What a

beautiful story and just if you’ve thought about that for a while, if it’s been something that you’ve gone back and forward on, a couple of pieces of encouragement for you. You heard from Jackie, there’s just joy in the experience of it. My, my own story has some similarities some ways in which God showed up in my life in new and profound ways.

found ways, it changed my relationship with him and again, like to hit the same notes that Jackie hit for us there but maybe a last piece is just simply, it’s a practice of obedience. One of the things about spirituality is it’s not always manufacturing feelings. It’s not even trying to just learn stuff.

It’s actually just giving God opportunities to show up in your life in new ways. If you’ve never got baptized, my huge encouragement would be to take that step to just join in what God is doing through that process. And for those of us that are watching that week, we get to relive our baptism stories, to re experience those moments which God spoke into our lives.

If you are catching up, if you either haven’t been here for a while, or you’re new this week, last week, we are in a series. On the book of Rev Book of Technology, Revelation. There we go. Kind of tracking through what I like to call the the foothills of the book. This is a long book, it is complicated.

There’s a reason most of the time we just avoid it. The lectionary, the kind of system by which some churches go through scriptures, in the Eastern Church, has no passages from the Book of Revelation. It just gets so complicated that a lot of people just say, let’s just hold. This part we’re in right now, these seven churches, if this feels complex, we’ll wait till you get after the seven churches.

This is like the easy territory we’re just making our way through and last week We looked at this church called Sardis, this church that had a reputation that was wonderful, but actually, internally there was a whole bunch of stuff going on. They were asleep, and so what it challenged us to do is to look for ways that within our life we may have the same problem, but for different reasons.

What is it that maybe, if you’re honest, would say, this kind of sends me through life in this comatose, Kind of way. It just enables me to switch off onto autopilot where you know that feeling that you have where you drive somewhere And you can’t remember how you got there. You’re just like, I just arrived.

No, neither do I. I don’t do that either, but clearly I’m the only one. But that can be how you live life at times. And so somewhere that the message, the strong word of Jesus to this church was to wake up. And maybe there’s ways that sleeping through life, just living life just day after day without realizing where we’re going, maybe it loses that attitude of love.

If love is the family likeness, For followers of Jesus and it’s the family language than actually waking up. Maybe restores some of that. So this week we move on to another church, the Church of Philadelphia. So I’m gonna read you a passage and then we’re gonna move into this text, which is different tone to the ones that we’ve just read.

So if you are following along in scripture, if you’d like to turn to Revelation chapter three verse. 7. To the angel of the church in Philadelphia. These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens, no one can shut. What he shuts, no one can open. I know your deeds.

See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. I will make those of you who are, those of, I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan who claim to be Jews, though they are not, but are liars, I will make them come and fall down at your feet, and acknowledge that I have loved you.

Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. I am coming soon. That’s a prominent, that’s a great note for that. I am coming soon. Hold on to the, To what you have so that no one will take your crown.

The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write on them the name of my God, the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God. And I will write on them my new name. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Let us pray. Jesus, would you speak to us? Would you unlock this text for us? Would you let us hear your heart? This church experiences suffering. And in this room, there’s probably those of us that feel the same. Life right now is not the picture we painted for it. It’s not the imagination we carried in our heads.

And there were all sorts of tensions arriving out of that. For those that came in feeling afflicted, would you bring comfort? And as we often pray for those that are comfortable, would you bring affliction? to the angel of the church in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is the penultimate letter of these seven churches.

Before we get into the text, I want to go back to an interpretative theory that I gave you maybe on week one, maybe on week two, what might be called a hermeneutic lens, because if you’ve been around Revelation at all, if you jumped in on a class, you’ve probably heard all sorts of ways that this book is read, and some of them are honestly good, and some of them I’m saying, I don’t know about that particular.

theory, so I don’t want to overly critique any, I don’t want to overly endorse any. We’re going with what I call the eclectic approach, but occasionally when one comes along that really seems out of whack with the purpose of the letter, it’s my job to bring that to light a little bit. Knowing that I could be wrong.

