Understanding Suffering in Order to Rejoice

Welcome and greetings to all, keeping the Feast of Tabernacles from Lake Generaluska. Beverly and I are very happy to be here and enjoy the feast with longtime friends, with those in the ministry with whom we've served for decades, approaching even a half a century. We're very happy to be able to share this time with 60 festival sites around the world. So welcome and a happy feast to you. But just as you heard the music, I would like to have all of you give special greetings to the other 10,000 who are keeping the feast.

So let's say, Happy Feast of Tabernacles, okay? Happy Feast of Tabernacles! Okay, that was a good one. Let's do another one. Happy Feast of Tabernacles! Okay, well, I'm sure that all the people who are listening at this time appreciate the 500-plus who are keeping the feast here in Lake Generaluska. I'd like to also give a shout-out to our family who's keeping the feast in Cincinnati. This Feast of Tabernacles is observed in all five continents, and we do appreciate the work that's been put into making it possible in all these areas.

We prepare for the feast for an entire year, and it takes a lot of work, a lot of preparatory work to make the Feast of Tabernacles a great success. And the Feast of Tabernacles is not just for adults, it's not just for representatives from churches, it's for the entire family, you and your household. It includes the newborn all the way to the most elderly of all. We make it possible for anybody who is able to attend to be able to be here with us, and we show them that honor by having activities, by socializing with them and making them included in everything that we do.

I've been following the UCGFOT hashtag with on Instagram and Facebook, and it's been so wonderful to see so many children enjoying the Feast of Tabernacles in different places around the country and being with their parents. Memories that are made for life. Also, I've enjoyed, I would say if there's any one thing that I've noticed about the Feast this year in talking to people that I have not talked to or have not met or have known for a long time, it's just the spirit of goodness and unity in the church.

Of people being so appreciative for what is being done through Beyond Today, what is being written in the preaching of the Gospel, and to see the church move forward with its mission as we approach the vision of making many sons and daughters.

The decades have brought a spirit of tempering of spirit and strength in our journey. The Apostle Paul often opened his letters with thankfulness and gratitude for the brethren. He wasn't talking about himself, he was saying, I thank God upon every remembrance of you. That was what was so important to him. Because the people are the church, the community, the church. And I'm thankful for all of you here, and pray for that the remainder of the Feast of Tabernacles continues to be joyous.

Each year from the President's Office, we send out six letters to our co-workers and subscribers. In my first letter this year, I asked our readers, and it included a special mail-in card. If you had one question that you could ask God, what would it be? Hundreds of responses came in.

I was overwhelmed by the number of people who had written in, and in their handwriting included they could offer a booklet, they could request a visit, whatever. But I was surprised as to how many wrote in. In fact, maybe that was the only thing that they sent in was their one question to God. Hundreds of responses came in, but what moved me most was the type of question that our co-workers asked.

By far, the largest category had to do with why God allows suffering and evil. They asked about suffering in the world. They asked about their own suffering and for their beloved ones. Why does God seem so silent?

Many, many questions. And here are some of them. Some of the questions. Why is there so much evil in the world, and you don't stop it? Another one. Where is God in our trials and tribulations? Another one. Why do you good, kind people suffer, and why do evil people prosper? Why did God allow evil to exist from the beginning of humanity? Another one. God, are you sad at the state of the world? Another one. Why am I a slave to people?

By the way, there are 46 million people involved in a worldwide enterprise of human trafficking. Here's a person who's a slave, who's somebody is exploiting them. They have no way out of that relationship. Why am I a slave to people? Well, why must we suffer, and what is the purpose and point of it? I even have another question. Why talk about this at the Feast of Tabernacles? This is supposed to be a time when we leave our cares behind. In fact, our TV isn't working in our house just right. We're glad. You know, we just put it aside. You know, it's been so relaxing not to know what's going on in the world except for the hurricane.

But when we're to leave our cares behind and rejoice, why do we want to talk about suffering?

Because we're talking and we're celebrating in advance a world when Jesus Christ is King of Kings. The desert shall blossom as the rose. There'll be a change in the nature of animals and people. So why talk about suffering at the Feast?

Well, we cannot deny the reality or ignore the reality of the sadness of our suffering planet. Suffering and evil affect every single one of us at different levels of intensity. And some of you have gone through unthinkable trials in the past year.

Just six days ago, the wife and daughter of one of my friends was in Las Vegas at the Country Music Concert. A hail of bullets came down upon them. They saw the daughter and the mother saw people shot to death right in front of them. Shot in the back. Bedlam, terror.

They were okay, but they were trampled and had to be hospitalized.

A horrible thing. That just happened six days ago, didn't it? Sunday.

We have all the horror that has taken place in wars. The weather patterns. Even the news. I was amazed on the newscast of saying something is really going on in this world. That's kind of different with all the evil and all the things that are sort of happening all at once. Earthquakes. I mean, you name it. It's a relief to be able to be by ourselves and to be able to celebrate and to have hope about something that is future. So, hence, my sermon title is Understanding Suffering in Order to Rejoice. You may have seen this title, but my sermon title is Understanding Suffering in Order to Rejoice because there is a bridge between this world and the world tomorrow that we must cross. We have to cross from this world into the next. Does a loving God use evil and suffering to accomplish a greater good? And, if so, how? How does he do it?

Now, those of us who have gone through various types of suffering, maybe intense this past year, need an explanation. We actually need more than an explanation. We need a hug.

