Kingdom Come - Why Does God Allow Suffering? - Jason Paredes

Jason: 00:00:00

So we'll see what happens. It's going to be in Matthew, chapter 13. Grab your Bibles. Matthew, chapter 13. We're going to start in verse 24 in just a second.

while you're finding Matthew: 13:24

But have any of you ever wrestled with the question, why does a good God let bad things happen to good people? Any of you ever wrestle with it? Look at me and blink. Whatever. Just some way. Okay, there's a few of you who've wrestled with that question.

It is one of the biggest questions that people outside the faith wrestle with. How could God, if he's good, let bad things happen to people, especially people we perceive as good?

I'm praying that a friend of mine is gonna watch this message. So, Charlie, this is for you. I'm asking you to listen into this one.

Cause Charlie and I had this really long conversation about this particular issue.

He was with me when we went over to Tanzania, and we were with Compassion International, which does a lot of good work of providing food for children and families who don't have much people in abject poverty. And we had had those visits. And then we went up on the mountain and on our way down, we were talking about Christianity and about faith.

And he knew it was a bunch of pastors on the trip. And he grew up all around Christianity. But I'm just really struggling with this question. Like, I mean, if we just.

Jason went into people's homes and they were in abject poverty, like dirt, floor, mud walls, so many of them hungry and hurting, and he's going, if God is who he says he is, he's got the power to help him. Why does he just sit back and do nothing? It's a good question. Why? Why would God, a good God let.

Why would a good God let there be child slavery even today? Why does a good God let there be cancer? Why does a good God let there be death?

Why does a good God let there be failure and broken relationships and broken men? Why does a good God allow this?

This is a question that if you haven't heard, it's a philosophical argument called the problem of evil or the problem of suffering. Let me tell you how the argument goes. Now, I'm not trying to arm you with unbelief.

I'm trying to arm you with facing the questions that you need to answer. So it goes like this. If God is who he says he is in the Bible, then he's all good, all knowing, and all powerful.

And if those are true, then evil shouldn't exist. You say, okay, if God is all good, then he shouldn't put up with evil existing in the world.

And if God is all knowing, then he should know exactly what to do about the evil in the world. And if God is all powerful, he should have the ability to do something about it.

So if evil exists in the world, therefore it must mean the God of the Bible does not exist. That's the philosophical argument called the problem of evil. Once you know, it sounds like an ironclad argument, like, what you gonna say about that?

But interestingly, today, Jesus is actually gonna answer that question, not for us, but for the original audience, and we're gonna see him deal with this.

Now, I don't know if you know this or not, but Bible interpretation, like how to rightly understand what the word of God is saying, hinges on one overarching principle. You have to know what the original author is saying to the original audience. There's always a context in which something is spoken.

So Jesus is speaking into a context, and you have to know the context to understand his words. So he's speaking into a Jewish context that lives in the middle of incredible oppression by the Roman regime.

They are living under the Roman Empire, and all they can do is look around and see evil all around them. I don't know if you know much about the Roman Empire, but they had so much evil and decadence and sexuality, and it was just.

They were oppressive people. They would literally take Jewish people, throw them into an arena, release dogs to devour them for entertainment for the masses.

These were people who had no moral code whatsoever. And they were thriving in those false temples.

And gods are everywhere and they're wealthy, and they're just living it up while the Jewish people are suffering and they're going, God, I thought you were all powerful, all knowing, and all good. How can you, Yahweh God let all this evil around us exist and you do nothing about it.

So the Jewish people at the time of Jesus are suffering with the exact same questions. And Jesus speaks into that in this parable that we're going to read. So last week we had the first of what's going to be multiple parables.

It was about the four soils and the different ways that people respond and the heart that they have. But he's going to come with another agricultural parable, but this one is going to be about weeds and about wheat and how to know the difference.

And he's going to explain a way for us to understand the problem of evil and suffering in the world.