There’s a theory, that each of these seven churches reflects a particular moment in time. And as we get to the last two, it’s the moments that we live in right now, our particular cultural moments. And so it’s easiest, easy for us to look at them and say, Does that seem like it’s true?

Does that not seem like it’s true. So this theory would hold that the Church of Ephesus, back at the beginning, is like the early church period up to about 200 A. D. And that each of the churches represents a chunk of time. Thyatira, nothing really happened for a few hundred years. And then we move to Sardis and then we get to Philadelphia, which in line with this theory would represent the 19th century church.

What you might call a faithful church. During that time period, there was this revolutionary, revolution in missionary activity. Suddenly, churches that had never sent missionaries anywhere were sending missionaries all over the world. In about 1793, William Carey went out to India from Great Britain. He was the first modern missionary.

And over the next hundred years, this process took off. So you may look at that and say, huh, maybe Alex is wrong. Maybe there’s more to this theory than meets the eye. That looks like a faithful church. But now, move to the seventh church that we’ll cover next week. In this theory, this church represents the church from about the mid 20th century, about 1950 60, all the way to If there’s no end to history immediately, we’ll have to cover a whole bunch of time yet to come.

That may be a problem. But it also is picked for this particular area of history because we’re told we are the lukewarm church. A reference that will appear in the next letter. A church that’s half hearted, a church that’s somewhat disinterested. Now, here’s the problem with this. Sure, there could be people within this community, it could be this community in general, that are somewhat half hearted about faith.

But remember back to that last church? That last church planted churches all over the world. In Africa, in Asia, in the Middle East, all over the place, South America. Guess what you might not say? About those churches, that they’re lukewarm. Those churches are deeply passionate in love with Jesus. They are sharing him all over the place and Christianity in those places is growing and flourishing to the point that people now start to say things like maybe the center of Christianity is now in the global South, not where it once was.

When you read this particular view, you know what it tells you by nature? It tells you that God’s eyes most prominently on the Western world, most prominently on countries like America, like Britain. Most interested in what is happening in church is here today. And yet there’s this whole rest of the world that is continuing to follow the way of Jesus, that are deeply immersed in living out His way at great cost to themselves.

So there is a hermeneutic key for you. If you ever come across a theory of revelation that kind of makes us, The center of everything. Can I take a pause and say, is that right? If you ever come across a theory of revelation that takes Jesus out of the center of it, again, take a pause and ask whether that really is a helpful.

theory. The church of the world today is not necessarily lukewarm, even if the church of the West is. With that, on to the church of Philadelphia. Keep in mind this kind of hermeneutic key I gave you, which was the book of Revelation wanted to help us stay faithful even in hard times. So as a question, this is something that I ask regularly.

How do Jesus words in each of these churches speak to the history and context of that place? So once again, we’re going to go back into the history of Philadelphia and track with that for a little bit. Now, if you are brand new to church, with no judgment whatsoever, let me just say this.

The letter to the church in Philadelphia is not written to a city in Pennsylvania in America in the 21st century. As important as that city might be, there are actually about 24 different Philadelphias all over the world. If you are from Philadelphia and you had this moment where you’re like, I thought we were in scripture a little bit.

That was really nice. Or I thought we were the only Philadelphia. You are the only Philadelphia with a statue of Rocky Balboa and a Liberty Bell. So that’s something to be said. You got that guy right there. This Philadelphia is out in what is now modern day Turkey. I did throw a picture of Rocky Balboa there for you, just In case I forgot that important point.

This Philadelphia is not famous for things like that. It’s famous for a couple of things. It’s famous for sultanas, raisins. If you think raisins are humiliated grapes, and you’re not interested in them, then you wouldn’t like this Philadelphia. This Philadelphia is famous for raisins, but also for earthquakes.

