Forgiveness and Suffering

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the

Saints. I'm Dylan, and with me, Michael and Drew. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask for you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you. And today we're gonna start out with a very pertinent question that apparently the congregation has been wanting answered for some time now and we just haven't got to.

Is decaf coffee heresy? Is decaf coffee heresy?

Well, I would say that if coffee were its own standard and coffee was its own thing, okay, then decaf doesn't make any sense.

Like, why did the original brewers of coffee, the creators of coffee, want to drink the coffee?

Because it was a stimulant. So decaf, I mean, I have a mug from Babylon Bee that says decaf condemned as heresy.

So I think that may have spawned the question because I flashed that mug a lot of different places and I've often made coffee here at church but I refuse to make decaf.

Even at night, you know, it's like double strength the whole way. I don't, you know, I don't want to make decaf. But my own personal opinion is that when it comes to decaf,

I consider it Ichabod. The glory has departed. Slap that above the door and walk away?

Yeah, absolutely. So analogous, would it be in apocryphal territory?

Is that where we find decaf coffee? Oh, apocryphal. Yeah. I don't know. Is it like purgatory?

Yeah, it's kind of like one of those magical made up things that should never have come about but we have it.

Baruch's blend. Oh, nice. I would think that decaf, I think it's more serious than that.

I think the decaf coffee to coffee, if we're going to be doing one of those SAT comparisons, okay,

I think decaf coffee to coffee is like open theism to orthodoxy. Okay.

It's like, you know, you still have the godness. It's a hollow shell. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, I would think that people like Clark Pinnock would drink decaf coffee and feel like he's...

And if he doesn't, he's just being inconsistent. Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm glad we answered that and we got that out of the way before we go on to our next question about forgiveness, which is, yet again, multifaceted and long and thorough.

So I wonder who asked that question. David. Yeah, probably. Yeah. We'll see.

We don't know. We don't know. We're not sure. We're not. It's supposed to be anonymous. It's anonymous. We'll leave it at that. All right.

The question is, how should a Christian view forgiveness biblically? I grew up being taught to always forgive, not really considering whether or not the one who might have sinned against you asked for it.

I think these days that might be called cathartic forgiveness. But in the past year or so, I've also heard taught that true forgiveness has to involve two parties, the one who has sinned and the one sinned against.

Are either of these ideas of forgiveness, or both, or something totally different taught in the

Bible? So in trying to make sense of forgiveness, there is, of course, the instructions that we have in Scripture.

If we go to Matthew chapter six, when we consider the model prayer,

Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray, we have this insertion about praying to the

Lord and praying to God and saying, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, depending on your translation.

But then when you get past the amen of the model prayer, in verse 14 of Matthew chapter six, we read this, for if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.

So there's a lot packed in there, but we can just see from the very basic reading of that text how important forgiveness is.

So none of us who follow Jesus would want to be unforgiving.

We wouldn't want to have an attitude that was holding on to bitterness and refusing to forgive.

The question being asked is, when do we have the opportunity to forgive? The moment that someone sins against us, is that when we have the opportunity and thus the need to go ahead and forgive?

Because if we follow Jesus, we should be forgiving others. Or the question is, do we only have the opportunity to forgive someone after they have come to us and confessed that sin and asked for our forgiveness, when they are seeking reconciliation?

So in one sense, you could say, well, obviously both. That would be kind of the broad look.

Or you have this situation where somebody comes and asks for forgiveness, they confess their sins, they've offended you, they've wronged you, they recognize this according to the word of God, and so on.

And they ask you for your forgiveness, and often the byline is, oh, there's nothing, well,

I've already forgiven you. Right. I forgave you a long time ago. And that kind of thing.

And the question is, is that biblical? And Dylan, Andrew, have you all thought about that question at all before we voiced it tonight?

How are we forgiven before God? Like, you know, are we forgiven when we ask?

Or are we forgiven beforehand for the sins that we've committed against him? Right.

So now we're getting kind of into some of the questions about the order of salvation or the order of salutis.

The question is, are we saved before we believe? Right. And these are getting into some of the questions about the sovereignty of God and election and so on.

I think the natural reading of scripture is that we come into the forgiveness of God and we are forgiven of God when we repent of our sins by the grace of God and by the same grace of God, believing upon Christ and trusting him as our

Savior. And that this is when we are forgiven. The means of our forgiveness, the basis of our forgiveness has already been established in Christ and his death upon the cross.

But the relationship between a holy, immutable, eternal God and our sinful, back and forth, frail selves, that restoration of that relationship occurs in conversion, in the new birth, in the union together with Christ by grace through faith.

So I would say that we receive forgiveness from God when we ask for it by faith.

I think that's how it would appear to me when we read different passages, whether it's

Peter or whether it's Paul or whether it's Jesus and his teachings. That's what it looks like to me.

And he's always faithful to forgive when we ask. We're told that as well. Yes. And think about a particular passage, fairly common in scripture memory, 1

John 1 .9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

When we come to the Lord, when we come to our maker and we homologo confess, say the same word that he says about our sin,

I wronged you. You're holy. I'm not. You're righteous. I'm not.