So let's listen to his words jumping in Matthew 13, beginning in verse 24, he put another parable before them, saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.

So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?

He said to them, an enemy has done this. So the servants said to him, then what do you want us to do? Do you want us to go and gather them?

But he said, no, lest in gathering the weeds, you root up the wheat along with them. Let them both grow together until the harvest.

And at harvest time, I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned and. But gather the wheat into my barn. Okay, so just a parable that Jesus gives.

And if you know anything about the parables, there's a lot of significance in the different stories. He's trying to tell them an idea of something in a way they could understand.

But we don't live in the same agrarian society that they lived in back then. And so there's some oddities of this parable that we have to deal with.

So the first oddity, if you're looking at this parable, is that when somebody wanted to do something evil, they. Their plan was to put weeds in somebody else's garden. I don't know about you, but, like, if I'm gonna be evil, that's not where I'm going.

Other things I could think of doing that'd be worse than, like, I got you, man. I can put some crabgrass up in your garden. Yeah, but apparently this was a big deal.

In fact, there are records of Roman law around the time of Jesus where it said, it is a criminal offense to sow weeds into somebody else's garden. Now, the Romans didn't make laws like that unless it was a problem. So apparently this is how you went gangsta on somebody back in biblical times.

You put some weeds up in their garden. The reason why we don't feel the same way is because our livelihood doesn't come from our gardens like we're putting plant. Very few.

We might have a little small vegetable garden, but we can go to Kroger, we can go to some other. So we can get our food that we need. But when it's your livelihood, I mean, this was terribly destructive.

And another thing I didn't know was the kind of weed I got all kinds of instruction as I was studying this passage I'd never seen before. But the weeds that Jesus is talking about was a particular kind of weed called darnel.

And this was an interesting thing because it happened to look a whole lot like wheat, but it was actually poisonous. And so wheat, you know, it has a little head of grain at the end that you could crush and turn into flour and make bread.

But Darnell had a very similar pod at the end of it. But if you were to consume it, it would be poisonous, and the best case scenario would be that you would be nauseous and begin to hallucinate.

The worst case scenario is it could kill you. So when you go sow this weed into the garden of somebody else, and they harvest it and eat it, they could die.

So apparently, it really was gangsta, because this is how you kill people in biblical times. So this is a big deal that Jesus is talking about this. They would have been familiar with this danger.

But there's another part of this that I don't really, for the longest time, didn't understand, and I think it's really the point Jesus is trying to make. We just miss it.

So when the servants come to the master and they see that there are weeds growing in the garden, they say, master, owner, do you want us to go and pull up the weeds? And the owner says, no, don't do it. Let them grow up together, and. And then we'll separate them when they're fully grown.

This is where you and I would do things differently. This is where we would say, that's not the right way. Like, how many of you in here garden? Anybody? Raise your hand if you like to garden at all.

Like, four of us in the room. Okay? There's a few of us that like to garden.

There's a very simple rule to gardening that's really important, and it's that you weed early and you weed often. You gotta get the weeds when they're a little bitty and they don't have much root. You just pull them out and. And you do it often.

You just pull them out and get it out so that it doesn't take up soil and nutrients and choke out the plants. So weed early, weed often. That's the general rule for gardening. Well, this is the exact opposite of what the owner's doing. He said, no, no, no.

Just let the weeds grow up in there. Don't pull them out. Now, again, I look at this and I go, that's not what I would have done.

This is the same issue that all of us have with God when it comes to the problem of evil. Like, that's not what we would do. God. I mean, if we were in control, we would rip out all the evil so that there was only paradise and good on earth.

We don't understand what you're doing. And I didn't really understand the parable until I studied it and realized why the owner was saying what he was saying.

So I had never seen a picture of Darnel before until I studied it. I think we have one up here. Let's bring it up. Look how similar the darnel looks to the wheat, down to the little pod and the thing that sticks off.

They're almost identical. And here's what's crazy about it. The color change is different, but as they're growing up, they're both the exact same green as the Darnel.