We're looking to God to give us a hug. We need more than just platitudes. We need more than an explanation. Have you ever been hurting and you've gone to somebody to say, well, what did I do wrong? How come I'm hurting? And they say, well, here's why. A, B, C. They say, shut up. You know, give me a hug. I don't want to hear that. Well, I think that all of us need a hug from time to time in connection with, in addition to the things that we learn from them. We need comfort, not only in analysis and mere words. I might also say my I have a special interest in the subject of human suffering. I grew up in a DP family. That's a displaced person's family. My parents were refugees that came over from World War II Germany after living in a DP camp for four years. My parents were slave, teenage slave laborers from the USSR, who the Germans took in Operation Barbarossum, forcibly to work in German factories. And my father was in a concentration camp for a while and had to go through rubble after air raids and pick out unexploded ordnance.

I was born in that camp. I was two years old. My parents were looking for a home. They finally found a home in the United States. I grew up in the Ukrainian community of other immigrants that talked about the horrors of the war, the bombing, the suffering, the death of their friends. In fact, they talked about how lucky they were and about how unlucky so many others were.

My father was beaten in the concentration camp. He had a scar on his face.

Always reminded us of just the terror and the suffering that they had gone through.

Our priest, oftentimes referred to our group, our motley group of Ukrainians, there are 60 or 70 Ukrainians in St. Paul, Minnesota, is just God taking a shovel full of dirt out of Europe and shoving it across the Atlantic Ocean into a new world from the mud and mire of the horror of World War II. I grew up hearing all these stories and they made an impression upon me. What made an impression upon me is that what my parents were talking about, what their friends were talking about, was not something they saw in a movie. It was their lives is what they had gone through. And this has also motivated me to be involved with charitable work, with various non-profits and foundations and so forth. I wanted to help the disadvantaged and the vulnerable. But let's talk about this bridge between this world and the next. Because to understand the bright future ahead of us, we need to understand where we're coming from and the context of our times. In the opening night video, I read from Romans chapter 8. I'd like you to turn to Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8, because this is the bridge between where we are now to where we're going. The Apostle Paul also when he spoke to congregations and spoke about the hopeful world tomorrow and spoke about the future was not ignorant of the fact of what he lived in and what he had to suffer and endure and spoke of it quite often. Romans chapter 8 and verse 18. Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal in us. For the creation, for all creation, is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. So he was not denying the present, and he was giving a vision of the future. The creation, verse 21, looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning, as in the pains of childbirth, right up to the present time. And we believers also groan. He's talking about the fact of those of us who are baptized in the church, those who receive Beyond Today magazine, who attend services every week. We also groan, we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us. Even those of us who are converted, those of us who are leading a decent life, those of us who have the Holy Spirit, we groan as a foretaste of future glory. For we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We long for that. We want that to happen. And we have hope given to us by God by celebrating those days of when that new world will come. And yet we are still in the world that is the reality of what we're in. Now there are various reasons and answers that are given for suffering in for suffering's place in humanity. Many sermons have been given, many things have been said and written. What is the purpose and what is the point?

So much of the Bible is about this subject. Is the purpose in building character?

Is the result of cause and effect? Is suffering because of punishment of some sort? Testing, time and chance, learning, compassion, empathy, or humility? Or to become stronger? No pain, no gain. We suffer so that we could be stronger. Or is it God's will that we have suffering? When I talk to my relatives in Ukraine, anytime something bad happens and something is unpleasant, oh, it must be God's will. Not often do they bring up about God's will of having life and wonderful things, but whenever it's bad, it's God's will. Or is it learning a lesson similar to Job's in one of the longer books of the Bible, which is all about suffering? And there are many, many lessons from that book and many, many sermons have been given. And I'm sure that most of you have heard many sermons on the subject of Job. But you know something? I want to dig a little deeper this afternoon on this subject. I want to peel off that layer of the onion, and I would like to go to a layer deeper and just answer one other question, if anything, this afternoon. Because all those can be sermons, and our sermons can be a whole book. Where is God in all the pain? Where is God in all the pain? The question of human suffering is one for all religions and secular philosophers. Man has even defined deities to fit their understanding or lack of understanding of God's silence.

For example, there's pantheism. You've heard of pantheism. It's where God is everywhere and in everything. Pantheism regards the universe as a manifestation of God himself. He doesn't do anything for mankind or interacts with mankind, and neither does he expect anything for mankind.

He's the blob God. Then there's deism. It was an intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason, but rejected belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind. He's the snob God. He created us, but he's busy doing something else somewhere else, and we're all to ourselves. There are even fellowships that say that there is no pain. They're in a state of denial of pain itself, trying to find an answer for this human condition that I'm talking about today. Well, who's got the best answer?

And what is the point and purpose of suffering an evil? Who has the truth, and what is the truth?

The answer has been given to us right here. God is not silent. God is very, very loud, and he explains a very beautiful story, a very hopeful story, about what he is creating. While we want a macro answer for the entirety of the world is why is the world in the state that it's in. We also, every one of us, want a personal answer to our pain, our suffering, our injustice, hurt, anger, disillusionment, betrayals, and catastrophes. Why?

Genesis chapter 1. Let's start talking about the meaning of life 101, because the clues and answers about why evil and sufferings emerge right from the Garden of Eden shortly after the creation of man. For God himself, the story starts long before that, long before the Garden of Eden, about this subject that I'm talking about today. In Genesis chapter 1, right in the third verse, God said, let there be light, and there was light, and God saw the light that it was good. Created light, good. Verse 10. God called the dry land earth and the gathering together of the waters he called seas, and he saw that it was good. Verse 17. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness, and God saw that it was good. And on the sixth day, so God created man, verse 27, in his own image in his own image, that's us, to look like him, to have the capacity, certain characteristics of God.

