If you would, get out your Bibles. Let's get started. Why don't you turn to Romans 5 first and then

to Acts chapter 16 where we're studying tonight, but Romans 5 first.

One of the questions people ask all the time is, why do bad things happen to good people?

If God is loved, then why do bad things happen in the world and stuff like that?

Well, it's, you know, people sometimes have a hard time answering that because they see it as a hard question.

There's one answer that may seem uncaring and unfeeling, but it's still true. And that is,

the real answer is, why do bad things happen to good people? Is because there are no good people.

We think there's good people, but God says in his word, there's no one righteous, not even one.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And bad things happened

once man brought sin into the world. Man, the world is now in a fallen state. Death, disease,

all of the things that people cry out to God, why do bad things happen? Man, humanity, we brought that

upon ourselves. Now, that's kind of the quick and easy answer,

but people don't like that one. It still doesn't mean that it's, I mean, it's for sure true,

but there's another thing that you might understand, and that is bad things can happen to us

to bring God glory or to make manifest, there's a biblical word, God's will in our lives.

You know, the disciples would look at a guy who's blind and say, was he blind from his birth

because of his sin or his mother and father's sin? Which one? And Jesus said, nope, neither.

But the reason the guy was blind was God was going to do a great work in him through that hardship, through that difficulty, and even the way the Lord would heal him.

And nobody really knew that God had a real plan for that.

Job and his friends for 37 chapters pontificated and hypothesized why Job was going through all the horrible things he was going through.

And then in chapter 38, God jumps and says, you're all wrong and what a waste of breath.

You know, were you there when I created that?

...