It had this huge earthquake in about 17 AD, which really just leveled the whole of the city. And if you remember, there’s been a few times we’ve talked about these towns and we’ve talked about these moments, these events that really stuck in people’s minds. They became part of their narrative. Hold that in your mind for just a second.

This earthquake. for Philadelphia, distinctly important. Now for a moment, let me pull together a few other threads of history, which really, it seems, speak into what this church is experiencing and what Jesus words to them mean, because there’s a few different things. During this time, the Roman Empire is the dominant empire of its day.

After an earthquake in Philadelphia, in about 17 AD. One of the Roman emperors sent them specific aid to help them rebuild. Another emperor said that we’re gonna, we’re just gonna remove taxation from you for a while, we’re gonna let you flourish as a city again, we’ve seen what’s happened, we’ve seen the problems, we’re gonna create ways in which you might return back to the place that you were.

Because of this, The people of Philadelphia, the city, became deeply passionate about the Roman Empire. To them, they became essentially just pure Romans. They were like, this empire has come in and rescued us when we were at the lowest. Now to show your love for the Roman Empire during these specific periods, one of the things you might do was to show distinct hatred for followers of Jesus.

There’d been a whole different series of events during that first hundred years of the Common Period that had shown like the Christians in a particularly bad light, especially where Rome was concerned. In about 60 A. D. There was an emperor of Rome called Nero. He became emperor at about 17 years old.

He was someone who was particularly wasteful. He lived a life of plenty. He did whatever he wanted. He had some rulers that took care of some things, but he really just said, I’m just going to do what I want to do. If you are familiar with cartoon movies, he was actually somewhat like this guy from Emperor’s New Groove.

He just lived. He just, he was who he was. If you took Nero and combined him with Mermar Gaddafi, who was the ruler of Libya, you have something like a perfect picture of Nero. Gaddafi brought independence. to the nation of Libya. He was loved by many people in Libya. We’re a fan of independence, right?

Otherwise, I know a guy called George who would like to come back and make a return visit. Picture this kind of going on. There’s this kind of ruler in the Empire of Rome, and so as he is ruling Rome, he gets very casual about the way he operates, and at one point has some people burn down a whole section of the city of Rome.

About three districts are destroyed completely. About ten of the fourteen districts of Rome are heavily damaged. And then Right after the fire, he pulls out architectural plans for a new palace for himself right in the middle of those sections. It was, like, very convenient that he had these plans put aside all the time.

After starting the fire of Rome and realizing how unpopular he’d become, he decided to blame it on one specific. And he picked the easiest target he had. He picked Christians. So imagine this, you’ve got this group of people in Philadelphia who are very loyal towards Rome, very thankful for what Rome has done.

Then you’ve got this kind of crazy kind of ruler who has hated Christians deeply, has started a persecution of Christians, and so that all comes into this cauldron of how Christians might be treated in Philadelphia. And then, third kind of Strand of history for you during this first hundred years Ad there’s this thing called the Jewish diaspora.

It’s this way that Jewish people moved from Jerusalem because of the Roman Empire all over this part of the world. They started migrating to all sorts of different places when Rome destroyed Jerusalem in about 70 ad, this increased more and more, so more Jewish people, more synagogues in all sorts of different parts of the world.

These three strands. all come together to speak to what is happening in Philadelphia, this city in Turkey, in this mod, in this period that we’re talking about right now. The people there love Rome. There are Jewish people that have built a synagogue, and some of those people make up the first converts.

The missionaries have come into town. They’ve shared with a group of Jewish diaspora that they found the Messiah and that they should follow the way of Jesus. And then, there’s been this moment where the rest of the Jewish people in the synagogues have said we’re going to show our love and support for Rome.

We’re going to throw those Christians out of the synagogue. We’re going to move them to the outside. I know they’re a whole bunch of somewhat complicated strands of history, but they all come together to have a small group of Christians, about twelve dozen, about three dozen maybe, who were removed from the synagogue and pushed to the outside of society.