That's just when the wheat dries up on the left side and they come out of the earth the exact same way with the exact same look and a stalk that goes up and it has the same color branches that go out to the side, and you don't know the difference. So, like, go to the next picture, and you'll see that when they're clumped together and they get kind of the same color.

Could you imagine these growing together? You don't know which one is which.

Now, that's incredibly important, because the servants come up and they say, would you want us to go out and rip up the weeds for you? And the owner knows. They have no idea which one is a weed and which one is wheat. And if they were to try, they would rip up the wrong plants.

He knows that about them.

And he also knows that by the time you can recognize the difference between the two when they're fully grown, that their roots have intertwined completely. And so when it's full grown, you're like, oh, okay, now I can recognize that's darnel. That's not wheat.

And you try to pull it, you would rip the wheat right up with it. So the owner knows that to try to separate them before the harvest time would kill everything. And he says, don't do it.

So let me tell you, Jesus point. I want you to write this down. This is the most important point for you all morning long. Whenever you're taking Sam.

I hope you have your little booklet. You gotta take your notes right there. Thank you. Here's the note that Sam is gonna write on his little booklet. Trust the owner.

He knows what he's doing. Write that down. Trust the owner. He knows what he's doing.

See, our problem is we look at this and we say, it doesn't make sense that I would do it differently. But the owner knows things that you and I don't know. And when I say the owner, I mean the owner.

Isaiah 55, 9, one of the most beautiful passages says, as the heaven is higher than the earth, so are his ways higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than our thoughts. Could it be that maybe, just maybe, God knows things that we don't know? That maybe, just maybe, his ways are higher and he knows what we don't know.

And we could trust him even when we don't agree with him because we don't know what's going on. Trust the owners.

Jesus is trying to teach this to these people who are going, look at this Roman Empire right now that is just hurting us and oppressing us. Yahweh, when are you going to do. And he's going, trust the owner. He knows what he's doing.

And he's saying that to you and to me this morning, whatever is going on in your life right now, however hard it may be, however different you would have done it, he's saying, trust the owner. He knows what he's doing. He's not making a mistake.

Scripture teaches that God actually causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Not the things we agree with alone, but all things. Trust the owner. He knows what he's doing.

Jesus whole point in this story is in God's perfect timing. You're going to see it's going to work out exactly the way it should. This is the interpretation that Jesus gives of this story.

So I'm going to do something I don't normally do. I'm going to skip over some verses. I'm going to come back to them before the sermon is over. But we're going to skip over 31 to 35.

I'm going to go to verse 36, because here the disciples go to Jesus and say, tell us what that whole parable was about. So he gives them the explanation. So I want to. I want to pick back up. I want you to see how much it has to do with timing.

So picking up in verse 36 of Matthew 13 says, Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him saying, explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.

He answered, the one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. That's just talking about Jesus. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom.

The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.

Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.

The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law breakers and throw them into the fiery furnace. And in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

And he who has ears, let him hear. So he says, here's the interpretation. I don't want you to miss any of the details. So you got the whole world. That's the field.

Jesus is the one sowing the seed, the good seeds that becomes wheat. Those are believers, the darnel, the weeds that come up. That's the Son of the evil One. That's unbelievers. And he's saying, don't worry about it.

They're growing up together, side by side in this world. Even in the same churches, sometimes in the same kingdom. It looks like it.

But there's going to come a moment at the end where God's going to send his angels to work it all out. And those who have done evil will be punished. And those who have done good will get eternal life and experience the blessings of Almighty God.

It's going to work out. Trust the owner. He knows what he's doing.

Now, there's some things that I don't think you and I ever stop and consider that Jesus is trying to explain to us through this passage to help us understand why we must be patient.

I don't know if you ever stopped and thought about it, but I think the majority of us in this room, in fact, in the last service, I said this, and I got some amens. It's not what I wanted to be. Amen. Let me just go ahead and forewarn you. But if we had our choice, we would say, God, rip out all the evil people.

