These Origin stories will make sense of the event, which makes sense of everything else.

  

Then the Lord said to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.' 'Does Job fear God for nothing?' Satan replied. 'Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.' The Lord said to Satan, 'Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.' Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.

-Job 1:8-12

Is it for your piety that he rebukes you and brings charges against you? Is not your wickedness great? Are not your sins endless?

-Job 22:4-5

Oh, that I had someone to hear me! I sign now my defense—let the Almighty answer me; let my accuser put his indictment in writing.

-Job 31:35

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: 'Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!'

-Job 38:1-5

I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.

-Job 42:2-4

God approves of Job’s honest approach, wanting to talk to God.

What are our options for making sense of natural disasters if God does not exist? If God does not exist, then this is just the way the world is. The universe we inhabit is a closed system of cause and effect, and the laws of nature acting upon matter. Tectonic plate collisions release shock waves and where a person happens to be at that moment is just luck of the draw. Some people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Statistically speaking, there are half a million earthquakes every year, and although only 100 are strong enough to cause any damage, chance alone can explain why every so often there will be a big one. . . . The sciences describe events in the natural world with elegance and insight, but they don’t answer our deepest questions about natural disasters. Nor do they help us to make sense of why our inbuilt response is not simply to accept the natural way of things. In the face of disasters, we get angry, we grieve, we object, we rail against it. . . . To call something a ‘disaster’ is to make a moral judgment, to imply that something is wrong with the world, that things could or should be better than they are. What kind of universe makes best sense of this morality? Is it a godless universe from which moral sentience is an unexpected anomaly? Or a universe that has been moral from the beginning because it was brought into being by a good God? Perhaps unexpectedly, our grief, sadness and anger at natural disasters are not a pointer away from God, but towards him.

-Dr Sharon Dirckx

How can we move toward God, with an imperfect answer for suffering?

  

The key is the CROSS OF JESUS CHRIST - Job’s life story was an origin story pointing to the ultimate event.

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

-Romans 8:31-32

We have to learn to climb the hill called Calvary, and from that vantage point survey all life’s tragedies. The cross does not solve the problem of suffering, but it supplies the essential perspective from which to look at it. Since God has demonstrated his holy love and loving justice in a historical event (the cross), no other historical event (whether personal or global) can override it or disprove it.

-John Stott

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: 'For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'

-Romans 8:35-39

How much more reasonable is it for us to trust God in view of the CROSS?

  

  

1 - Patient Endurance

  

For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

-Hebrews 12:2-3

2 - Mature Holiness

  

In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.

-Hebrews 2:10

3 - Suffering Service

  

Jesus replied, 'The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.'

-John 12:23-26

4 - The Hope of Glory

  

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

-Romans 5:1-2

5 - The Cross Give a Reason for Our Faith

  

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

-2 Peter 3:8-9

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

-Romans 8:18-21

6 - The Pain of God

  

The CROSS smashes this caricature completely as God himself joins us in our suffering.

I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who is immune to it? I turn to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering. 'The cross of Christ is God's only self-justification in such a world as ours.'

-John Stott

Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 'He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.' When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 'He himself bore our sins' in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; 'by his wounds you have been healed.'

-1 Peter 2:21-24

  Maximilion Kobe

  

   

   

   

What are your main takeaways from this message?

Make a Decision The Cross of Christ by John Stott