The people within that synagogue have continued to preach a message that to be in God’s favor, you must be in the synagogue. But the Christians are now on the outside looking in. If you’re new to the history of South, you might say that South has experienced some of that This is a picture of Old South, 1700 Grant Street.

In about 17, 1979, the Church of South Fellowship was removed from its denomination. It was this experience of being pushed to the outside, where there were no bank accounts, no buildings, just It’s a similar experience to what is going on right here. Hopefully it gives you some kind of understanding to it.

So just to summarize, small group of Christians, three dozen maybe about 30, 35, outside of the synagogue, feeling like the whole world is against them, feeling like nobody’s in support of them, deeply persecuted, wondering what is going on here. Now knowing that history, Read the words of Jesus to this people in the first century A.

D. To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. Now if you can remember back to the first chapter of Revelation, again I know we’re multiple weeks back and you may not have even been there, you can go back and listen to the sermon because it gives a framework for the whole And series, but when you go all the way back there, that there is references that constantly get picked out by the different letters.

The writer will go back and he’ll take something that was said about Jesus in the first chapter and he’ll say it here. Here he does that, but he changes it just a little bit. Who holds the key Instead of talking about the keys of death and Hades, he says specifically it’s the key of David. A very Jewish kind of theme, a reference back actually to Isaiah 22 where he talks about giving a particular person the keys of David.

And then follows up with this idea that what he opens, no one can shut. And what he shuts, no one can open. Imagine yourself for a moment being that first. century group of followers of Jesus. You’ve been removed from a synagogue, which was the place of worship. You find yourself on the outside looking in.

What might you want to know about your situation? We might want to know who’s really in control here. Who has the power? And so what Jesus tells them is distinctly important in relation to power. I have a wonderful story to share with you about my beautiful little two year old, Leo. My wife, I was going to say us and make it corporate, just parents in general, but I’m, I’ve already said it, was out shopping with Leo the other day and they were returning back to the car and Leo’s going through this particular age where he’s somewhat rambunctious about going into a car seat.

I don’t know what different generations did about that, maybe there was like spanking, maybe there was yelling, but we’re Millennial parents, so we don’t do anything like that. So in the midst of this protest about going back into a car seat, my wife decided to hand him the car keys. This is a picture of our car key.

And as she shut the door and went to open her door, in that split second, Leo grabbed this key, And he pressed the lock button, his favorite thing to do right now. He loves to press the lock button just to make it beep beep, for a two year old. And of course, there’s, like, how do you problem solve this?

So my wife went into brilliant problem solving mood. She called our neighbor, who is present, and said, Is there any way that you could come and you could save us by bringing us the spare car key? And then she called our tenant. Nearly teenager and said can you find the car key and she came up with a brilliant solution of her own She’s like when you just smash the window of the car.

It’s like that’s a generational problem You guys are gonna have to that’s full panic mood We’re just if it was Leo and a great white shark in the car, then maybe we’d see Smash the window, but right now that’s a little bit above where we need to respond. And so there was a call made and then there was a decision that the key would be bought to Laura and that we would be able to open the car and we’d be able to free our two year old.

And then during that space, during that time, that dead zone, what did Leo do? He continued to hold the key fob and continued to press only the lock button and none of the other buttons, all of which would have either opened doors, opened trunks, or unlocked the car, anything that would have been helpful, but just one key and one key only, one key and one key only.

Why did he do that? Because somewhere internally a two year old or nearly two year old knows this. He who holds the keys

has the power. Keys and power. Across history, the two go hand in hand. We talk about now giving the key of the city to someone. Somewhere this, somewhere here, there’s this moment where there’s keys and powers that connect. Jesus says to this church that is on the outside looking in, I am the one that holds the keys.

I open doors that nobody can shut, and I shut doors that nobody can open. He then goes on to follow the pattern that he’s followed for the other five letters. I know your deeds. Usually, this is followed by what? Some kind of comment on their behavior that is corrective. Some kind of insight into either you, have a reputation for being alive, but really, you’re dead.