Right now. We don't want them in this world, just rip them out. But we don't stop and think about the implications of that. The way the Father Does.

Maybe you've heard of the concept of the Rapture? I don't know if you've heard of that concept. The idea. It's the whole Left behind series.

So is there a moment when the trumpet sounds and all the believers are whisked up into the sky with the Lord and only unbelievers are left on earth? Well, this is the opposite of that.

This is like the opposite rapture, where only the evil people are taken out and all that's left on earth are the Christians. Now, that may sound like a good idea, but let me tell you what the problem is with that.

There aren't nearly as many Christians on this earth as there are evil people. Jesus talked about this back in the Sermon on the Mount.

He was very clear when he was saying, like, the gate is wide and broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many, but the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. And he's saying the vast majority of people are going to take the easy way to destruction. There's very few people that actually find life and live.

For me, let me tell you what that means. If God were to rip out all the unbelievers from this world, society as we know it would collapse.

That phone you have would stop working because the people who work behind the scenes, a whole bunch of them, are not believers. They'd be gone. You go to the gas station to pump, and guess what never showed up.

The gas truck that has the gas because the dude driving the truck was an unbeliever, has gone. Society as we know it would collapse because our lives are intertwined at the root system, and he loves us too much to let us get what we want.

He knows things that we don't know, and so he's letting us grow up together so that society doesn't collapse, so the word of God can spread. Let me tell you another reason why he doesn't just rip out all the evil people.

Because you and I were evil before we were redeemed, we would have been ripped out. I mean, the craziest message of the whole gospel is that we were weeds that got transformed into wheat.

And if God Weren't Patient, 2 Peter, chapter three talks about this. God is not slow in what he's doing, but he doesn't want any to perish, but all to come to salvation. So he is waiting so that more and more can come.

You know the kind of heart that says, yeah, rip all the evil people out of here. Forget that they were once evil. It's the patient heart that says, save more, God. Give us a little bit more time. Save some more.

Don't rip them out yet, God. Cause more might become wheat, more might become your people. God is not wrong or evil or bad.

He's patient because he knows there's more transformation. He knows what we need and what we don't. His ways are higher. He might just know things, but we don't trust the owner. He knows what he's doing.

And because of it, right now, you and I live in this weird already, but not yet kingdom of God. Like the kingdom of God's already here, but it's not yet fully here. And so we live in this intentional limbo, intention from God.

And there are a couple things we can learn from Jesus teaching that helps us live a little better than we actually do in this limbo season. So a couple more things I want you to write down. Here's the first one I think Jesus is trying to teach us. Don't judge what you don't know.

I think the church could benefit so stinking much from this simple word. Don't judge what you don't know. Let me tell you what I mean by that. I find way too many Christians think they got it all figured out, okay?

You're not a believer. You are a believer. You're not a believer. You are a believer. We know which one's which.

I don't know if you remember the story, but he actually says the angels are the one of the inns who are gonna distinguish between the darnel and the wheat. Like they're the ones who know who could separate. The servants think they know. And the owner says, no, don't. You're gonna mess up the harvest.

Don't even try. I wanna remind you, we're the servants, we're not the angels. Some people have this wrong. They think that when they die, they become angels in heaven.

That's not how the whole thing works. We're the servants, not the angels. We don't know which one is which. And it's not our judge. Our job to go judge the world.

And saying, you're in, you're out. I think we're gonna be shocked by some people who have eternal life that we didn't think, didn't.

And we're gonna be shocked by some people who aren't there that we thought were gonna be there. Don't judge what you don't know. I think the world would really appreciate it if we would start getting that right.

But there's another side to that same coin that I think Jesus is trying to teach us. And this is where Jesus is gonna do the little gut punch on us. So just remember, blame him, not me. Here's what he's going to say.