In the image of God, he created him male and female. In verse 31, then God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. Everything that God had created was very, very good.

So then, where did evil come from?

Did God create evil? Would God create evil? No. Evil is not a thing. Everything that God created in the first chapter of Genesis was a thing. Everything was good. Evil is not a thing. Evil is what people do. Evil is the absence of good.

And the Bible very clearly tells us where evil comes from, Isaiah chapter 14. Isaiah chapter 14 speaks about the origins of evil. It had nothing to do with God in any way inciting it, or making it, or encouraging it, or in any way making it part of his plan. Isaiah chapter 14, verse 12. How were you fallen from heaven? O Lucifer, son of the morning, how were you cut down to the ground, who weakened, who damaged the nations? Verse 13. For you have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north. Okay. Verse 14. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most high.

Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest pits, depths of the pit.

You must cast down to the earth. And verse 16. Those who gaze at you and consider you will say, Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook the kingdoms, who made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed its cities? He's the one who has left the world in the mess that is in.

Lucifer was the embittered angel who wanted God's position and caused as much collateral damage as he could in the process, and he became Satan. That's where evil came from, of what Lucifer did.

Okay, let's move on to another lesson. I call it Meaning of Life 102.

In the dialogues that ensued between God and man in the Garden of Eden, God presents a choice to Adam and Eve. God gave Adam and Eve access to everything in the Garden of Eden, including the Tree of Life, and man was encouraged to eat from it. And by what it was called, Tree of Life, it suggests that by eating from it, it would perpetuate life. You keep eating it, you have more life. You have another fruit, you have more life, and life just continues.

But there was also the dangerous Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that had dire warnings attached to it. And God read those warnings to Adam and Eve. Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis chapter 2, verse 17. But of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you shall not eat. For in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. This is the first time that death is mentioned. God said that if you eat from it, you won't be the same.

You will come to a knowledge of something different from what you know now. You will become an altered being. If you taste it, you will suffer and you will finally die.

Don't do it! I advise you to choose life. Choose the Tree of Life that you can have access to.

This should have been a no-brainer. But man made a big mistake. Adam and Eve both disobeyed and made a choice of their own free will to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Nobody made them do it. Eve was, however, persuaded by the serpent in the Garden of Eden that it was okay to eat this forbidden fruit. But she made that choice, and so did Adam. As a result, they were immediately filled with shame, guilt, and regret. Shouldn't have done it.

As a consequence, as God had already warned them, they were expelled from the Garden of Eden, which was an environment like the Kingdom of God.

God lived with them, God dwelt with them, God talked to them, God was present, and they were thrust into another kingdom. Not a neutral kingdom, not a neutral territory, but they were thrust into the Kingdom of that serpent, the Kingdom of Satan, the Devil.

But as the story unfolds, what happened is much more than being expelled from the idyllic Garden of Eden. Much, much more. Because in Genesis 3 now, as we move on further in this narrative about what God is doing in the source of where we are now today, and where we're going, and what God has in plan for us continues here, in one of the greatest prophecies of all time, the first time that the Messiah, that Jesus Christ is prophesied. Prophesied. God addresses three people here, or three beings, addresses them in order of blame. First of all, He talks to the serpent, then He talks to Eve, and then He talks to Adam.

Verse 14, the Lord said to the serpent, verse 15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed, He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.

War is declared between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. There will be a continual struggle between righteousness and corruption, between the wicked and the godly in this world. That's what's going to continue on.

The seed of the woman was a reference to the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. It was not at that time.

I think Eve thought maybe it would be sooner they named everyone that came along by the name of God.

Included God's name in their name, but it wouldn't happen in their time. It didn't happen for a long time. It didn't happen for thousands of years. Notification is given in these verses of a saber coming in the flesh, His suffering, who would be bruised by the seed of the serpent, but also that this seed of Eve, of the woman, would overcome the seed of the devil.

Satan would bruise Jesus Christ by causing him to be crucified, but Christ would bruise Satan's head by rising from the dead and triumphing over him. Read here in verse 16 of Genesis 3. To the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain you will bring children.

Then to Adam, he said, Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of life, which I commanded you, saying you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground for your sake, in toil, in hardship, in unpleasant environmental conditions, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you will return. He's telling Adam, it's going to be hard and painful, and you will eventually die. Access to the tree of life is cut off. Now, human beings, when you think of us being created in the image and likeness of God, have extremely short lifespans, even going with Methuselah's 969 years. Lifespans that they had back then, that's nothing, and our lifespans are which are less than one-tenth of that now. Why couldn't humans just have a longer life?

Humans are like day lilies in this universe, and yet with a crowning creation of God.

Life is so sacred. Angels are immortal. They're around a long time. The 24 elders have been around for a long time. They're still alive. But we who have made an image and likeness of God, which is here today and gone. I just turned 70 years old this last week. Where have those years gone by? A child at Grandma's funeral said to her parent, Why does God create new people all the time? Why can't he just reuse the ones he's already made?

Smart little kid. Thinker. But God had a plan thought of long before the creation of man.

What was in the Garden of Eden was already prophesied. And God can predict. He can't determine, but he can predict. Because in Revelation 13, and in a few other places, there's evidence that God had something prepared long before for a particular and special purpose.

