?

And then page 13, the book explains why listening to the Bible makes sense.

In our Bible study, our Life Hub, we were going through this material and someone said, why would I believe the Bible?

That was sort of playing devil's advocate.

Why would, you need to have something in the book that explains why should we believe the Bible?

And so we thought, well, let's do that.

So we put in a section that starts on page 13.

The Bible isn't just one book.

I've spoken to so many people over the years, certainly a lot in scripture, high school scripture, where people just say, how do you know the Bible wasn't written a few years ago just by some nutter?

Well, we actually do know.

If that is your question, we do know the Bible was not written by one person.

In fact, it was written by over 40 authors.

It's a collection of 66 books written over about 1500 years from different backgrounds, languages and places.

Yet, if you read it, it's astonishing how there is a uniform story that goes through the whole Bible.

It tells one story about a good God, a broken world and the hope of restoration through Jesus.

So in the book we explain, and I'm just going to run through it very quickly here, what are some of the aspects that would help us think that believing the Bible as an authentic, verifiable source of truth is something to actually believe?

Well, firstly, it's historically grounded.

Its stories are set in real places.

There are real people backed by archaeology, history, manuscripts, and in fact, it's backed like no other religion.

You may not know this, but there are religions in the world that if you go back to the source and the things that the leader said, they're actually not archaeologically provable.

They're making it up.

It wasn't written in secret or by a single individual.

Often, religions start by someone saying, I had an angelic visitation and I was just given this.

That's not the history of the Bible.

It's a public history.

Third, it claims to be God's word.

That's a bold claim.

Within the scriptures themselves, they claim to be the expression of truth, the highest expression that comes from God himself.

Second, Timothy in the New Testament says, the scriptures are God-breathed.

So, if it's even possibly true, the Bible is worth giving a good look at.

It speaks with unmatched moral and spiritual clarity.

And I would put it to you, do some research on the impact of the teaching of the New Testament on the last 2,000 years of human history.

And you will find from its radical vision of justice and mercy to its call to love even enemies, the Bible has shaped our world like no other book.

Modern ideas like human rights, dignity, equality and compassion genuinely are all traced back to biblical roots.

It points consistently to the Messiah who is Jesus.

And Jesus himself treats the Old Testament as authoritative.

So a big question is, if Jesus did rise from the dead himself, which is an incredible claim that history has not disproved, Jesus actually says, this book, it's worth reading and listening to and coming under.

So that's a powerful truth.

And finally, the Bible has transforming power.

Millions of people across time and culture testify that the Bible has changed their lives.

And it's not just because they read it like a textbook, it's because they have encountered the living God explained about through its pages.

It's often said, the Bible reads us as much as we read it, and it's the truth.

Now this is all in preparation for our first statement, and that's this.

There is a good God revealed through the good world we live in, and experience, and this goodness, good God, beautiful world, is held in tension with a whole lot of not so good stuff that we find in this world.

We have a good God and a broken world.

That would be a great time in a smaller group to stop and have feedback, because this discussion of the Gospel is best set in an environment of conversation, isn't it?

And so, as we work through it, it's always with the thought that you would take the Gospel, or maybe a little book like that one that we've made, and go and talk it through with the person.

We live in a world that is astonishingly beautiful, and at the same time, so full of evil and suffering, that it's hard to even comprehend it.

And when we do, we run away from that comprehension.

It's just too much.

Well, the Bible says that that mystery of suffering is ultimately caused by sin, which is a religious sounding word, but it's a very important word for us to understand as we move towards an understanding of the mystery of evil and suffering.

Lord willing, we're going to have testimonies most weeks because Christianity is lived out in community and it's so good to hear people's authentic and vulnerable stories.

And so, would you give Cedric a warm hand as he's going to come and tell, tell us some, some of his story.

I grew up in a family where God was never mentioned.

My parents divorced when I was nine years old and my father sexually abused me when I was twelve.

I never told anyone about this because I was too ashamed.

But I bear the scars to this day.