Looking like a Christian on the outside does not make one a Christian on the inside. Yeah, that's when I wrote that. I was like, ah, that's ugly. Looking like a Christian on the outside does not make one a Christian on the inside.

Let me tell you what I mean by this is the thing I'm probably the most concerned about.

For a church our size, with all the people who are part of this, it's really easy to think, because I go to church, because I know the songs, because I act like a Christian, I listen to Christian music, I dress like a Christian, I give money away like a Christian. I do all the things on the outside that look like a Christian. I must be a Christian.

But you can look like a Christian, sound like a Christian, sing like a Christian, act like a Christian, and still not be a Christian on the inside. There you go. Where do you get that from? Well, that was Jesus whole point. They look the exact same coming up.

It's not until you see what the POD produces that you know which one is which. And I'm just afraid. And I say genuinely afraid.

There are people, especially in a country like the United States of America, where people grow up all around church. And I hear it all the time. Yeah, I'm a Christian. I've always been a Christian. I grew up in a Christian home. I mean, I've always been a Christian.

You know what that shows me? They think that because they look and act like a Christian on the outside, they're one on the inside. And we may.

Oh, God forbid it, hundreds of people who come to this very church may one day realize they're actually the weeds, they're not the wheat. And I want you to know Jesus very clearly says, and the weeds will be gathered into bundles and thrown into the fiery furnace.

If you don't know that that's a euphemism for hell. And Jesus talks a lot about hell. This literally is heaven and hell in the balance. And the most important thing is that you know which one you are.

Because what makes a person a Christian isn't looking like a Christian on the outside. It's a redeemed heart by faith in the blood of Jesus Christ on the inside. That's what makes a person a Christian.

And so you can have all the trappings on the outside. And still not be it on the inside. So which one are you? Heaven and hell depend on that answer for you. Which one are you to which you're going? Jason? I.

Don't tell me. How do I know which you say they all look alike, act alike. I thought that's how I knew what I was. By how I dressed and how I acted.

And going to church. How do I know what Jesus has been telling us all along? All the way from the Sermon on the Mount?

By your fruit, you're going to know what you really are. He keeps coming back to this idea that he brought back in the Sermon on the Mount.

He says every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. There's that hell picture again. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. So how do you know a difference between wheat and darnel?

By what the pods the fruit accomplishes? Wheat, when you grind it. And when you bake, it makes bread that gives life. Darnel, when you grind it and you bake, it poisons.

So what does your life produce that will tell you what you really are? Not how you dress, not if you go to church or not, not if you read your Bible and not if you try to be a good person or not the fruit of your life.

So I think you need to ask yourself a question, a very serious and I've been praying that the Spirit would reveal to you what's really inside in this particular moment. So the Bible tells us what fruit looks like the fruit of the Spirit. Perfect example.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. So when I don't want to ask you to define yourself, it would be better for you to ask the people around you, what do they see?

Do they see you being unbelievably loving and forgiving and gracious? Do they see you filled with joy? Like just breathing life into everybody? Are you patient? Are you filled with peace? Or is there anxiety everywhere?

Do you show gentleness? Are you self controlled in how you love? And do you have the fruit of the Spirit?

Where people around you go, man, that person just breathes life into everybody. They're just so life giving. Is that what they say about you? Or do they say, dude's mean, that girl's just bitter.

Every time I'm around, she's talking bad about somebody else. Every time I'm around, he's screaming at his kids. Every time he's just like. He just tears people down behind their back. Gossips everywhere.

Golly, man. Every time I'm around him, I feel worse when I leave life or poison.

What do people say about us when they spend time with us that will tell us who we really are? So some of you right now are going, okay, I genuinely believe and feel like God has allowed me to produce life to bless others.

I have joy, I have patience. These things come from the Spirit of God and I see them in my life in ever increasing measure. If that's you, here's how you respond.

You praise God louder than you have ever praised him, because only the spirit of God could produce that in you.