I sinned. You were right. That's what confession involves. When we confess our sins, there we find forgiveness.

You see, confession involves necessarily both repentance and belief.

Right. I see the horridness of the sin because I'm taking God's point of view on it and I'm taking

God's point of view on it because I believe his word. So in that, there's the forgiveness.

There's the hope of cleansing when we come to the Lord and we come and we confess, we agree with him about it.

So I think that's a great question. How are we forgiven, Dylan? Because we begin with, how does

God forgive us? Because the text is saying, consider how God has forgiven you.

This is how you should forgive others. Right. Is there a difference between patience or synonyms like forbearance and forgiveness?

Oh, certainly. Yes. All day long,

God said he's held out his arms to a stiff necked and rebellious people showing long suffering and patience, forbearance to people not forgiven, but continuing in their rebellion, not even seeking reconciliation, perhaps even telling themselves they don't need it.

Right. Right. And when the relationship is breached because of transgression, because the covenant has been broken and those who have done the breaking consider themselves righteous and they have valid excuses or they don't need any kind of restoration, then it's really hard sledding for the prophet who's trying to tell them, hey, you need to repent.

And they're saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. So I think beginning with that is the question.

And then the practicalities, of course, are, and this was what the question I had, because I remember when

I was trying to make sense of what do you do about when people hurt you, when people sin against you, and this is a very serious thing, and it can, if it's not handled right, we read about the root of bitterness.

We read about all kinds of things happening in the life of a believer if we don't handle these things right.

So I, when reading the scriptures, saw these expressions, if you don't forgive others, you're not someone who is forgiven.

Right. I mean, this bitterness evidence is that you don't understand grace because you haven't experienced it.

And begin to think about, you know, forgiveness versus bitterness and so on. And I had that perspective of forgiving everyone, everything.

That's the call of the Christian. And I saw that there was a contrast between that perspective and God's perspective, where he doesn't forgive everybody everything.

He just doesn't. There's all sorts of people that he has not and will not forgive.

And that's not because he's an ungracious God. He's far more gracious than any of us. But the fact of the matter is there are these promises that there, and warnings about a broken relationship, covenant breaking, sins and transgressions, and people of a reprobate mind justifying themselves and praising themselves and going straight to hell, which is terrible.

So I was trying to make sense of why is it that God doesn't forgive everyone, but he wants me to. Right. I'm trying to make sense of that.

And I did my best. I even wrote like an eight part series for the local newspaper when we were in Tennessee about this perspective of Christian forgiveness and so on.

And I held that pretty strong until, I guess it was probably a couple of years ago, and I made mention of this in a lesson that I was teaching here at the church.

And someone who had been a pastor and was rooted in the word came to me and began to talk with me about whether or not that was biblical.

And my main hang up was, but God said, if we don't forgive, then, you know, he says, yes, of course.

And he said, you know, but if that means if somebody comes to you and says, I did,

I did you wrong. I, you know, before the face of God, I did it wrong. I would,

I don't want to continue in this broken relationship. Would you please forgive me? And at that point, if you don't forgive them, that's what

Jesus is talking about. Holding on to that bitterness and refusing to forgive somebody who asks you, that's what

Jesus is talking about. And I said, well, how do you suppose then you're supposed to treat these people who have spitefully used you and so on and so forth?

He says, well, that's the category called love, right? You love your enemy, right?

So that if somebody lies about me, steals from me, harms my family and so on, and they don't have anything to do with me because they're hiding in the darkness and they don't want the light to expose their deeds.

Am I then to say all is forgiven? Well, to say that would imply that that person is on good terms with me.

But the facts of the matter are they're not on good terms with me. And they can't be until things are truly reconciled through forgiveness.

And there is certainly hope of forgiveness in Christ because all of justice is handled either at the cross of Christ or at the coming of Christ.

So I can leave it there. I don't take my own revenge, right? I can leave that to the Lord. But to say that all is forgiven when the relationship is totally shattered, these two things put together, well, they shouldn't be put together, right?

That's a false equivocation. I didn't know that. I was trying to give expression to what the

Bible calls love, love your enemies. And if they come to you and ask you for forgiveness, well, then forgive them.

But that's different. And that's where I have been trying to grow in understanding.

What do you do as someone who asks for forgiveness, but you don't believe they've wronged you, but their conscience is just so pricked that they believe they have done you wrong?

And you can even walk them through the scenario of everything that's happened and walk through the biblical case of, hey, you didn't do anything wrong in this situation, and they just have to have it.

What do you do in those situations? Well, it's not really hard to forgive someone you're not upset with.

Obviously, this is an issue of conscience, right? Romans 14, something like that, their conscience is pricked where yours is not.

Well, then in bearing with one another and accepting one another in Christ, then you take them and their concern seriously as to their regard, even though that's not your conviction.

