The Nile is neither a river nor a biblical concept. Let's talk about it on this edition of Keylight. Hello, this is Mike Keller. Keylight, getting you home with freedom, joy, and faithfulness to Christ. Our Bible teacher Steve Brown. And here's Steve with a teaching for today. Thanks Mike, if you have your Bible, you might want to open it there. We're referring to it as we go along. We're in the process of a fairly long series, which is a break in our Old Testament survey. Series on God pains suffering how to deal with things bad when they happen. And we're talking this week and probably a little into next week about the fact that this isn't our party. That things were created for him and not for us. That a worship service isn't for you, it's for him. And that sounds pretty bad, but the perspective enables the believer to deal with tragic circumstances. Now once you recognize that the celebration to which you've been invited is not your celebration, once you begin to understand that, understand it in a profound and intimate way, there are a number of ways that that will help you in dealing with the tragedy. But there are funny ways that people deal with some people say this isn't really happening. We talked about it yesterday. Positive thinking can be an effective way to make your life a little bit better, but positive thinking simply doesn't work when you've got cancer. You can pretend that everything is fine, that everything is wonderful, but it's not. All of the wishing in the world is not going to make you well, pretending that you live in a world where failures and tragedies don't happen, or if they do, their only temporary is going to require a whole lot of denial and a whole lot of pretending. I one time attended the graduation of a high school, a high school graduation speaker said failure is only in the dictionary of cowards and fools, and almost walked out. I certainly wanted to stand up and said, guys, don't listen to him. He's wrong, he doesn't know what he's talking about. An old Chinese story tells about a thief who stole a bell. He was running away the bell kept ringing. And he thought I'm going to get caught, I'm going to get caught, and then in his panic, he discovered a way to deal with this problem. He covered his ears, so he couldn't hear the bell. The real world is no place to cover your ears or your eyes. Playing pretend may be okay for children, but not for a man or woman of God. If that's what a lot of Christians do, anyone who's ever faced a tragedy straight on has heard and went to some of the clichés people use when you're going through a difficult time and people say, I know it's bad now, but you'll be better for it. Or sometimes God loves us so much that he allows us to suffer, or it's always darkest before the dawn. Are they quote Romans 8.28? Now, much of that may be true, but it's desperately important that Christians not hide behind clichés and plight of dudes. Death, for instance, is the thing most of us fear most. Too many Christians glibly talk about how they have no fear of death, and more often than not, I don't believe them. In fact, most people who say they have no fear of death are simply denying a reality that eventually they're going to have to face facing their own mortality. Statistics is always the same, it's one out of one. Fear of death is normal, and the best way to deal with the fear is to face it head on. Sometimes you can't deal with a fear of death all at once. I think I talked to you this before, but when you had two o'clock in the morning, realize you're going to die and it scares you. Don't turn on the television. Think about it. Charles Spurgeon used to picture himself in a coffin at night before he would go, and people today would say, man, that is way sick. There's something wrong with no wasn't. He was facing his own mortality, so he wouldn't be afraid of it. An example can be multiplied over and over again, of Christians denying, and me too, I'm not just talking about you, the reality not only of death, but also of hurt in the family, of tragedies, of the 9-11. Everything's going to get back to normal. It's going to be cool. We're going to fix it in a day. Parents, I've seen, when confronted with evidence that their son or daughter is on drugs, will pretend that it's not true. For most Christians' self-analysis rarely yields much real knowledge of their sin. We pretend by quoting Romans 8.28. We won't experience any really hurt or pain. We deny our doubts thereby making faith, a fantasy. We deny the pain of growth thereby becoming stunning. We deny the harshness of God thereby becoming worshiping worshipers of idols. For a while our proclaiming that God has created the world for our enjoyment and pleasure may work, but that choice is essentially a game of self-delusion. Someone told a man who had fallen out of a window on the 20th floor of a 20-story building as he passed the 10th floor, somebody hurting mumbling, as he went by, I'm okay, so far. I'm okay, so far. Another way that some of us, and I do all of this, the reason I'm an expert in this is that I've done our end doing all of it. You can adopt a second view of the world when things go bad. You can choose to believe that the world is essentially meaningless. In other words, you can say with Macbeth, life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, and then it's heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Now if you're looking for a world without meaning, you can find plenty of evidence. The preacher, the author of Ecclesiastes, and if some of