When we get to the end and we sing our song, you should be the loudest one singing because you know your end is to be gathered into God's beautiful barn to enjoy eternal life forevermore by his grace. But if you're hearing me right now and the Spirit is bringing conviction, you're going, I don't like what I think about.

When I think about what people would say about me, they see brokenness and bitterness and anger and short tempered and, and cruelty. And I'm not life giving to the people around me. What do I do?

Well, that's a scary place and a beautiful place to be because it allows you to make the most important decision of your life. It allows you to say, confess. I'm broken. I'm the weeds in this story. And when you come to that place of humility, Jesus says, that's perfect.

Let me kill that weed and let me raise up a wheat in its place. Because I can transform you. I can make you something new. I can make you what the Bible calls a brand new creation in Christ Jesus.

There's hope for you because Jesus is in this world. This is exactly what Jesus was telling him in verses 31 and 35. I just skipped over it.

You didn't see it, but he's about to show you and me how God can take our broken self and transform it through his incredibly expanding kingdom. Go Back to verse 31, read verses 31 and 35 and see what he has to say here.

Verse 31, he says he put another parable before them, saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.

It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. He told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour and till it was all leavened.

All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables. Indeed he said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet. I will open my mouth in parables.

I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world. So Jesus is saying, I want to make known to you what's been hidden, how this whole kingdom works. And I'm doing it through parables.

And he gives us two parables that actually have the same meaning, about an external and internal expansion of the kingdom. So the first thing he starts with is mustard seed. And so I believe we're gonna have some help over here. There's a cameraman who's gonna be coming.

My brother Scott over here is gonna help out. But I have right here mustard seed. And you really can't see it all that well. So I had to bring this camera over here. Yeah, come on down in there.

Do I need to turn it for you? There you go. That's what mustard seed looks like. There's like thousands and thousands in there. Now I'm gonna try to get one right there.

That's one mustard seed. Itty bitty thing. I can throw it at Susan down there and she can't even see it. Cause it's just so small.

This right here is the smallest seed that they would have seen in all the land of Palestine back then in Jesus time. But I want you to know. Okay, thanks, brother. I appreciate that. I want you to know what this seed, I still have one in my finger.

You can't see it, but you saw me put it in there, what this seed could produce. Now, if you've ever planted a real mustard seed in the US our climate, it'll only grow about 2 or 3ft. It's a little bush.

But in the land of Israel, that arid climate over there, it gets so much bigger. In fact, we have a picture of one. This is basically life size. I want you to see this. Like, there's a dude over here. Check this out.

So this right here, this little seed that you can't see in my hand makes one literally that's about 12 and a half feet. They get as tall as 15ft and they spread out that way in the land of Israel.

So Jesus is talking to his audience and he's saying that little bitty seed that you could barely see with your eye can produce a plant so big that it can take over the whole garden. Now, here's what's interesting about that.

They're actually, they found fragments of notes written to gardeners of people who had, you know, they were cultivating land and they would say, do not plant mustard seeds in your garden or it will take over the entire garden. This was known back then, little bitty mustard seed. Now, what was Jesus point?

Now, remember, he's trying to convince people who are struggling with the environment going, God, why are you allowing all this evil? And here comes the Messiah on the scene, and he looks about as big as this little grain of mustard seed, like from Galilee, Are you kidding me?

And you pick 12 people to ride beside you, and you pick these guys, these little backwoods people who don't have education and like, this is your plan. It's so small. How is this gonna overtake the world?

And they're looking out all over the Greco Roman world with all these big temples to Artemis and Athens and these massive buildings and all this wealth. And they're going, there's no way. And Jesus says, trust the owner.

That little seed is gonna produce something so big it's gonna take over the whole garden. And you wanna know what happens? Exactly what Jesus said comes true. I've had the privilege of traveling over to the other side of the world.

And there was a number of you who were with us when we went to Ephesus. And we got to be right there where this massive temple of Artemis, one of the great wonders of the world was.