Yeah, and certainly extend forgiveness. There may be the need for further discussion.

Maybe it's a conviction that is keeping them from following Christ well. For instance, perhaps they used the telephone to call you on Sunday and they believe that they broke the

Sabbath. There might be the need to disciple there, okay?

But certainly forgive. Yeah, I don't know if that ever happened to either one of you, somebody comes asking for forgiveness for something and you had no idea what's going on.

Yeah, I've had that happen a couple of times to me, and I think just by default to appease them naturally, just said, yeah,

I forgive you. And then thinking like nothing wrong happened. Sure.

Yeah. Did you feel very gregarious? Well, yeah, I kind of felt like I gave something that they didn't need or I kind of lied.

I almost felt like I was lying that they needed forgiveness by giving it to them. But kind of feels like somebody is returning to you $20 they never took from you.

Yes. Yeah. It's kind of hard to figure out how to accept that. I'll take that found money.

That's pretty good. Andrew, do you have anything to add? Maybe you can talk to a little bit about the order of forgiveness.

In Matthew 18, I'll just skip to the very end of what's commonly called the wicked servant that Jesus says.

So my heavenly father also will do to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother, his trespasses.

So this is the revocation of forgiveness possibly. And the order now is this person not forgiven because they chose not to forgive?

Or is it a demonstration of their heart like Jesus speaks about?

Yeah. So when you when you read the story of the wicked servant, the story intentionally does not make sense.

That's his point. That's Jesus's point. A lot of you know, when you read the parables of Jesus, they make sense.

A guy goes out and sows some seed and the stuff grows and this and that and the other happens, and it makes sense.

But when you read this parable and the man was forgiven the equivalent of six million days wages, and then he goes and chokes a man over 100 days wages, that doesn't make sense.

That doesn't compute. And everybody in listening to Jesus's story knows that doesn't compute.

Who would do that? Who was forgiven six million days wages? Who's going to go out?

And Jesus says, of course, that's the point. That's the point. If you're bitter and angry, taking vengeance into your own hands, which is a form of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you're determining what is right and just for yourself, and you're going after these people, doing your own vengeance, then you don't know the forgiveness of God.

You don't know the grace of God. This is clear evidence that you do not have the forgiveness of God, and God condemns your bitterness and your vengeance.

So this is a wonderful, very timely, relevant parable for our day, wherein if somebody will simply sit back and consider what they have been forgiven, then how are they going to hold on to these bitter agendas concerning either the dead or the living, either the personal or the systemic?

How are they going to go on these war paths of personal vendettas of making things right when we're faced with the reality of the justice of God?

I mean, these things put things in proper perspective. You bet. I think that people that do such things have an idea of justice that does not extend past the end of this life, where all justice must be meted out now, because there's no justice coming for those who escape it.

Yes, exactly. And without a trust in the sovereignty of God and a hope of the resurrection, and that includes the hope of the

Day of Judgment where everything is set right, without that hope, people want to resurrect the dead themselves and hold

Judgment Day themselves. And this, of course, is an attempt to replace the uniqueness of Christ, an anti -Christ version of judgment.

Thinking it'll satiate their thirst for bloodlust or bitterness, and it's just not going to fulfill it at all.

Because like you said, that's something that justice has to be beyond the grave, and you cannot dole that out yourself.

Yes. And you can see how pointless it is and how it doesn't work, and people aren't satisfied with it.

And it really is a kind of despairing hopelessness about the whole endeavor. And when we're looking at the euphemism for the corporate guilt that Israel has before God as his servant during that time period, or is this more being taught to individuals?

Since Jesus is in Judea preaching and teaching, and a lot of times preaching and teaching against those sins that are most prevalent in his time period,

I'm seeing it as a... In God's forbearance, he allowed

Israel hundreds of years. Sure. So six million days wages to me, that seems like the type of debt that Israel has built up that they should have been making those wages over those hundreds of years.

But since they have the debt now, and they in their own land are not forgiving debts.

In fact, they're extorting a lot of the people outside Judea and Galilee. Yeah. You notice that Jesus, when he's answering

Peter's question, how often should I forgive my brother if he offends me? And Peter, of course, he extends the rabbinical suggestion of three times to seven times, maybe seven times.

He's kind of catching on to some of the patterns of Christ. You've heard it said, but I say to you, so Peter's trying that out.

He's walking on water there a little bit, tripping towards where he's wanting to get.

And then Jesus says, not seven times, the rendering is 77 fold.

Okay. And that is a direct quote from Genesis four, where in Lamech says to his wives,

Ada and Zillah, listen to my voice. I have killed a man, right?

I have killed a man for wounding me, or a young man for insulting me, basically, is the idea.

And he says, if Cain be avenged seven fold, we remember that God put a mark on Cain as a stemming of the tide of violence.

He says, if Cain be avenged seven fold, then Lamech avenged 77 fold. So we see the way of the godless pagan, one who does not call upon the name of the like the descendants of Seth.