Revelation 3, all who dwell on the earth will worship Him, talking about the beast, whose names have not been written in the book of life, of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Reference to the Lamb. That's Christ, who was killed, who was projected to be killed, and it was decided long before the foundation of the world. Christ's coming in the flesh and sacrifice was planned long before the Garden of Eden. So, you know, brethren, we're not living out some kind of plan B, where God created Adam and Eve, put them in the Garden of Eden, and gave them this choice, and oh no, they made the wrong choice. Now what do we do? And so He just quickly hurried with this plan B. That was the plan that we're living right now, is what He had projected would come to be. And that's what we're in doing right now. God can predict, God can prophesy, but God cannot determine.

We now live in the kingdom and the world of Satan. You know, our life right now is not in the kingdom of God, but the thing is, is that we're also not in some kind of a neutral world. We're in the kingdom of Satan. This is His world. This is His turf.

The Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 2 writes the following about Christian responsibility and also Christian reality of what we do once we are converted, and once our eyes are opened. Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 1, and you He made alive, talking about Christians, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. I mean, we, before our conversion, before our eyes were opened, walked according to the prince of the power of the air. The Spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires in the flesh of the mind. Now, part of conversion is just getting away from that spirit of the power of the air, resisting it, and He will flee from you, putting it aside, being aware of the wiles of the devil, being aware of the one who is the author of destruction, deception, genocide, one who hates God, one who hates mankind. Satan hates you. He wants you dead. It galls him that we are alive. And he will invent any kind of conflict to get people to kill each other, to be at odds with one another. You know Jesus Christ, in His model prayer, the points that He made were very important. Our Father would chart in heaven, hell would be your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. But He also said, deliver us from the evil one. This is the very end. And maybe you won't even pray it long enough or often enough, because it's kind of a tail end. It's not. It's one of the cardinal, important points of the model prayer that we should be praying every day. God, deliver me, deliver my family from the evil one who hates me. This is a part of our resistance of the devil.

We're told to love not the world or the things in the world.

Do you know why we're not to love the world?

You know, why is it that we shouldn't love the world?

Because the world doesn't love you. The world hates you. The world wants your children.

The world wants your money. The world wants to see you fail.

The world wants to spam you. The world wants to hack into your life and destroy you.

You know, a good stockbroker will tell his clients, don't ever fall in love with your stocks. People say, oh, I love my Amazon. I love my Apple.

I'm never going to sell. I love those stocks. Never love your stocks, because they don't love you. They could walk you up a building and it puts you on an elevator and it'll take you to the bottom. And they don't care. And they will have no pity on you. The world does not love us. The world hates us.

And if we fail, it will have no pity on us at all. Well, let's talk more about free will, the ability to choose. People believe that there's conflict between God's goodness and God's power. If he was good, he'd want to get rid of all the evil in the world.

And if he was all-powerful, he'd be able to. It's one of the big philosophical questions.

But evil exists, and therefore, okay, God is either not good or he's not powerful, or he doesn't exist. Believe me, that's something we probably have gone past already and understand. But this has been the shipwreck of many people's faiths, including religious leaders, who've not been able to reconcile this particular, if you want to call it, argument. The number one objection to the Christian faith is, how could there be a loving God with so much pain and suffering in the world? Back in 2005, we were holding the Feast of Tabernacles in Tartu, Estonia. We had a very nice convention center on the river. And I noted that one of the days, there was a Rotary Club meeting in the restaurant that was attached to the convention center. So I thought I'd attend that meeting and be able to meet those people. And I did. In fact, that year, we had two or three of our services be public lectures. We advertised them in the town. We put posters up, things that we stapled onto telephone poles, come to our lectures, and we had people of all kinds that came to our services, which were in a very nice location. Well, at the meeting, they were very kind to me. They paid for my lunch. They said, who are you? I said that because you always expected as a guest to give a two, three minute icebreaker of who you are, who you represent. I told them that I was the pastor of the church that was holding the Feast of Tabernacles across the hall.

I told them that I was inviting every single one of them to our meetings, which would be held yet for several more days. Well, right after the meeting, the membership of this Rotary Club was mostly professors from Tartu University, the intelligentsia of the town. One of them came up to me and poked his finger into my chest. You! How can you speak of a loving God? This was just a few months after the tsunami, where two, three hundred thousand people perished. How can you believe in a loving God? Would that have taken place? How could God allow that? I said, look, sir, I said, I would love to explain that to you. I would love to have a dialogue on this subject, but he was more interested in pushing his disbelieving thought. I said, especially come to our last day service. I said, we really talk about the meaning of this in connection with God. Well, not that one of them came, but nonetheless, I wanted to talk to them about the fact that God is aware of this. God knows this, and God allows it. Many people think that God being all-powerful means that God can do anything, but the Bible is very clear that there are things that God can't do and that he won't do. For example, in Hebrews 6 and verse 18, the Bible teaches that God cannot lie. It is impossible for God to lie. It is impossible. He can't do it. That is not his nature. God will not break a promise. Write this verse down. Psalm 89.34, my covenant will I not break nor alter the thing that has gone out of my lips.

God won't change his mind. God won't alter an agreement that he's made or covenant that he's made.

God is love. You know, I rely on that very heavily. God can't just one day say, you know, I'm no longer love. I am hatred. God is love. He cannot be something different or something opposite. He cannot be evil or hateful. He is consistent and constant. But human beings can be good. They can be bad, and they can be both.

When you have moral freedom, there's a possibility for great good, but there's a possibility for great evil, as there was with Eve under the influence and duress of an evil spirit in the form of a serpent in the Garden of Eden. We have freedom.