After mum got divorced, she married a guy who beat her up when he had had too much to drink.

My brother Joe and I would cop it sometimes too.

He resented our presence in her, in the home.

And so he gave mum an ultimatum.

Either we had to go or he would leave her.

As a result, she arranged for us to go and stay in the YMCA in Durban.

I had just started high school and my mum's rejection cut deep.

A few months after we moved into the YMCA, I dropped out of high school and started living on the streets of Durban and Johannesburg.

I would steal clothes from washing lines and then sell them to get money to buy food.

I slept rough, occasionally sneaking into a hotel bathroom when it was cold.

I lived the life of a hobo for almost five years as a teenager.

My life was a misery.

I tried to overdose on one occasion but survived.

I spiraled downwards to the point where I'd lost all self-respect.

Then two things happened which ultimately led to my redemption.

Firstly, I stole a jacket from a restaurant and took it to the market area of Durban to try and sell it.

And amazingly, the first person I offered that jacket to was the owner of the jacket.

And his name was on the inside pocket.

He marched me to the police station where I was charged and convicted of theft and now alarmingly, I had a criminal conviction.

Then secondly, after being beaten up by a guy who had offered me a place to stay, I was overcome by a sense of a supernatural presence.

As I stood up battered and bruised, I felt the overwhelming experience and assurance that I was not meant to live a life like this.

And within three weeks, I was offered a job as a trainee furniture salesman.

That was nearly 60 years ago, and I've never been destitute since.

Two years later, I was drawn to a YFC crusade where I discovered who that supernatural presence had been, Jesus Christ.

As Dave Burnham preached, I realized that we are all born with a factory fault, sin.

I recognized that God loved me despite everything that I had done, and that he wanted a close relationship with me.

I was overjoyed, and so I responded to an altar call.

And this was the start of my topsy-turvy journey as a Christian.

Shortly afterwards, I met and married Sue, and my daughter Candice was born.

Sadly, my involvement with our church in Durban was cut short when I accepted a promotion to run a ladies fashion boutique in Johannesburg.

My wife left me after two months after we had settled in Johannesburg.

I came home one evening to find our home contained only one bed.

I had neglected her by often working late at night, merchandising the boutique I was managing, and she knew no one in Johannesburg.

And so I should have been more considerate.

I was devastated.

After our divorce, I moved to Cape Town on a promotion with Burlington Hosiery Mills, and there I met a nursing sister, Sarah.

Within six weeks of meeting her, we got married in Portugal, where her family were living.

We loved Cape Town, but we later moved back to Johannesburg, when I was offered a position of National Sales Manager with the company.

We were very happily married for many years, during which time my daughter Kate and son Michael were born.

And it was when we wanted to get Kate christened, that I was drawn back into the church.

I approached a local ecumenical church about this, and they insisted that we attend a few services first.

This led to us both becoming fully committed, and I went on to serve in children's ministry as a worship leader and as a deacon in some of our subsequent churches.

We later moved to Johannesburg, where I joined Unilever, and after a year or so, I was promoted to General Sales and Export Manager for the company in Durban.

My marketing colleagues were all had university degrees, and most of them were being offered overseas assignments, and I wanted to get on to that bandwagon.

And so, even though I hadn't completed high school and I had no undergraduate degree, I successfully applied to join the MBA program at Cape Town University, the Graduate School of Business, in 1988.

The year was an outstanding success as my thesis was accepted, and I was awarded the Alumni Prize for the student who had made the most significant all-around contribution to the MBA program.

I felt I was in a really good place at that stage.

Jumping forward 10 years, however, the wheels started to come off.

We had moved to Durban and I went through a midlife crisis.

I'm ashamed to admit that I spent a good few years of my life as a sex addict.

I manifested this in being unfaithful to Sarah and also in bondage to pornography.

This destroyed my previous marriage and was well on the way to destroying our present marriage when a few years ago, I could see that I was on a slippery slope.

And so I repented and asked God to help me.

God was gracious and He enabled me to see pornography for what it is.