And all that's left is a couple of fragments of pillars about this tall off the ground. Every once in a while you can go to Athens and you can see remnants of what was once a mighty empire.

But you look over and all we do is we read about fables of these Greco Roman gods and goddesses that are just fancy stories to tell for entertainment. They're all gone. But you know what's not gone? The message of Jesus Christ, which has gone all over this world.

That right now, in every single place around this world, every continent, except I don't think the penguins are over there in Antarctica, but all the other continents, you got Jesus spreading and he's entering into new tribes, into new cultures and the new languages, and it's spreading and spreading and will not stop until it takes over this whole world. Here was his point. Trust the owner. He knows what he's doing. Nothing can stop the expansion of his kingdom in this world.

But the second illustration was to say, but nothing can stop the expansion of his kingdom. And in your heart either. That's what the leaven was about.

I don't know if you noticed the leaven, but the leaven part was you take a little lump of it and you put it into three measures of flour until all of the leaven has spread. I don't know if you know how much three measures of flour is that it talks about.

That's about 50 pounds of flour that could feed about 100 to 150 people. A whole village by a little. Little lump, a little clump of leaven. I was talking to somebody else.

A friend of mine was explaining how, like, sourdough starters work.

I don't know if any of you have ever done that before, but, like, if you have a sourdough starter, you put that into a lump and it spreads all over it. And then you could pinch some of that and you can hand it out to your friends.

And as long as you keep feeding it, like, it can last for decades, just going, you got to keep putting more and more flour, more ingredients, and then just keep spreading and spreading and spreading. Well, that's exactly what Jesus is talking about right here.

He's saying, the advancement of the kingdom of God inside your heart is not about how good you are. It's about how strong my kingdom is. And once my kingdom gets inside of you, nothing's gonna stop it.

There have been so many of you who've been baptized over the last few years. I want you to know that's really good news for you. Especially when you look in the mirror and going, what am I gonna change?

Well, what's happening behind the scenes is that the spirit is conquering more and more ground inside your heart. You can't even see it happening. Here's how it works. It starts off small. The way you used to think is beginning to change just a little bit.

You're having new thoughts that are coming from the spirit and not from you. And those new thoughts begin to start to change.

Now your belief system, you believe differently about yourself, about God, about the people around you. Well, that begins to change your affections. Now you long for things that you didn't used to long for.

And the things you used to long for now begin to go away. And that begins to change your attitude toward what brings joy and what matters in life, which begins to change now.

Your motivation for everything you do, which changes your actions. And now your approach, brand new person and God has conquered your body, soul, mind and strength.

How slowly spreading inside you until that leaven goes to the very end.

That's the power of the seed of the gospel, when somebody brings it into themselves, that itty bitty seed that's planted inside and spreads and spreads and spreads and no one can stop it. So the question that you have to ask yourself, if you're looking right now at yourself going, I don't like what I see.

I see too much poison, I see too much bad. I, I don't see a redeemed heart, is have you let the seed of the gospel take root? Have you opened yourself to it?

And I'm just, I'm afraid I'm come back to what I said before. I'm afraid there are some of you who have hardened your heart toward God because of what you've been enduring.

And you have not let the seed penetrate because you just can't get over the fact that you go, why would a good God let me suffer? Why would a good God let that happen to my family member? Why would a good God let that happen to those people on the other side of the world? Why? Why?

Why? And Jesus is trying to tell us right now, trust the owner. He knows what he's doing in your life.

And if anything needed to give you trust in the owner, let me tell you what it is. It's the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We have this issue. Why would a good God let there be suffering and evil in the world?

And I want to remind you what I've been saying all along. The reason you feel that way is because you don't have his thoughts. You don't understand his ways. And I can prove it.

None of you would have chosen what the Father did to his Son. Why does God let evil exist in the world? Well, why would God let the worst evil of all happen to his own Son?