Their approach is what? Vengeance 77 fold. You hit me with a hammer,

I'll hit you with a truck. Okay. So that whole mentality. So Jesus takes up that language and he totally spins it on its head.

I say to you, forgiveness 77 fold. Not putting a limit on forgiveness and then saying, okay, now the vengeance can start, right?

But forgiveness 77 fold. And that's a shocking statement. So then he says, now the kingdom of heaven is like, okay.

So now he's going to talk about the kingdom of heaven, which again is the kingdom is the stone, which crashes into the fourth section of the statue in Daniel two, right?

So into the Roman empire comes crashing a stone uncut by human hands that grows into be a mountain that fills the whole earth.

Here comes the kingdom of heaven, the one that cannot be shaken. And you want to be a part of this kingdom. You want to be a part of this kingdom,

Jews. You want to be a part of this kingdom, all you in Judea, who are harboring a great deal of animosity and anger and bitterness towards a lot of people, right?

The lack of forgiveness was obvious in the desire for the

Pharisees and scribes. How do they handle a problem?

Kill them. Right. Get the, let's get Herod to kill him.

Or let's, let's get the Romans to kill him. Let's do something. Let's, let's, let's ensnare him. Let's get the people all mad at him so that they'll kill him.

But let's just get rid of this guy. Um, though that kind of mentality shows up later in the history of Israel.

Also, there's a lot of anger against the Romans, right? This occupying force. And Jesus is saying things like, well, if, you know, if someone comes and says, you know, carry my pack one mile, carry it too.

Right. And Jesus begins talking about how you treat your oppressors, not the way that you've been taught.

How can I stab them in the back? You know? So Jesus says, you know, this is the kingdom of heaven is like this.

Like you get into the kingdom of heaven by grace. You get into the kingdom of heaven by being forgiven and being forgivers.

The kingdom of heaven is, is totally of grace. You didn't get into God's kingdom because you were born a

Jew. You get into God's kingdom by God's unmerited favor, his mercy and his forgiveness.

And so why am I telling you forgive other 77 fold? Because that is the way of the kingdom.

That's kingdom life. And even if you forgive somebody 77 times straight, you don't even getting close to how much you've been forgiven.

And so that's what he's getting at. And then he gets at the end of the chapter at that all important last verse.

Okay. And so Jesus is identifying. If you're not forgiving others, if you're not walking in the way of forgiveness toward others, that means that you're not in the kingdom.

You're not in the kingdom because you're not a part of that, that entire realm of grace later on in the history of Judea, the gospel being preached for decades after Jesus' resurrection and ascension.

During the Roman Jewish civil war, especially after the saints evacuated

Jerusalem and fled to Pella, Judea was awash in blood, not simply because the

Roman legions were advancing. Judea was awash in blood because there was a three way civil war going on and the

Jews were killing each other, stealing each other's food supplies, starving each other out.

And when they were bottled up in Jerusalem, those three factions refused to let anybody out of Jerusalem long before the

Romans built their own wall to keep everybody in. And in contrast to the, you hurt me,

I'll kill you mentality on clear display in the last vestiges of the covenant breakers, we have the kingdom of heaven in which forgiveness is a key feature.

So I would say that that's how I would read it in the larger context. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense.

It just brought up kind of a, a, uh, a corporate mindset to me because of how big the analogy was.

I'm like, I got you. We got 6 million. We got to be talking about a nation here or, um, cause

I mean, that's, that's like, that's a country's size of wealth, right? Well, it, it is.

And to, to, you know, the story is built upon the idea that the, the

King is like an emperor and he has various rulers in charge of regions.

And they're responsible to make sure that the taxes of the region are, are given to the

King. The tribute must be paid to the King. And if it's not paid to the King and maybe squandered by this steward, then he owes the whole thing.

Uh, it's like the story, uh, in the Dawn Treader and C .S. Lewis, uh, Caspian lands and, um, manages to confront the governor of the

Lone Islands, Gumpus, which is a great, is a great, uh, name for a functionary. And, um, and, uh, the tribute of the

Lone Islands have not been paid to the realm, to the crown of Narnia for quite some time.

And, uh, well, today's a judgment day. The King has come and where's the tribute? And, uh,

Caspian reminds Gumpus that the law states that, uh, if, if the tribute hasn't been paid, it comes out of the, uh, governor's personal, uh, money supply.

And, uh, and Gumpus is, you know, it's possible can't be done, you know, so that, and we, we just read that as a family.

So it came to mind. Yeah. I like it. We need to, we're going through, or we're going to eventually be going through, uh, the, the series of Narnia, Narnia series as well.

And it's going to be me and Heather first, but we'll, we'll take the kids along with it as well. So pulling out nuggets like that's always nice, but that's actually a good segue into, uh, what we should have done to begin with, but what are we reading right now?

Oh, do you have any suggestions? Recommendations? Oh, so I've been talking with my wife recently about how

I'm going to call YouTube something different. I'm going to call it the library of Alexandria.