You know, one thing is interesting that the immigrants that came over from Stalinist Russia to the United States, where they were oppressed, where their neighbors could tell on them they could be sent to Siberia and the Gulags. When they came to America, one thing that they noticed very, very quickly and right away was all the freedom that we had.

Then they saw all the things that were being done in this country. I'm talking about the 1950s, late 1950s and 1960s, as I remember as a 10-, 12-year-old boy. They said, you Americans have too much freedom. They're putting terrible things on television that they shouldn't. The thing in the question was a Mickey Mouse Club.

Well, things have considerably gone worse since that time. How can you have people wearing mouse ears? That you have freedom to do too many things. There's a point there. In fact, they said that this is the beginning, this is the end of civilization. I remember that.

If God creates human beings with the power of free choice, which he did, he may foreknow or predict what they are going to do, but he can't determine what they're going to do. Otherwise, they're not really free. Evil entered the world when people freely chose to withhold doing the wrong, the right thing, and instead did the wrong thing. So, if it was the free will of humans that actually caused evil, why didn't God just create a world where moral freedom didn't exist, where it wouldn't be there? And that way, evil and suffering wouldn't exist either. Wouldn't be like a world where there couldn't be evil and suffering, but also world without free moral choice? That would be the trade-off. God could have a world without evil by just taking away our free will to do it.

And he would say, well, I'm going to make you all puppets, and I'll pull the strings, and everybody will do things right. Wouldn't that be a beautiful world?

However, God wanted a race of tested individuals who choose to love him and to love others, who make that as a choice. You cannot love someone unless you have the choice to not love him. God is love, and love is a function of free will.

The sort of love that humans can give to God and one another is something which depends on them being able to do so from the bottom of their heart, from the bottom of our heart. As soon as it's forced, it's not love anymore. God wants us to love him because we do it because we want to.

So it's a good thing for God to create creatures with freedom because it opened up the ability that could actually express genuine love not only to God but to one another in the closest of relationships. You know, in science fiction there are oftentimes interesting scenarios about perfect worlds, you know, where people can't do wrong in perfect societies.

Futuristic societies that have eradicated suffering by technology, curing disease, eliminating war and poverty, controlling accidents, and sometimes conquering death by artificial immortality. In these stories, a society is always a colossal fake.

It's apparently happy but experiencing deep failure, looking humane but really inhuman.

And the abolition of suffering turns out to be the abolition of humanity. Now we're building a society, the kingdom of God is a society which will work, a perfect society, that will be built upon different principles which we'll be talking about here at the Feast of Tabernacles. We look to a perfect world, the kingdom of God, that will succeed and work. But these futuristic models don't seem to. They all end up bad. Probably the most famous one was a book that was called The Brave New World. It's a book that for some of us was required reading in high school by Aldous Huxley in 1931. It ranked fifth on a list of 100 best English language novels of the 20th century.

It's set in London in the year 2540, and the publisher describes it as a streamlined, soulless Eden where there is no suffering. Everybody's happy now. If you're bored, there's the endless, fascinating game of centrifugal bumble puppy.

Or it would be a video game right now. You just keep playing video games. Be happy. If you're upset, there's a wonder drug soma. You know, you just get a little bit blue. You know, happy again.

And there's plenty of free sex. Motherhood, childbirth, and families are regarded as obscene and inefficient. The source of suffering is dried up. The characters in Brave New World are happy because they're part puppet, part animal, and part vegetable. The only human character in this book is a fellow by the name of John. From an Indian reservation, he only maintains his humanity and sanity by suffering and death. And since his Brave New World gives him no opportunity for either, he is driven to self-flagellation and finally suicide. What a horrible story. About creating a utopian society, but it's not working. In fact, it's going the other direction. What's missing in such a society is not just suffering, but also the thing that causes suffering, and that is free will. So free will is thus both the source of suffering and the solution to suffering.

But now I want to turn to the supreme demonstration of God's use of suffering and evil for good, as revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our coming King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Because the most incredible event in all history occurred, and that was eternity entering into time and space. I don't think that we realize the awesomeness and the grandeur and the wonder of that experience. The mind of God, the word of life, timeless eternal life became human. He came into the world that Adam and Eve were exiled into, into the kingdom of Satan to perform his mission. Some of the most eloquent words in the Bible are found in the very first chapter of John, the Apostle John in John chapter 1. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and the life was a light of men. Verse 10, He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, but his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, those who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. In verse 14, the word became flesh. God became man. And we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Even his own disciples didn't fully understand this, that their teacher, the one who was with them, was God.

They did, ultimately, but it took Jesus Christ's teaching them continually about this.

They didn't fully understand it at first. It was unthinkable to them that the eternal God would enter into time that the maker of Mary's womb would be born of Mary's womb. Christ, to a hostile Pharisee, a crowd of Pharisees, stated, before Abraham was, I am. They knew exactly what he meant, his pre-existence as the God that was before Adam's Abraham's time. That's John chapter 8 in verse 58. Even the devil didn't expect this folly that God should step right into Satan's trap, Satan's world, into the jaws of death. But that's what God the Father and what Jesus Christ the Word planned. Then Christ was to face the greatest ignominy of a Roman execution.

