We’re in the middle of our sermon series, “The End of
Time”, looking at what the Bible has to say about the second coming of Jesus
and about the end of the world. And as
many of you know, one of the books of the Bible that talks about that the most
is the book of Revelation.
I don’t know
how many of you believe you understand our Bible reading for today from
Revelation six. To be honest, I don’t
really think I do. There have been lots
and lots of words and pages written about just what this business of the Lamb opening the seven seals means, as well as about all these
things that are going to happen with the seals are opened.
Regardless of
what the details mean, though, there’s one thing that does seem to be
clear. There’s a lot of bad stuff that’s
going to happen before the end. That was
made clear when we looked at the prophecy from the book of Daniel. That was made clear when Jesus talked about
the coming of the end. And it’s made
clear in our reading from Revelation today.
Before the end comes, there are going to be lots and lots of bad things
that happen here on earth.
What we don’t
seem to be told, in Revelation or anywhere else, is why. Why do all these bad things have to happen
before the end comes? Daniel was not
told why. Jesus did not say why. The revelation given to John does not say
why. In fact, nobody even seems to have
asked the question. Daniel did not ask
why. No one seems to have asked Jesus
why. The apostle John did ask why.
Does that not
seem strange to you? It does to me. Everyone just seems to accept the fact that a
whole bunch of bad stuff has to happen before the end comes. No one ever asks why all that bad stuff has
to happen.
Maybe when
you’re in the presence of God, or an angel, or even in the presence of Jesus
under these circumstances, you get too scared to ask why. Maybe you just accept it. I don’t know.
But it seems to me that we don’t find times in the Bible when God gets
upset when people ask questions. When we
did the sermon series on Moses, we saw Moses asking God questions all the
time. Abraham even bargained with God. God did not get upset. I don’t think God would’ve gotten upset if
Daniel or John or the disciples had asked why all this bad stuff has to happen
before the end comes. I don’t think God
gets upset when we ask why, either.
And we don’t
have to wait until the end times to ask that question, either. We see all kinds of things happening in the
world and we wonder, why? Why does God
allow so many bad things to happen? I
mean, some of them can be explained by God giving us the freedom to make
choices, and sometimes people make bad choices, and those bad choices affect
other people, sometimes lots and lots of other people. We get that.
We may not always like it, but we understand it.
But there are
so many other things that happen that had nothing to do with freedom of
choice. A young person gets cancer. A baby, the essence of innocence, gets some
terrible disease. An earthquake kills a
bunch of people. Those and lots of other
things happen all the time. And they’re
not anyone’s fault. They’re not the
result of a choice anyone made. They
just happened. From our point of view,
they happened totally at random. And we
don’t know why. And we want to know
why. Sometimes we cry out to God, in
anguish or in anger or in all kinds of other emotions. Why, God?
Why did you allow this to happen?
Even if you did not cause it, you could’ve stopped it. Why did you not stop it?
Again, I don’t
think God gets upset when we ask why. I
don’t see times in the Bible when God gets upset when people ask why. But here’s the thing. I also don’t see times in the Bible when God
answers that question. I don’t see times
in the Bible when God tells us why. So
that leads to another question. Why does
God not tell us why?
I can think of
reasons. It could be that we would not
understand the answer if God told it to us.
After all, God is God. God is
greater and wiser and can see farther and knows more than we ever can. Maybe it’s like when I took calculus in
college and they tried to explain differential equations to me. I’m sure differential equations make sense if
you can understand them, but I never could.
I was totally lost. I got a C in
the course mainly because the professor liked me and felt sorry for me. So maybe that’s why God does not tell us
why: because we would not be able to
understand the answer if God gave it to us.
Or it could be
that if we knew the answer we still would not be satisfied. After all, when we have a terrible tragedy,
when we’ve lost everything or, even worse, lost a loved one, there’s no answer
to why that’s going to satisfy us. Even
if we assume that God has good reasons for setting up the world the way God
did, in that moment, there’s no reason that would be good enough to explain why
such a terrible thing happened. So maybe
that’s why God does not tell us why:
because we would not like the answer if we knew it.
Or it could be
that if we knew why, it would mess up God’s plan in some way. Maybe it’s sort of like when you read a
couple of chapters of a story and then skip to the ending. Have you ever done that? The rest of the story is never as good when
we do that. There’s no excitement to
it. There’s no discovery. We may go ahead and read the rest of the
story, but it loses its impact, because we already know what’s going to
happen. So maybe that’s why God does not
tell us why: maybe at least part of the
point of our lives is in the living of them, and so God does not want to spoil
the ending for us by explaining why.
I don’t
know. Any of those answers could be
correct. Or they could all be so far off
base that it’s laughable. Because the
fact is that I don’t know why things happen, and I don’t know why God does not
tell us why. I don’t know why bad things
are happening now. And I don’t know why
so many bad things are going to have to happen before the end comes.
So what does
that mean for us? Since we don’t know
why, and we don’t know why we don’t know why, what are we supposed to do?
It seems to me
that this is where the choice comes.
This is where we make a decision about our faith. Are we going to decide that a loving God
would never allow these things, and so either God does not exist or God is not
the loving God we’ve been told about? Or
are we willing to accept that God is there and that God loves us, and that
there is some good reason God allows these things to happen, even though we
don’t understand that reason and we never will?
These are not
questions we should take lightly. I
mean, we’re in church on Sunday morning, and so we know the answer we’re
supposed to give. But we need to really
think about it. If we don’t, if we just
give the answer we’re supposed to give, then we may not be ready when a
tragedy hits. We need to think about it
ahead of time. Are we willing to trust
that God is there and that God loves us even when we don’t understand why
things happen and we never will?
No one can
answer that question for anyone else. I
cannot answer it for you and you cannot answer it for me. I’ll be happy to talk about it with you, but
I cannot answer it for you. Each one of
us has to answer that question for ourselves.
And maybe
that’s why God does not tell us why.
Because God does not tell us to understand. God asks us to believe. God asks us to trust. God asks us to have faith. And faith and trust, by definition, involve
not knowing everything there is to know.
I don’t have a
nice, neat conclusion to this message. As
I said, each of us has to make our own decision about this. But I do have one more thing for you to think
about.
As I was
working on this message, I remembered something I read years ago. I don’t remember who wrote it. But they said that, while it’s okay to ask
why, we know we’ll never get an answer.
So, instead of asking why, we should ask what. When bad things happen, what can we do to
help?
That’s a
question God will answer. If we try hard
enough, and if we open our hearts to God’s leading, we can always find some way
to help. And to the extent we can know
why we’re here, that’s why. To
help. To help each other. To be there for each other. To love each other, the way Jesus told us to.
It’s okay to
ask questions we’ll never get answers to.
But let’s remember to ask the question we will get an answer to. And when we have the answer, let’s act on
it. And who knows? Maybe doing that will help us be able to
accept not knowing why.
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