Something that says, do better. In this case, there is nothing that says, do better. To this church that is persecuted, this church that is struggling, he gives only praise. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. This tends to, this kind of language tends to speak to some level of potential or opportunity that Jesus is giving to a particular church.

It’s used in other parts of the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians, Paul says this, for there is a wide open door for me to preach and teach here. Open door. In 2 Corinthians 2, it says, when I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, the Lord opened a door of opportunity for me to a first century group.

Immediately they would hear open door and we have been, we have a door of opportunity opened for us. And they follow through. They go through that door of opportunity, and the church eventually will grow. This is a, the ruins of a 6th century church in Philadelphia, which was one of the most beautiful buildings created in that area.

Ruined now, at the time. Beautiful. The church had expanded, had grown, had become a significant part of the city. Jesus says to them in his words, I’ve opened a door, follow it through. keep working. I know that you have little strength and yet you have kept my word. And have not denied my name. Again, all sorts of praise for this church that is suffering, this church that is struggling.

Again, we’re going to get to some complicated stuff now. I’m going to read through it fairly breezily, but we’re going to wrestle with it on our podcast that we do in the week. I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews, though they are not, but are liars, I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.

This surprising twist. Following an Old Testament where all sorts of passages say that God will bring the Gentiles to bring down to the Jews, bow down to the Jews, now there’s this language here that Gentiles A reversal of that, at least in this particular situation. Again, far too complicated to unpack in the few minutes we have trying to get through this whole letter.

Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. To a church that is struggling, a church that has been removed to the margins, Jesus says, I am watching out for you. I am watching out for you.

For those that have persecuted, I will bring an apology, at least of some kind. To those that are against you, I will vindicate you. In the midst of your suffering, I will stop more suffering. All sorts of promises that all seem to reflect God’s particular care for this church. In a way that seems distinct from some of the other churches.

I am coming soon. Not necessarily coming soon as in a date, but when I come, I will come quickly. I won’t be delayed by anything is perhaps the tone of the Greek language. Hold on to what you have so that no one will take your crown. To this church that is suffering, this church on the margins, he asks nothing other than to stay.

Stay faithful. Stay faithful. And then he makes a promise that seems deeply tied to the history of Philadelphia. The one who is victorious, I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. If you are in a town with a history of earthquakes, what do you know about buildings?

They don’t last forever. In an earthquake in this ancient world, one of the big buildings would have been the least safe places to be. Some of the smaller homes may survive, but these big structures were almost certain to fall, and yet the picture painted for them is this preferred future with a building that will not fall, that will last forever, and they will be forever.

a part of it. Never again will they leave this building, because this building is permanent. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God. And I will also write on them my new name. To a church on the margins, on the edge of society that has been faithful.

God gives constant promises. I am with you. I am for you. I see you. No demands, no judgment, simply one day. All of this will be restored. And then he finishes, as is the pattern, with these words, Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. All of that, for a church, a couple of thousand years ago, must have been deeply encouraging and important to hear.

They have stayed faithful, even when life is at its worst, and the constant promise of Jesus is, I am with you, I am for you. But here’s the question that we turn to every week. What does that mean to you and I? Sure, it’s nice history. It’s good. It was important for them to hear. But in the midst of that, is there a message for us?

It’s been somewhat easy for us to track with letters that say, do this better. This is a corrective message for you. We get to be obedient to the strong word of Jesus last week of wake up. We get to figure out how we might be sleeping. But to you and I in 2024, what does this mean? Given that you and I are unlikely to be removed from a synagogue.

Given that we’re not any longer part of a denomination, so no one can kick us out of a denomination, and given that although we meet in a strip mall, we own the strip mall, and so the church isn’t going anywhere, what does it mean for you and I to hear these words in 2024? I would suggest there’s a couple of things that are hidden in the text.

That are designed to be encouraging and I’m gonna use some complex words we have a podcast to talk about this, but I think that this offers us a Theology for theodicy and a praxis for living out the way of Jesus. And yes, our podcast is on Thursday So send any questions you have because I’m sure to leave some questions Lying there.