I has it burning Oh no. One day it seems like it's rapidly accumulating the world's it's just soaking up world's wisdom on every single topic.

Yeah. Um, so I would say I've been reading on bushcrafting mechanic, you know, auto mechanics stuff around the house and, you know, flooring, how to do finish carpentry.

You name it, it's there. Pick up a book, press play. Um, that's, that's what

I, I would also recommend it to, um, they have policies that are changing to limit the wisdom that's on the platform, but you can still find pieces of knowledge.

Yeah. So I'm reading, um, I'm reading according to plan by Graham Goldsworthy.

It's a book that I've read before. Uh, it is out of all the books that Graham Goldsworthy has written, who was, um, he's a professed, he's a, he's still alive, but he would taught at more theological college in Sydney, Australia.

And he's an Anglican and has a lot of, uh, published works on biblical theology.

And this is one of his, uh, primers. He's after decades of writing and so on and so forth, he's really brought together.

I think one of his clearest expressions for anybody interested in seeing the harmony of all the scriptures caught up in, uh, in the light of Christ.

So I, I really have tried to acquire and read everything by Graham Goldsworthy as an exercise.

And there, you know, I, I found things that I've disagreed with him about, but I, um, greatly have benefited from his, his work.

So I'm reading that in preparation for, uh, something we call Timothy school here, which is going to start up in February because we're going to be reading through that book together.

And as a companion volume to that, I've been reading, um, kingdom through covenant, uh, by Gentry and Wellum, which is their shorter volume, uh, that they, uh, then what they had written earlier about new covenant theology.

And I borrowed this volume from David Casson. Um, so, uh,

I'm reading through that and I can't fold the little corners of the pages down and I can't underline anything. So it's been miserable.

Um, I want to give it back to him in good condition. Uh, but I've been reading that and these are not necessarily new themes, but they are themes that I come back to again and again and again, because, uh, they are helpful for me in my teaching and preaching and discipleship and being a father and so on.

So, uh, that's good. Um, right now I am zipping through all of what houses

Jeeves novels. So I've already read on, read them on my Kindle. Um, but I'm listening to all of them at 2 .5

on audible and they're all included with a subscription to audible right now for everybody out there who is a

Woodhouse fan. Can you actually appreciate the absurd metaphors at two and a half speed?

Absolutely. Okay. Yep. I know you, it doesn't seem like you can, but it, it, you get used to it, your ear adjust to it.

It's just like, I, the analogy that I would have is making the jump from high school to college baseball, um, where you might have one guy that throws 90 miles an hour in high school on an entire county.

And now everybody from the, all the surrounding counties throws 90 miles an hour and that's, that's the team you're on now.

So that's kind of how you adjust. My follow -up question is when you listen to audio books at two and a half speed and you're driving, does this, does this have an impact on your driving?

Yeah. Because not that I can tell. I haven't, I haven't, no one's phoned in with any gripes.

Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. But I kind of rubbed off the phone number on the back that says, how's my driving? So, or just one, just change one digit.

It'd be fine. We really wouldn't know if anybody griped or not, but I'm going through that right now. Uh, I'm also going through, um,

Desire, Deceit and the Novel by Rene Girard. And I'm looking forward to getting into a book called

Gödel, Escher, Bach. Um, it's a huge volume. It is at the same time period, a writer, an artist, and, uh, obviously the musician

Bach. Um, but it's something that was recommended to me online.

Um, and it's going to be interesting how all three of these men were pursuers of truth, beauty, and goodness and their respective disciplines and how they were kind of working, not in tandem necessarily together on, on things, but it was supposedly very interesting how their work complimented each other during the same time period.

Um, and I think it's something we can only, uh, credit to Providence that we, we have it and we have it recorded for us to kind of to examine and understand.

Um, but yeah, I'm looking forward to getting to that. Cause I got that for Christmas and there's only, they don't, it's not in print anymore.

So my mom, my mom found it online and got it for me for Christmas. And I was like, yeah. Wow. What a mom. Excellent.

Excellent. So, but I would recommend, uh, all the Woodhouse stuff on Audible. It's, it's good stuff.

And they, they've got great readers for all of his, his stuff, but we'll go ahead and move on now to our last question in the main segment.

And it's on suffering. How should a Christian respond to personal suffering when that suffering does not appear to make any sense?

Now when reading this, I think there's two ways you might be able to read this.

Um, or at least that's the way I'm seeing it. Their suffering doesn't make any sense as in, it seems pointless maybe, or you don't understand why they're suffering or why they're telling you they're suffering or at least that's, that's the way

I'm reading it. What, what does it sound like to you guys though? I would say that suffering is more difficult to bear when you don't understand it.

If you, um, for instance, if you went out and uh, played baseball in college and had a great career, but you injured your elbow.

Okay. From just overuse, you know, hyperextended your elbow, whatever. And then you had to go through the process of physical therapy, maybe a surgery and recovery and so on.

There's suffering there, but you understand it. Okay. So it's understandable what often makes suffering so hard to bear is when it is unclear why this is going on.