Crucifixion was invented a few centuries before Jesus Christ's time. It was so horrific that Roman citizens could not be crucified. And in the saddest chapter, to me, of the Bible, Matthew chapter 27, is the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ, who was the Word. Matthew chapter 27, verse 45. When Christ was up there crucified from the sixth hour until the ninth hour, verse 45 of Matthew 27, there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out a loud voice, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's the worst thing that ever happened in history. Three hours of darkness and God dies. Inconceivable. Yet did God allow that? Sure, He didn't stop it. He didn't stop His own Son from dying. He allowed the devil to creep into scary it. Judas is scary, I should say. Caiaphas, Herod, Pilate. And allowed the worst event in all of human history to take place. Christ was in great emotional and spiritual agony because He experienced the actual sin of the world in His own conscience and knew what it felt and what the experience was of evil and hurt. And yet this injustice, the gross injustice and miscarriage of justice was redeemed by all wise, all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God. And He could turn this event into the greatest goodness imaginable, which is salvation. And when we see this in the light of the entire longer story, this is how we see how God drew all the forces of evil, of Satan, all together to defeat and to deal with them there and create a new creation beginning with Jesus' resurrection and our redemption. And that's why we ultimately have hope. So now we get closer to the answer to my earlier question about why we must suffer and where we find peace and relief. Okay, what about our suffering? What about our suffering? It's a question of a hurt child who needs not so much as an explanation as reassurance. And God has us in the writings of Paul and the book of Romans to talk to our Father in heaven in a very, very close, intimate way. Daddy, Abba, Father. It's a little child with tears in his eyes looking at Daddy saying, Abba, why? Why the loss of a mate? Why this sickness? Why have all these things happened? Why the deaths of an elder on the way to the Feast of Tabernacles this last Wednesday? Why the hurt? And we want more than a cerebral, mechanical, clinical explanation or an analysis. We want that hug that I'm talking about. We want comfort. That comfort is given.

The Apostle John is the epistle, is the gospel that fills in all the blanks from whatever else is in the New Testament with certain important principles, whether they be about I Am, I was I Am before Abraham, or whether it was very clearly stating that the Word was God and the Word became flesh. Not that the others don't refer to it, but he made it very, very clear.

Another fill in the blank is John's use of the word pirocultus. Often I was mispronounced like I did just now. I call this the hug.

In John 16, this word is used four times by John and not used by any of the other writers. Pirocultus is used in reference to the Holy Spirit. It's translated as helper, it's translated as comforter, it's translated as advocate.

He is our helper. First John 16, in verse 7. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. The helper will not come to you.

This word pirocultus, there are some very interesting definitions of it, is used as advocate, comforter, helper, is used for the Holy Spirit, and it's also used for Jesus Christ as our advocate in 1 John 2, verse 1. I like to read some of these words in other translations and also in other languages.

In the Ukrainian Bible, this word is translated back to me as an encourager who brings cheer almost with a smile. So when we go to the Father, we get reassurance from Him through the person of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The answer to why our suffering indeed lies in the once for all catastrophic event in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. Because this is where we get closer to the answer, and the answer has been made more clear to me. God did not paint over, paper over, or spray paint our sin and suffering. He came into it. Jesus Christ, when He came and became flesh, He died for our sins, spilled His blood, which He would commemorate with wine at the Passover.

That is very, very clear. He came into it, however, into our lives, and He's coming into our lives now, not with just some platitudes and attaboy and some pep talk and good advice or gave us a pill.

He put Himself completely into our individual lives. He came in like a surgeon, like a dentist, to get it all out. He came out into our lives as a garbage man to take away the garbage of sin from our lives. He came into our lives with His bloody hands to develop a closeness, a presence, togetherness, and a relationship. The Apostle Paul knew this. The Apostle Paul fully understood this and made it very clear to us in Galatians 2. Probably one who suffered more than any of us could bear. The Apostle Paul writes, I have been crucified with Christ. Do you know what crucifixion meant? And he also is part of that. Christ is part of His trials. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live is in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. Christ knew Paul's pain. Christ was in Paul's pain when he was beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and all the rest.

In coming into our world, God comes into our suffering now, into our sickness, injury, and abandonment. Now, he told his disciples just the night before he was going to go through this most ignominious event in all history in John chapter 16 in verse 33. He writes, I have told you these things. He's talking to them in a very personal way. We read these at the Passover service every year. That in me, you may have peace. I have told you these things that in me, you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. You will have tribulation. But take heart. I have overcome the world. Jesus Christ acknowledges that because of the acts of humanity that open the door to evil in this world, we have pain and we have suffering. He doesn't cover it up.

It's an inevitable part of life. And he tells us something very important in this passage that is more important. I have overcome the world. I have overcome the world.

Thus, the answer to the problem of suffering is not what happened only 2000 years ago, but it's still happening in our lives now.

It is for suffering that is not our fault. There are things that happen to us that are not our fault. Now, when Christ died for our sins, that is our fault. We have sinned and we have killed Christ through the blood. But the suffering and some of the suffering that we endure is because of what happens through men's free moral choices in this world. And it's a result of that.

Christ has compassion on us because he went through it and has suffered unlike anyone. But we too can have compassion on others. Do we weep? Do we say? Do we ever say, I can't take it anymore? Christ was a man who was acquainted with sorrows, acquainted with grief.

Are we ever rejected? Christ was despised and rejected of all men. Do people misunderstand us and turn away from us? They turned, they hid his face from him as an outcast. Has our love ever been betrayed? Have our closest relationships been broken?

Christ was betrayed by those closest to him. Christ is in our sicknesses, hurts, and catastrophes. He visited the gas chambers and the ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau, then to both those places.

Was Christ there? Yes, he was. He suffered for them. He's been in Darfur, Rwanda, Pickett's Charge, Battle of Waterloo. He's been in all the hideous places in this strange world. He's been in the abortion clinics. By God becoming human means that he descends into the whole of the human condition.