A mirage that entices but never delivers, and an activity that poisons my relationship with Jesus.

Felicity and I met on the Internet 16 years ago, when we were both very vulnerable.

She had just lost her precious son, Keween, and she divorced her husband who had cheated on her.

I was pretty lonely on my own after Sarah divorced me.

We just clicked, and our relationship blossomed.

We were both a bit cautious in having been married twice before.

But as our walk with Christ developed, we knew that God wanted us to get married, which we did in 2012.

Our ambition now is to celebrate our silver-winning anniversary in 2037.

And you're all invited, by the way.

As I look back on my life, I can see that the hardships I experienced as an adolescence significantly influenced my later life.

However, I can't blame anyone but myself for the mistakes that I have made.

Without God's intervention, I would have been completely crushed.

No doubt about that.

As God promises in Ezekiel 34, from verse 11, every time I have stumbled, He has lovingly restored me, which I am eternally grateful.

Thank you, Cedric.

When you hear a sketch of a life, it's a powerful example that there is so much good that happens.

And right alongside it, there's suffering.

And it's caused by, the Bible says, sin.

The Bible gives us straight up no nonsense answer to why the world is broken.

God is a moral being, and He has given instruction on how human beings should live.

And when God's code for flourishing life is broken, it causes death.

On page 16, we find two important verses to reflect on regarding sin.

The first one is Romans 3, 23, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

All have sinned.

We are broken.

We have missed the mark in the morality standard of our life, like an archer shooting for a perfect target.

We have all, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

We have a problem.

This started all the way back at the very beginning, the Bible says, and Ruth read for us from Chapter 3 of Genesis.

The first pages of the Bible tell us that life on planet Earth was designed to be lived in harmony.

Vertically, you might imagine, with God, horizontally with other human beings, and downwards, we're meant to be good stewards of creation and of the natural order.

And when sin entered, it changed all of this.

And we're told that there was a spirit being known as Satan, which means accuser, who came represented by a snake in the Garden of Eden, and he put doubt in the first human minds.

And they took his advice and disobeyed God, who is the source of all life.

His words are life.

And there was a result of a catastrophic disobedience and carnage unfolding caused by sin.

There was an avalanche of evil, pain and suffering, and it has continued all the way down to today.

And all of the pain and all of the suffering is wrapped up under this catch-all container, sin.

So this world we live in is extraordinarily beautiful and yet tragically flawed.

Would you agree?

It is broken and filled with suffering.

In our course books from page 18, we explore some of the philosophical attempts given throughout history to explain this problem, or in a better way of describing it, a mystery, the mystery of suffering within the human condition.

I guess the main explanation for why God would allow a world with so much suffering is that it is the natural consequence of free will.

That's probably the best answer to why is there suffering.

Well, love expressed in its fullest form is an act of free will.

And God created humanity with the same capacity he has, free will, and said, I want you to love me back.

Just obey, don't disobey, but show me your love through your obedience.

Suffering is the inevitable result of free will.

When you allow people to choose whatever they want, invariably some of those choices will not be in line with the betterment of all concerned.

Is that fair to say?

So free will is a real problem as much as something we all desire.

On page 21 of the book, we look at what some of the religions of the world say about suffering.

And to sum it all up, it's basically, they tend to say suffering is a judgment, either caused by bad karma or bad desire or a lack of submission to God.

Christianity, as I just mentioned, teaches that it's ultimately caused by sin, but used by God to train his people for godly living.

But most uniquely of all, Christianity teaches that God actually came and suffered in our place to save us.

Are you aware that when you try to find the answer to suffering in the world, there's only one religion.

There's only one religion that says the God who made everything is not ambivalent to your suffering.

He has demonstrated that in actually becoming one of us.

Jesus is God in human flesh and he suffered like no one else.

So it's not an answer to exactly why there is suffering in the world, but I feel like it's a powerful truth that the Christian God is not ambivalent to our suffering.

He came and experienced it himself.

Romans 323 says, the wages of sin is death.