you were listening, when we studied the book of Ecclesiastes, we spent a long time in that, but this is what he said. What profit is a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, another generation comes, but the earth abides forever. I've seen all the works that are done under the sun, and indeed all is vanity and grasping after win. That's Ecclesiastes, the first chapter verses three through four, and the 14 chapters. The preacher was saying, men must work and women must weep in the center toward the center to sleep. Or as I read on a bumper sticker the other day, life is hard, and then you die. Meaninglessness is a choice we make. When Camus said that the only question with which we must deal is the question of suicide, he understood perfectly the dilemma we face. What's our purposeful limit? Do we have any? Only the very silly believe that the world is a playground filled with good things for God's children. There's simply too much hurt and loneliness and death and evil. If we're not so silly as to accept that kind of option without God, our only other option is meaninglessness. No. If you face tragedy in your life and you've kind of bought into that, you can create meaning in your situation as long as you realize that the meaning you've created is not ultimate meaning. Whether you want to devote your life to stepping on dixie cups or helping the board doesn't matter. You can invest meaning into your task but don't ever fool yourself into believing that the tragedy that the evil has meaning beyond what you've assigned. Ultimately it says the preacher of Ecclesiastes all is vanity. A prominent sociologist has said that you can tell a lot about a society by observing the way the people in that society dance. And he commented after visiting a major dance hall that Americans danced the way people on the Titanic would dance. The dance of meaninglessness and death. I can imagine the janitor of one of those dance places. After all the lights are dim, the blaring speakers are turned off, the bands gone home, the dance floor is empty. He sweets up the debris left by the dancers and he pauses and he says, well what was that all about? He thinks for a moment and he says, it's about nothing, nothing at all. That of course is an option for those who are trying to understand the world that's evil. If there's no God, there's no meaning, if there's no meaning, there's no value in your life with or without tragedy. And if there's no value, you might as well be a turn up. As long as you remember that, you can keep on until you die and who knows you might have a little fun on the way. But there's a third way of dealing when we face tragedy and evil. And the final option, if you're asking questions about the meaning of tragedy, poses a creator who, for his own reasons, created the world. That is the biblical option and while it isn't all together, great news, it is at least a way to bring genuine meaning into the equation. One of the reasons, I believe the Christian faith, is nobody would make up this stuff. I have in my day been a reasonably good liar and I know as does every proficient liar that a lie in order to be believed must not stray too far from the reality of the one who's presented with a lie. When one considers Christian faith, you've got to face the fact that it is either true or one whopper of a lie. God entering time and space and a manger no less walking on water, bringing sight to the blind, raising the dead, dying for sin on a cross, teaching about love in the midst of the world of hatred, a dead man getting out of a grave, talking about death, ascending into heaven, coming again, you've got to be getting. And yet that's exactly what Christians believe. Because it's so unbelievable, so wild, so gigantic, there is no way we would believe it unless it were true. If you understand the rules of the game, you may not like the rules, but you'll certainly play a lot better. Most people, however, seem to be playing a football game with baseball rules. That is, they're living in a world with a whole set of presuppositions. I'm supposed to be happy. The world centers around me. I'm more important than anybody else, which simply aren't true. The Bible teaches that God created the world that he might be glorified. Once you understand that, you have the key to living and dying. It's very important, it seems to me, that we start here. Now, next week, tomorrow, my pastor will be, and next week we're going to have some good news. It was just very important, for a while, before we started, when we start talking about God, pain, evil, and suffering, and tragedy that we start here. And once you see that, the question then becomes, what is God like? I'll give you a hint. He's good. He likes you. And if you're a believer, he'll never be in. Do you think about that? I'm in. Hey, listen, if you're not a part of key life tapes, or family, I'd like for you to be a part of it. This is how it works. Once you give me a call, 1-800-Keylife, or you write key life, post office box 5,000, meetlin' Florida, 32794. Or you write key life Canada, post office box 321-50, King Bridge, Ontario. In 3H5N3, are you email us at steveatkeylife.org, with your regular mating address, and ask to be a part of the key life tape family, you start receiving a tape every seven or eight weeks, and they keep coming automatically until you don't want them anymore. And these are not the tapes of the broadcast. You can subscribe to those, and if you ask us, I will tell you. 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