Remember we’re asking constantly in Revelation. How do we stay faithful to God? in difficult times. How do we stay faithful in hard? And you may not know it, but somewhere in your mind, you, I would suspect, have a reason or an explanation for suffering in the world. It may not be particularly well formed, but it’s there lurking somewhere in the background.

You figured out a way to make And the question we would ask there is it something that’s in line with scripture? Or have you picked that theory up from some other place in history? Because there’s a couple of theories that float around, that sound kind of Christian. But when we push on them a little bit more, They may not be so Christian.

And I suggest this gives us a real response to the problem of suffering both in our own lives and in the world. For most of history, for a long time, the idea behind suffering looked something like this. It’s called the Retribution Principle. So if you think back to if you know anything about the Book of Job, the Book of Job in the Old Testament is a book about a man who suffers deeply.

His life is wonderful, everything is in line with what was considered blessed for that time period. He has a big family, he has wealth, he has everything that he might want. And then he systematically loses all of it. God gives this character, the accuser or Satan, free reign to do whatever he would like.

And Job loses his children, loses his wealth, his wife grows to despise him, his brothers want nothing to do with him, he’s covered with painful sores, and finally at the end, he begins to lose his faith. In the midst of that, He receives three friends who come to comfort him. I think these friends may actually be the origin of the idiom.

With friends like that who needs enemies, they come and they give him all sorts of advice. And they assume this, they assume that what has happened to Job is a verdict. That God has given a verdict over Job and now they are this retroactive jury who is going to look around in Job’s life and figure out what exactly did he do wrong that led God to punish him.

Because they know one thing for certain, that this retribution principle is sure. Those that are faithful and good. will be rewarded with good things, with wealth, with money, with fame, all those sorts of things. And those that have not will be punished. So they’re sure that somewhere they’ll find that Job is guilty of something, and that explains his life.

That was their way of understanding the world. Why bad things happen to people in the world. And yet, as we push at the story of Job, we find out that isn’t quite the case. One, there’s this restoration of everything that Job had before, although with some caveats there that we don’t have. time for. We read in Job 42, the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends.

And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before came to him and they ate bread with him in his house and they consoled him and comforted him over all the distressing adversities that the Lord had brought him. There’s this moment when Job is given back everything that he has without any concrete repentance for anything he’s done.

wrong. There’s this moment where this retribution principle seems to be denied by God. in the story of Job. The writer, John Walton, who is not a relation, before you ask, says this. When Job believed that his understanding of the world and how it worked could be reduced to a single model, the retribution principle, his suffering took him by surprise and was without explanation.

How could such a thing happen? Why would God do this? The book is full of Job’s demand for an explanation. When God finally appears, He does not offer an explanation, but offers a new insight to Job by comforting Job with the vast complexity of the world. God shows that simplistic models are an inadequate basis for understanding what He is doing in the world.

We trust His wisdom rather than demanding explanations for all that we observe in the world around us and in our own life. For a whole world that believed that God dealt with you based on how good you were, this offered a different insight. That life was simply more complex than that. Sometimes things happen to people who didn’t seem to deserve them.

Both good and bad. For those that seem to be bad and bad that seemed for those that seemed to be good So this kind of card this kind of framework for seeing suffering disappeared somewhere around 500 BC or something like that and some of the teaching of Jesus seems to speak to that specifically But it was replaced by one that’s even more common in the church today.

And it’s this one, the Meticulous Providence Theory. This theory says that somewhere God is there playing with every single detail of what goes on in the world. And that if something goes wrong in your life, it’s simply because God wanted it to happen for reasons of his own. On the surface, this one sounds really spiritual, sounds really wise.

It’s even rooted in some brilliant writers over history, people far smarter than I am. Augustine of Hippo says, of the world and of God particularly, the will of the omnipotent is never defeated. The omnipotent God never does anything except his own free will, and never wills anything that he does not perform.