That's what sin will produce.

But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This broken world deserves to be fixed.

We long for it to be fixed.

It's the message of the Bible.

It's the message of Christianity.

And it's also the message of many of the religions of the world.

They offer a way out of suffering.

And with as much respect as I can garner, I just will explain very briefly a general statement that you can find in the book about what the religions of the world say about how to find salvation.

Islam says you get saved by following the five pillars, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, profession of faith and pilgrimage.

This is very important for you if you're one of the people or you're talking to a person who says all religions are the same.

Well, on that page in front of you, if you look at the book, there's the proof they're not all the same.

It's very disrespectful to say you're all the same.

That's categorically untrue.

It's a weird statement, really.

Unfortunately, for Islam, there's no assurance that you could do enough.

Hinduism is a complex religion, but teacher's salvation is found by escaping the cycle of rebirth through karma, devotion and spiritual knowledge.

Salvation is found through self-effort and striving.

Buddhism is somewhat similar.

It teaches that salvation is found by achieving nirvana, the end of suffering and desire found through the eightfold noble path.

Get rid of desire, Buddhism says in its purest form.

Get rid of desire, because desire forms, creates suffering.

You get rid of suffering and ultimately you will cease to exist.

So for a Buddhist, a classical Buddhist, it's get rid of suffering, get rid of desire, get to nirvana and cease to exist.

So salvation is to be rid of this suffering world.

Judaism teaches that salvation is found in moral living and obedience to the law of the Lord.

New age spiritualities or alternate religious movements tend to teach that salvation is found by realising that you are actually God yourself, and you can just script your destiny.

So salvation is actually finding that you are truly divine and part of all is one.

So contrasting to all of these, biblical Christianity teaches that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Can you see how beautiful that is?

It's just there, standing above the ideas of striving to please God, to please the powers, to please the universe.

Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 is in the book, and it's just a beautiful verse.

It is by grace you have been saved through faith.

You've got to put faith in Christ, and this is not from yourselves.

It is the gift of God.

Let me say it again.

It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves.

It is the gift of God.

Every other religion says, do.

Do this, do this, do that, do this.

Christianity says what?

Done.

Someone else has paid for my sin.

I have a problem.

My relationship with God is broken, eternally broken.

I will go to eternal death without salvation, but the salvation is found through what God has done in His Son Jesus.

The Gospel says done.

Jesus has done what needs to be done in our place.

He died for our sin.

And our job is quite simple, more complex to live it out, really, but is to believe and receive His forgiveness.

We are to believe and receive His Spirit and then believe and obey His Word.

Believe and receive His forgiveness.

Believe and receive His Spirit.

Believe and obey His Word.

I don't know if you've ever been able to walk along the beach, Freemantle Beach in Perth.

I've only been there once, and it was a beautiful place.

The sun setting over the water is unique for us who live on the East Coast, isn't it?

It's just a beautiful setting.

The crystal blue sea, either there or down around Esperance, certainly at the bottom of Australia, or pick Huskerson Beach.

There are places that are so beautiful with water, aren't there?

I don't know where your memory goes to, but snow capped mountain peaks that reminds you this world is astonishingly beautiful.

Where do you go?

The gurgle of a newborn baby.

How beautiful, how wonderful is life?

The smell of your favourite dish simmering on the stove, laughing with friends, feeling the wind in your hair on a special drive, being immersed in cross-cultural experiences, and amazed at the diversity of life on earth, let alone the animals, just stopping and appreciating the complexity of this incredible planet we get to live on.

And yet, this beautiful world is profoundly broken.

Could it be that the hint of beauty and goodness we see in the world, that's undeniable that there must be a God, could it be that this God is doing something and has done something to fix the problem of sin?

Well, this is the thesis of the Bible, and it is good news, and I hope you'll consider it worthwhile really pursuing an answer.

Really pursuing the answer to the question of, did Jesus rise again from the dead?

Is He the Lord of everything?

And is He the Lord of my life?

That's, I hope, where we will go in the weeks to come.

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