And he is in your life as well. He descends into our hells. It's one of the most unforgettable lines in Cori Ten Boom's book. She was a Nazi concentration camp survivor in her book, The Hiding Place. She wrote, No matter how deep our darkness, he is deeper still.

While clinging to life in the shadow of ultimate evil, she concluded, there is no pit so deep that the love of God is not deeper still. It is a kinship of knowing that God totally gets it regarding our pain. He's been there. He's with us. He is not silent. I'll tell you a brief story. Seven years ago, I was in Africa. When the love of many of us was betrayed, I wasn't even wanting to be in Africa to try to reclaim our brethren. But we did. And on the very last day of my journey, as I was getting dressed to be picked up to go to the airport from Zambia to South Africa, I slipped on a tile floor and fell back on a wooden bench. I heard a crack, so I thought it was the wood. It wasn't. It was my ribs. My two back ribs were broken. I didn't know that, though, and I still went on the plane. Major Talama took me to the airport. I said, well, I'll worry about it when I get to South Africa, which is a flight of two hours and ten minutes. When I got there, Monique Webster picked me up, and I said, look, take me to the hospital. Something's not right. The pain wasn't going away. I'm a master of denial, but I couldn't deny this. She took me to the hospital. They said, you've broken your ribs. Good. But we'll just patch them up, and you can go back to the States in two days. So I thought it'd be okay. All through the day, I was feeling horrible, and even people came over. We were having a kind of informal Bible study that evening. But Sabbath morning, as I woke up, barely able to breathe, I told her husband, Jason, take me to the hospital again. Something is really bad.

They took me to the hospital, and the pain was just excruciating. All of a sudden, they do another x-ray. All of a sudden, they hear, emergency, emergency. This was a little bit of a problem. This was a little Catholic hospital nearby. Ambulance was called. Emergency, they were calling. I was being wheeled down hallways, looking up at the ceiling. I was thinking to myself, I go to hospitals to visit people. I don't go to hospitals for this kind of thing. And I was put into an ambulance and taken to the main hospital downtown Pretoria. And the doctors, still before even entering into the emergency room, were saying, what do we do with him? What kind of method do we do here? Because my lung had collapsed, and then it was being filled with fluid.

And they were talking and talking. I'm hearing everything that they're saying. Well, I think we should put a hole in his back and drain him. And I was thinking, oh man, this is, you know, this is terrible. Which they did. The doctor happened to be a Dr. Stein, who was Dr. Christian Barnard's surgeon mate, the one who created the first, did the first heart transplants. And I was in intensive care for four or five days. The pain was so excruciating, so excruciating, I could barely move a tiny little bit without just agonizing horrible pain.

And outside of me, behind my back, I was all IVs and everything else in intensive care.

There was a bucket. It was dripping from my back. Dr. Stein would come in the morning and in the afternoon, and I said, how much longer? He said, well, until it's all drained. When? I don't know. Okay, just a few more days. Then, one of the evenings, I had a nurse who sat at the bed, end of the bed, a black man. And all of a sudden, I noticed that what was coming out was bright red. I said, what does this mean? This is like about two o'clock in the morning. Ah, don't worry about it. He was giving me my cell phone. I called Bev. I called Bev in America. She wasn't with me. I said, Bev, I'm scared. I said, this thing was supposed to be working out a certain way, and I'm in horrible pain. And I said, I don't know what's going to happen. And she was there. About 36 hours later, Bev came to see me. And I came back. I healed up. I had to spend another 10, 12 days before my lungs got inflated and so forth, got back to the states.

And then I was working at the home office, and I was driving. I was still pastoring churches in Kentucky, I mean, in Indiana, and working at the home office in church administration or ministerial services. I couldn't even drive. Chris Roland would drive week after week. We'd go down there, spend the whole week, work, and then come back. But then, shortly after I came back, I had to visit a woman in a hospital. And she came to me, and she, from her hospital bed, said, Mr. Kubik, I'm in so much pain. You know, when she said that, it just had a whole different meaning to me. It wasn't like, okay, well, I hope you feel better tomorrow. Or, you know, well, that's good, you know, could we bring anything? Flowers, whatever. I felt her pain. I think to myself how Jesus Christ feels our pain because He went through it. He experienced it.

He knows what it means to be beaten. That's why He went through what He did. You know, the Passover service will never be the same to me again. You know, I have conducted over 50 Passover services. And I've always, when we did the bread and the wine, the wine was always so straightforward.

The wine represents Christ's shed blood for our sins. While painful, it's straightforward.

I would stumble around my words about the bread, though. Okay, He suffered for us. His body was broken. Was it for Him, for us? How was it? So forth. You know, I understand it far better.

I sometimes wanted to even avoid that part of the service, have somebody else do it, because they could explain it because it's more complex. All of us who are ministers know that that part of explanation of that Passover service is more complicated. There is more meaning. There are more complex angles to the broken bread than it is to the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

Well, now I understand more fully. Jesus Christ has suffered for us. He is suffering for us now. He is very much involved in your life. He knows He's been there. In fact, He is there right now in your life. Jesus Christ is, figuratively, the tears of God the Father for mankind.

But it comes down to His Father losing His Son as God the Father lost His Son, Jesus Christ.

But Jesus and God the Father solved the problem of suffering in these three ways.

You can just remember these three things. Number one, first Christ came into the human condition.

He suffered with us and He wept. He came to be as a human being. Not as just kind of being around us as a good friend and just somebody that we would kind of socialize with. No, He came into our condition, into a world that was Satan's world, a world that Satan wanted to destroy.

Second, in becoming man, He changed the meaning of our suffering.