What does that mean? I That if God wants something to happen, He’ll make it happen. If God wants you to suffer for a particular reason, He’ll make you suffer. If God wants evil to come upon you, He’ll make evil come on you. It paints a picture of a God who is in control of everything, which on one hand can seem comforting.

But is that what scripture says about God after all? In actual fact, this kind of thinking produces all sorts of statements that become a modern part of life that maybe you have thrown out yourself. Maybe statements like this, God has a plan. Everything happens for a reason. God is in control. Maybe these kind of things have actually made faith seem particularly hard for you.

It’s made me, made it particularly hard for you to trust God in the day to day life. There’s again, maybe this moment of comfort where you hear and say that sounds encouraging, but as you wrestle with it further, you start to ask more and more. Again, as we poke at this theory, there’s some holes in this one throughout the New Testament.

Have a look at these couple of passages and see how it makes you question this particular theory that has a good voice in the world. In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus taught us to pray this way. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Why pray this if God’s will is always done in every little detail?

Why be taught to pray, God, I want your will to be done here in this specific place, this world. In a way that he’s done in heaven It seems to suggest from the mouth of jesus that there’s aspects of this world that are not god’s particular Will that he isn’t willing particular things to happen and our calling for you and me is to pray Against those things pray for god’s will to be done in heaven The writer Greg Boyd, who I agree with on some stuff, now on some other stuff, says this.

One, when one possesses a vital awareness that in between God and humanity there exists a vast society of spiritual beings who are quite like humans in possessing intelligence and free will, there is simply no difficulty in reconciling the reality of evil with the goodness of the Supreme God. It virtually sidesteps the problem.

When we start to understand that the world around us in some ways reflects what God wants and in some ways doesn’t reflect what God wants we start to get a window maybe into the reality of things that maybe The actual kind of lens for seeing suffering looks something more like this that there’s something like unorder Something like order and something like disorder.

Let me explain that really quickly based on human history. When we read Genesis 1, we read a world that is unordered. It’s described as chaos. It’s messy, there’s things that are out of place. And what happens in Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis 2? God begins to bring order to this unordered world. He starts to, in partnership with humans, bring it to transformation.

You have part of it that’s unordered. And this small haven of God’s order in this place called Eden. And it seems the mission of these first followers of Jesus is to, in partnering with God, sorry, first humans, is to, in partnership with God, see this Eden expand until it fills the whole world and the whole world lands in that place of God’s order.

And then there’s this moment where there’s this human decision that brings, not an order, not order, but order. But disorder. Think about how you see the world now with that framework. Other ways that sometimes you see what looks like unorder. Ways in which you see the way that weather patterns affect particular people.

Ways in which you see just the brokenness of the world, or the chaos of the world affect particular people. Maybe the way that diseases develop. Maybe the way that they impact some people and not others. Is that an order? Maybe it certainly doesn’t seem like order. And then what about disorder?

The way is people introduce suffering into this world through their decisions or experience it through other people’s decisions. Maybe disorder looks like the moment you get fired from a job because you simply spent more time on Instagram than you spent on Excel. That’s not God’s plan. for your life.

That’s you making a decision that leads to disorder. There’s times that we look at the world and say that clearly seems like un order. Other times where we see God is wonderfully bringing order into this place. And other times where a human decision inserts disorder into this world. What this framework does is it means we start to get to look at a world that says God longs for order.

And sometimes he incredibly, in partnership with humans, brings new order out of disorder, out of the decisions of particular human beings. And slowly, one day, completely, he’s going to take away unorder, and everything will be under this beautiful realm of God’s rule. It will be the Eden that was supposed to be.

But somewhere, this theory does something else. It frees us up from the idea that every time we see a particular suffering, that God crafted that suffering for somebody to experience. Because when we look at the world like that, that ultimately gets to a point where we look at a particular situation, and we say, I don’t know how to worship a God that did that.

