Trusting God When Bad Things Happen to Good People

``And so here we are, thousands of years ago, two hundred about twenty eight hundred years ago, and Solomon was a preacher, is asking the same question. Or basically, he's stating the same quotation. Good things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people. It just don't make sense. Why do we have this problem? Why are the same fate falling on? I thought we were the favorite children of God. I thought Israel was the favorite nation. Why are we not receiving this favor and having a a dome put over us to protect us from everything? Why do we still have bad coming into our lives? [00:28:06] (37 seconds)  #WhyDoBadThingsHappen

But I wanna rephrase the question a little bit because Solomon does it a disservice. You said, learn to read everything in scripture is true and we need to understand what that means. What that means is everything in scripture is what the original author wrote, but it is not all prescriptive. [00:29:25] (19 seconds)  #ScriptureContextMatters

If you read the book of Ecclesiastes, you'll find that most of it is him going back and forth, and he doesn't make up his mind on any one side or the other. And finally, you get to the end and a different voice appears, written with a different dialect and a little bit different vocabulary and it says, see, the best thing you can do is serve God and worship him. And so it's including the voice of a cynic who's weighing all these things and saying this is just awful and that's what Solomon says about it is bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and it's awful. [00:29:44] (35 seconds)  #WorshipAfterDoubt

But there's another teacher in scripture that has another take on this. God named Jesus. I think his words count for a little bit more than a sin. The words in Ecclesiastes are there to help us understand that God relates to us when we struggle with this. Solomon did too. We're not alone in it. All people have struggled with this. But listen to Jesus' answer too. [00:30:20] (28 seconds)  #JesusOffersPerspective

Yeah. Was rough. Mornings and evenings were great, but sometimes that song gets a little intense. But Jesus is saying this is a good thing because it levels the playing field. God loves your enemies as much as he loves you, and he's sending them rain and he's sending them sun and he's sending it to you. The same experience is happening to all people, but Jesus is talking about it as though it's a good thing. [00:32:37] (23 seconds)  #GodLovesYourEnemies

To understand, we've gotta ask a couple questions to really figure this out. When we say, bad things happen to good people. There are two words in that sentence that we need to define before we can truly understand what's going on there. We need to define the word good. What do we mean by good people? And we need to define the word bad. [00:33:06] (26 seconds)  #DefineGoodAndBad

Now by our definition, we are. By our definition, we say, oh, we're good. What does god say? He says our hearts are evil, our hearts are deceitful. That doesn't change his love for us. He loves us because he is love and he chooses to love us, but that doesn't make us good. That makes us righteous in his sight, but that doesn't make us deserving of something different. [00:34:09] (25 seconds)  #GodsStandardNotOurs

All of you have heard my most of you, those those who've been here since July have heard my testimony. You know that I was sitting in a jail cell and I was praying for a book to pass the time and a Gideon came by and dropped off bibles for us. I had a bible dropped in my lap and it changed my life. How many of you think that when I was arrested and taken to that jail and placed in that cell, that I thought that was a good thing? No. I didn't think that was a good thing. Thought that was a bad thing. Now I look back, that was the best thing I've ever had in him. [00:35:23] (33 seconds)  #BlessingsFromBrokenPlaces