Here he is, almighty God, pure in flesh, coming to save his own people. And they crucify him. They torture him, they reject him, they spit in his face. There is no greater evil than to treat an innocent person that way.

And the Father let it happen to his own son. You want to talk about suffering? If any of you have ever watched the Passion of the Christ, I've seen it one time.

I can't watch it again because it's so gruesome to think about the crucifixion, that way of death for his own son. And that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was that he had been with the Father before all eternity.

And now he's separated by the way hell means to be separate from. He's enduring hell not because he deserved it. Because you and I deserved it. Suffering more immensely than anybody ever could have suffered.

And the Father let him. I guarantee you, none of us would have picked that way for any of our children. You look at God going, why would he do that?

Because God knew something that you and I don't know. He knew that when his son carried that evil, it would destroy evil in you and in me. You got Satan laughing his little face off going, I beat him.

And three days later he goes, holy moly. He beat me. Put evil on his shoulders and he's crucified and he raises up from the dead. And now evil is eradicated from all.

Who would believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ? The Father knows what he's doing. Trust the owner. He's not making mistakes. And he's not making mistakes in your life right now either.

God causes all of it to work together for good. Maybe he's been trying to break you down, to release you from whatever you've been holding on to so you could cling on to Him.

Stop hoping in these things that can't satisfy, so you'll put your hope in Him. Stop resisting because you think you can handle it. And pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and raising your flag going, I can't. White flag is up.

Jesus save me. He knows what he's doing. Trust him. Well, how do I trust him? You let him put his seed inside you, the Gospel inside you, and take over.

That's what the Baptistery is all about. The Baptistery is a symbol.

It is a picture of poisonous wheat going down and being buried in a brand new creation coming up, the weed that produces the wheat, poisonous weeds going down, wheat that comes out that gives life to the world. Baptism is an act by which you get to picture the transformation that's really going on.

You could have come here today as one person and leave here a completely different person. Not by your own doing, but by faith. What Christ can do in you if you trust Him. The Baptistery is a symbol of trust. I need you, Jesus.

I confess I'm broken. I want to die and be raised in Christ Jesus.

If you're ready to stop letting the excuses of not trusting God or the pain and suffering in your life and all that to keep you but to say, okay, God, I'm going to trust you, then you can come forward in just a moment and let us know and we'll counsel with you and make sure you're ready. And if you're ready, today is the day you become a brand new creation in Christ Jesus.

If you're ready for it, I'm going to open it up in just a moment. One last thing I want to say.

I know there are so many of you here who are Christians, and you're suffering because we live in a world where there's still evil and suffering around us. And I want to remind you of this. Every time we suffer, one of two things is happening in our hearts.

We're either growing hardened toward God or softer toward God. There's no in between. It's so easy when things go bad to get angry with God, cross our arms and saying, I don't even know if I can trust you.

Or we could say, God, I don't see your goodness yet, but I believe you could. And by faith, I'm going to choose to come to you anyway. I'm going to believe your ways are higher and you've got something good you're trying to do.

So my prayer is to bring it before you and say, God, do your good work. Every single Sunday, we open up the front for prayer, and it's a chance for you to exercise faith.

You can sit back during this next song and you can keep your arms crossed. Just know what you're doing, or you can say, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to. I'm going to come before my God.

I'm going to bring my knee before I'm going to receive prayer. I'm going to trust that my God is good. I'm gonna trust that one day I'm gonna see the good he's doing. So I want to encourage you to respond in faith.

Stand to your feet. If you don't mind, I want to invite the prayer team to spread around the front.

If today you're saying, I'm a believer, but I'm suffering right now, and I want to put my hope in a God who's good, then you can come down front and you can let us know and we'll pray with you. Or if today you're coming, you're going, I'm ready. I need to place my faith in Jesus Christ. I need the old me to die.

I need a brand new me to come because God needs to transform me, then we're ready to meet with you and pray with you. And today can be the day that you declare your faith in Christ through baptism. It's time to respond. Let the spirit move you.