And this tends to make the burden exponentially more weighty.

You know, and again, you could the kind of suffering where I am going to diet and exercise and go to bed early, deny myself some pleasures and get up early in the morning.

And we're going to, you know, ride herd on my, my physical desires and, um, buffet my body to make it useful and et cetera.

There's going to be some suffering involved there, but that is something where you understand what's going on.

It's the, it's the kind that you don't understand that, that makes it all the more difficult.

So I think that's, I think that's where the questioner is coming from. Okay. There may be a different nuance to it.

Is there a different take on it? I, when I first read it, I thought they were talking about like somebody you see that's suffering and, uh, you don't think that they should feel like they're suffering.

That's just what that's, that's what I had in my mind. But I, I think it's closer to what you're saying.

Yeah. Whenever you read it, it sounded more like to me that there was some nameless faceless antagonist that you can't quite put your finger on, uh, you know, medical condition would be a good way of putting this, you know, a sort of suffering that doesn't necessarily seem purposeful or meaningful.

Why? Well, why, why me? Those types of things come to my mind.

I think you're right. I think you're closer to that than I was. Yeah. So this is,

I think this is a question that I've often, uh, thought about. And I think the sinful instinct, um, for me in my, in my past has been one of risking nothing as much as possible to do or to do the best to manage any kind of potential problem suffering.

So I don't want to cause suffering to myself or to others and so on and so forth. So, um, that was a very sinful attitude.

Um, a lack of trust in the sovereignty of God and even, even a, a not very, not resting very well in the justification that is there in Christ.

And there is no avoiding suffering. There's just, there's no avoiding suffering.

And even if, even if you personally never experience, uh, the, the perils of, of financial, uh, poverty or physical suffering, uh, or broken relationships or, you know, consent, so on and so forth.

And, you know, the church you go to is just solid steady on and nothing ever bad happens and so on. You're not going to, you're not going to avoid suffering because your, your brothers and sisters in Christ are going to suffer.

And when part of the body suffers, everyone feels it. And your family members are going to suffer, even close family members are going to suffer.

And then you're going to feel that as well. And there's going to be suffering. And a lot,

I would say a majority of the time we're trying to assign reasons to it.

That's one of the first things we try to do. We're trying to identify it. You know, I mean, we're all, we're all

Adam's sons here. So we see something, we don't know what it is. We want to name it.

Like I want to name, well, why, why did that happen? I want to give a reason for it. I need an explanation for it.

I want to see the cause and effect so that why, so that I can maybe better manage the situation, cut off whatever is causing the suffering and then avoid it in the future.

Right? We're, we're trying to identify it so that we can manage it. We're trying to identify it so we can get rid of it.

We're trying to take control of the situation. Now taking responsibility for things and living in wisdom and forsaking folly and all of that, that's good.

That's good. Sometimes suffering happens and you, you just don't know why.

I've experienced a lot of that in the last few years. I don't have any idea why.

I don't know why. And I've become more keenly aware of others suffering in similar ways.

A lot of focus gets put on to me and my family because I'm a pastor, but name me any family in this church and I can tell you a list of their suffering.

I won't know it all. I won't know it all. Okay. Um, I don't, but I will know,

I will be able to list at least five things about everybody. So it'd be everybody's suffering and a lot of that is not going to have a particular reason for it.

And I've often been in contention with my good and perfect Heavenly Father about that.

Why? Come on. Uh, more?

This is unreasonable, right? A lot of complaining gets going, but it doesn't take long for a little suffering that has been handled perfectly by, uh, our, the

Father of Lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. He has handled the suffering.

He has handled the trial. It has come through his hands to me and I'm suffering and I want to complain.

It doesn't take much to expose where I'm at.

And I may not be able to explain why there's suffering in either my life or with my wife and my children.

And so I don't I can't explain it. Um, but I do know that God does his work through it.

And this is something that I was thinking about in the hospital, this last hospitalization in our family. And this is a, this was, you know, this was a thought that I had.

Trials make me to know my own inconsistencies in the light of God's faithfulness.

I learned what a novice I am in prayer and what an expert God is in grace.

And these things I would never learn in the comforts of an undisrupted routine.

So that's not an explanation of why, but that is a testimony of what good, not, not the only good, but some of the good that God does through suffering in our lives.

Um, about suffering and the question of why my mind goes to, my mother passed away in 2020,

September of 2020. Um, she was diagnosed with liver cancer in the fall of 2018.

Um, after she passed, I would find myself thinking, you know, like, why'd this happen to her?

Then one day when I was driving, I was having similar thoughts and my, my mind was corrected.

My mom wasn't, she wasn't sinless. What do you mean?

She didn't deserve it. So in, uh,

I found a helpful passage of scripture, first Peter chapter two, where Peter exhorts or clarifies that it's not of any credit for you to suffer for the bad things that you've done, but when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God.

And that very thing is what we were called for.