It is now part of His work of salvation. Our death pangs become birth pangs for eternity.

And we are being prepared for a new nature, a divine nature. We will be someday that one who has said, Victor is love. God is love. Whatever your name is, Bruce is love. Beverly is love.

That'll be your divine nature. That is what is going to make us of a stature higher than the angels. That's what will make us divine. Thirdly, Christ died and He was resurrected.

Dying, He paid the price for sin and opened eternal life for us. And by His life, we are saved from death pangs to birth pangs. You know, the fall sweet of feasts are festivals that celebrate the resurrections. The Feast of Trumpets celebrates the first resurrection to life.

The eighth day is about the resurrection to life for all those who have lived for their opportunity for life. God has a plan. He had this known before He created mankind. Before the foundation of the world, before Adam and Eve were created, God had a plan to reproduce Himself, to make Himself divine and to make us divine. He couldn't create us as robots. He's taken this route.

The Christian response, I'll be ending here soon, is found in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 8. The apostle Paul was well acquainted with hardship, and he passes this on to us.

We are heart-pressed on every side, yet not crushed.

We are perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed.

Always caring about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.

Therefore, we do not lose heart. You know, I'm so thankful, brethren, that I'm not in the world being blinded to knowing what's going to happen. I've got this support. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, whoa, light affliction, he refers to whatever we go through in this lifetime as light affliction, is but for a moment. Because in verse 17, he is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. That's what it's doing. And you know, as we celebrate the wonderful world tomorrow, as we celebrate a world without pain, we understand this whole process, starting with the meaning of life 101, 102, and what God is doing by bringing Jesus Christ into our life.

You know, there are many passages that I could use today. I only skim the surface. If you want to go to my Twitter feed at Victor Cubitt, one word, I have 200 more passages about suffering and about joy in suffering that you could look up. The Board of God helps us to understand the problem of evil and suffering as followers of Jesus Christ. That God can cause all these things to work for good in our lives because we love Him and we are called according to His purpose. And we become different people than what we would have been had we not gone through these things. The story that starts in the Garden of Eden makes full circle to the Garden of Eden at the very end of the Bible. It's an amazing story. Nobody could have, as a single person, penned a beautiful chronology that starts in the first verses of the book of Genesis and ends in the Garden of Eden at the very end.

I call this the Hallelujah Chorus of the Bible. Revelation chapter 21, my last verse.

Revelation 21, verse 1, And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea.

Then I, John, saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people. That was what he wanted with Adam and Eve. He was there, dwelling with them, talking with them.

Our God, as part of making us part of his family, wants to be with us. He sent Jesus Christ, his son, our brother, so that we could be with him, part of his family. God himself will be with them and be their God. And God, verse 4, will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. That's what we look to. What great hope, what great victory. That's Christ saying, I have overcome the world. There will be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. So as we strive to understand this difficult subject, it's not an easy one. It's not an easy one to even preach about, but it's one that is very much as part of our lives.

Let us rejoice as we keep the Feast of Tabernacles and celebrate the coming Kingdom of God.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thank you.

Thank you so very, very much, Mr. Kubik, for that heartfelt message. This is just a gentle reminder, brethren, that services tomorrow begin at 10 a.m.

So please take your hymnals now, if you have them. And let's turn to page number 73.

This is the last song for today. It's a song that was sung on opening night, on that opening night video, and it's a very, very beautiful song.

It's one of my favorite songs. Page number 73, How I Love Thy Law, O Lord.

And following the scene of this hymn, we'll call on Mr. Lacey Mays, a deacon from the Hickory, North Carolina congregation, to close with prayer. Page number 73, with a very good, loud, strong voice. How I Love Thy Law, O Lord. Everyone, nice and loud.

How I Love Thy Law, O Lord. How I Love Thy Law, O Lord. How I Love Thy Law, O Lord. How I Love Thy Law, O Lord. How I Love Thy Law, O Lord. Mr. Mays.

Father in Heaven, we thank you so much as we come to the close of this service today. Hallowed be Your great Holy Name for all of the blessings that You have given us. We thank You so much. We have so many things to thank You for. We thank You for answering the opening prayer today. You have poured out Your Spirit. We know and understand the basic plan for Your salvation for mankind through Your Holy Days.

But You have peeled away some of the outer layers today and helped us to go deep into more understanding. We thank You so much for that. We thank You for the Internet, where the message of the Gospel can go around the world. You said the Gospel would go around the world, but there it is. We think it could be done in one afternoon.

It's amazing the miracles that You perform. We see miracles all around us here at the Feast. Great blessings. We just ask that You bless all Your Feast sites around the world. And as we approach midway of the Feast, we realize that You have ministers in faraway countries that need Your protection. We have ministers here that are traveling from feast sites to feast sites. And we ask Your protection. Set Your angels about them, all of them, and protect them. Give them the protection that they need in this world that we live in. And we ask that You would go with us here as we dismiss this service and protect us. We see a storm approaching. We ask that You would bless all of the Feast sites that might be affected. Just be with Your people and give us protection. We look to You as our sustainer and provider of all things. So we ask Your protection and comfort and bless the remainder of this Feast. We give thanks. We offer praise and sacrifice of thanksgiving. And we thank You for our Savior, Jesus Christ, who suffered for us. Nothing we can ever do is a free gift. We're humbled by it. And we thank You so much for it. So as we depart here today, we ask that You be with us and bless us through the night and bring us back again tomorrow morning. So we ask Your blessings, and we offer thanks and praise in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen.

Thank you.

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