There’s always a particular version of evil that breaks our ability to write it all off as just evil. God’s plan what that is for you may be true for you and not for somebody else But ultimately everyone gets to a point saying I don’t know how to encompass this in God’s good world I don’t know how to encompass what was done to me by somebody else in God’s good world.

I need a different framework Go and read, if you love scripture, go and read something like Romans 8 with this framework in mind and start to see how it makes a whole bunch of sense of the way that the world operates. A world of chaos that God is bringing to order, but humans who make decisions that bring disorder is far more robust than a theory that says simply God is controlling every flap of every butterfly’s wings, every detail of every human interaction.

Something scripture, by the way, never says of God. Far better than the retribution principle that says it’s just about how you happen to choose to live and if you’re good, God will be good to you, and if you’re not, He’ll be bad to you. All of those theories somewhere fail somewhere, but somewhere when we start to look at a world that God is bringing new order to through people like you and I, it suddenly starts to feel like it makes sense.

For those that are in suffering, what we see here is a God who is particularly present. with you in those moments. Not excusing evil, not claiming it as his own decision, but simply saying I am with you when you are at your lowest. One day I will bring all things to order. For those of us outside of suffering right now, we get to live part of God’s mission in, yes, bringing order to a world that is unordered.

But be willing to sit ourselves with those who are at their lowest points as the way of Jesus The writer gustavo. Gutierrez said this to be followers of jesus requires that we walk with and be committed to the poor When we do we experience an encounter with the lord who is Simultaneously revealed as hidden in the faces of the poor.

To a whole bunch of writers over a whole bunch of years in all sorts of different streams, they began to look at what Jesus did and reflect on the fact that Jesus regularly says things like this. The good news of the gospel is preached to the poor. The sick are healed. The lost are found. They saw in the way of Jesus, a Jesus who was particularly present with those who were at their lowest and most broken points.

And the good news in that is for you, who might sit here saying, I sit in the midst of job loss, and I don’t know what to do next. I sit in the midst of suffering, of sickness, and I don’t know what is next. I sit in the midst of suffering, of sickness, and I don’t know what is next. I sit in the midst of heartache, of someone who I thought could trust, who showed themselves to be untrustworthy.

In the midst of that, it says, for you going through that, God is particularly close. to you. It’s as though he walked into this space and with his beautiful heart for those that are lowly, he walks these aisles and comes closest particularly to those that need him the most. And that we do his work when we do the same thing.

When we come alongside those that are at the most broken, most weak point of life. Look at those words again at the end of Revelation chapter 3. The one who is victorious, I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God.

And I will also write on them my new name. It’s all future orientated. There are promises that are given, but it’s all about presence. I see you. I am with you. I am with you. I am with you. To a church on the outside, looking in, a church on the margins, these were his words. And in the moments when we feel we’re outside of God’s zone of interest, what it tells us is that we are most in his zone of interest, that he sees us and is with us.

He promises one day, as Julian of Norwich beautifully says, that all should be well, and all should be well. And all manner of things shall be well. Today is not this day for many of us in this room, but in the midst of that, he is beautifully present, beautifully near to those that are broken hearted, hurting, and suffering.

I asked Aaron to play this particular song at the end. It’s a song of lament, a song of hurt, a song of broken heartedness. Thank you. If that’s you, sit in these words. If you’d like to be prayed for, there are people that would love to pray for you, to come alongside you and speak God’s encouraging words over your heart.

If you feel like God has forgotten you, that he is uninterested, be reminded, along with this church 2, 000 years ago, that God is particularly close to those that are brokenhearted.

Jesus, as we sit in this moment, I know for certain, some of my brothers and sisters, my friends here, there’s a deep pain, a deep question of where are you in this particular moment? They weren’t thrown out of synagogues or moved to the fringes of society, but inside it feels like you maybe have forgotten that if this is your plan, it feels like a horrible plan.

God, you created a world that for whatever reason seemed like it was had a moment of unorder and you began to put that world together. But we ruined that story through our own decisions as a humanity.

You’re still working, still present. Remind us that you’re present.