And then Peter shows us Christ, the one who did no wrong, where seemingly senseless suffering finds its focal point in history, clearly shown in Christ, the redeemer.

Now, going back to thinking about my mom, um, I, I knew of something that happened very early in her life that many people did not know about.

She had an abortion and she kept that hidden for a long time. And I was thinking about delivering that during her, during the eulogy at her funeral, um, just to show that these people that you think are, you know, like why this, why this happened to them?

My mom was a murderer. She got what she deserved.

And it's hard to say that, but she was that murderer is with Christ.

Praise the Lord. And God is just and the justifier of the ungodly of the one who has faith in Jesus.

And Jesus Christ came to save sinners. And we think about,

I think about death, um, as a, as an enemy that is yet to be brought fully under the feet of Christ.

Death is the last enemy. And it is, it is still something that causes a suffering as our loved ones die, as we face our own death.

And yet we don't have to fear death. We are no longer enslaved to the one who held the fear of death as a power over us.

We have been delivered from the strong man that Jesus Christ has much like Benaiah gone down to the strong man and snatched his own weapon from his hand and defeated him with his own weapon.

And having been raised from the dead to die, no more. Jesus Christ is the first fruits of resurrection.

We have our hope in him so that as we suffer, we remember our captain who has blazed the trail from suffering to glory for us.

And that we are not walking on any path that he has not first trod, that he has, he has, he has blazed that trail.

And Isaiah 53 verses four and five, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our, for our peace was upon him and by his stripes, we are healed.

Not one aspect of our suffering as believers in Christ is outside of the grace of God and the atoning work of Jesus Christ, that everything about our suffering in Christ is redeemed for his glory and that ultimately he uses it for good.

And we are so much like little children. We are just infants.

We are toddlers. We don't get it. How often do our little ones, they just don't get it.

They don't understand why they have to be given a shot or a bath or they have to get, you know, they have to, we have to do something to them that causes them discomfort or maybe they're in pain, but we're doing, and they don't get it.

They don't get it. And we can't explain it to them. There's no, there's no amount of us talking to them that's ever going to help them understand clearly what is going on and why it is, but we're doing things where they're good and they don't get it.

And I try to remember that when I pray and I've very often, and it's been like this last, this last week and this last month,

I have often felt like an infant in my prayers, crying out to the heavenly father.

Not to pile on here, but I received word this afternoon that a good friend of mine had passed away recently.

He had contracted COVID on Christmas Eve and ended up going to the hospital for it.

He was in his 80s and was a multiple sclerosis patient from the time he was in his 40s.

And he went to church with us at Berry Road for the entire time that I was there.

And he'd been there because the assisted living center or the government housing center that was down the street, he'd lived there for quite some time.

So he'd been going to Berry Road for a long time. He contracted, got pneumonia, ended up getting a urinary tract infection because of their catheter that they put in and didn't handle correctly.

But they brought him home on hospice on Thursday and he quickly took a turn in two days.

And Heather and I and the boys went to go see him on Saturday night. And I'm very thankful that God preserved him to the point to where I could show him my children.

Because since Killian's been born, I had not given, I had not had the chance to, or the ease,

I would say, the ease in my conscience to bring the boys around. Because I don't know what they could get in that place.

And I don't know what they could give him in his condition. So these, the last couple of days was,

I would say, a gift for us to have a go see him one last time.

And if there was ever a man that I thought in my own life that I've met to ask that question, you know, the why, it would have been him.

But he had told me, he had told me that and confided in me that there are, there are other reasons why, like you said.

And he was never, at least openly saying that to me.

And whenever he would start to feel sorry for himself and I could see it, he was always reminded of scripture.

And this is one thing this man did because he didn't have time to do anything else but learn.

He stayed, lived most of the rest of his life in his room and in that church. And so he would sit there and learn and read scripture.

And whenever I would come to take care of him on certain nights because his government healthcare was falling short, we would have debates over eschatology and soteriology.

But he was extremely precious and he was kind to me and my family all the way through and appreciative of everything that we could do for him.

And like you say, when you see brothers and sisters suffering, that is a form of an end of weight that comes with it.

I get what you're saying with that. But I know with him the last few days that his focus was on the suffering ending and that death, that last enemy, he was going to experience and experience no more.

And he, that's something he had always looked forward to, to have a whole body again and to walk with his

Lord. And so I praise the

Lord that's where he's at now. And seeing him where he was at, barely able to stay awake and say hi or bye the last time was something

I had never personally experienced before. But I rest in the assurance that we have been given the justification that we have and that we've known all that your mother had and that we all get to experience.

And I praise the Lord for that. Okay. So onto lighter things.

This week in witchcraft. Yeah. So witchcraft. There was always ample examples.

I think probably the hot topic of this week is Bill C -4 having passed in Canada with unanimous consent from the conservative party along with the liberals.

And it was the conservative party who brought it forward. And Bill C -4 is so explosively named simply because it was, used to be

Bill C -6, but in the transition from one year to the next and the election that they had in Canada to retain

Prime Minister Trudeau, they changed what was

Bill C -6 and they strengthened it as Bill C -4 and they passed it with unanimous consent and it was celebrated much like the 40 -week abortion bill in New York was celebrated some years ago.

What it says basically is this, that no one in Canada is allowed to give or procure any kind of counseling that would bring somebody who is, you know, identifying as a homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, whatever, the

LBGTQIA plus, whatever, that nobody among the alphabet people can receive or nobody should be offering and nobody should be trying to connect anybody of the alphabet people with anybody else who would tell them that they need to change.

So this is specifically against conversion therapy as they call it. So in 1

Corinthians chapter 6 and yes, in verse 9, you know where I'm going with this.

Oh yeah. We have this very hope -filled passage of scripture.

It says, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

And here's the hope. And such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. And so today in Canada, if a pastor or a

Christian counselor, if a church member, if a parent of a child were to follow through on the hope of this passage and call a homosexual, sodomite, or someone engaging in sexual perversion and identifying themselves as through sexual perversion, if somebody were to say to them, you don't have to stay that way.

There's forgiveness in Christ. There's cleansing. You can leave all that behind by the grace of God, and you can enter into the kingdom of God and be saved.

If you do that, it's a five -year prison sentence. Five -year prison sentence.

And the reasoning given for that in Bill C -4 is that such a notion that somebody should change from being bisexual or homosexual or so on to something else, like according to the standard

God's word, what sex is designed for, what sexuality actually looks like according to God's word.

The reason why this is outlawed is because it is based on harmful myths.

It is anti -human. So this is where we're getting into the witchcraft, where it's dehumanizing to counsel people to repent of these sins.

That's what the parliamentarians and the government officials of Canada said, when in fact,

God is the one who has defined humanity. In the image of God, he made them male and female.

He created them. And humanity is defined by the maker of humanity. Mankind and what it means to be a man or a woman who created an image of God, that's been defined by God.

But here are, shall we say, a bunch of little horns on the head of the

Canadian state beast, and they have risen up together in harmonious chorus, and they are singing pagan hymns, and they have declared that humanity, to be humane, to uphold what a human really is, is to celebrate and protect every form currently that is acceptable in sexual perversion.

Nothing has been said yet about bestiality and pedophilia and so on, but there's always that plus on the alphabet soup.

It's coming. Yeah, it's coming. So the witchcraft at work here is where they have taken what is good and called it evil, and they've taken what is evil and they've it good.

So that's witchcraft, using words to try to alter reality just by using words.

And so that's an example that many people are having to deal with today in Canada.

You also have another layer of witchcraft there with the idea that the Bible tells us about deceitful desires, yet we have here the reinforcement that whatever desire someone has is good.

And to tell them that that is inappropriate or wrong, sinful, using that word, oh no, you can't say that.

That's inhumane. No, it's inhumane to let people act like beasts, doing instinct with whatever deceitful desire they have.

I'm glad you brought it up as like a beast too. Like you're highlighting the corporate function of how the government kind of usually works all in tandem together.

And it's like a lot of little, like one big dragon making little baby dragons out of everybody else so they can go and be tyrannical back in their own provinces, wherever they're at in Canada, because that's what you're going to get.

You're going to get like a Stasi type of police situation where we're going to start literally policing language because that's what we have here.

And policing language that is witchcraft, it's bent, it's a state craft and they're going to go out and they're going to rat out neighbors, brothers, sisters, husbands, and wives.

But it's also interesting how beasts always seek out and provoke the king that ends up slaying them as well.

Yeah, if I were going to use imagery from Daniel, I'd say that there is a massive elk beast kind of thing that would represent the state of Canada and the horns are going over antlers, you know, and it's all intertwined and perverse, full of perversions.

It's twisted and gnarled and disgusting and full of abominations. And beside it is growing an equally gnarled maple tree, which would be the perverted

Canadian church. And the sap is poisonous because they are not offering opposition to the beast.

They're casting shade, they're giving shade to the beast. The beast would not be too uncomfortable in the hot sun and this twisted gnarled maple tree is casting shade for them and is in opposition to those who are calling it out as sin and desiring that the bright light of God's truth be shown upon the situation to demonstrate what this is.

This is disgusting. This is disastrous. This is tyranny.

But so many in the Canadian church are not.

Now, there are heroes who are definitely standing firm in the faith, but there are so many who are continuing to give protective shade to the perversion.

Yeah, it's difficult to watch. Yeah, it is. And it's a warning.

Just like in Ezekiel, Judah was told, you know,

Israel's disaster was to be your warning. You should have paid attention.

And of course, you know, Israel was the northern kingdom and Judah was north and south. You know, it's probably symbolic, really, of Canada and the

U .S. there in Ezekiel. Ezekiel's really about our day, right? We can at least use it as a point of prayer to be reminded, you know, if there is a kingdom to the north of you doing this, pray for repentance in your own land.

There you go. Well, looks like we've ate up our time for today, but we hope you'll join us again when we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read?