A Good God
The news is filled with stories of the war in Ukraine. We've seen war from afar before, but with social media and access to real-time events - the images pull at our hearts and raise our tensions and concerns. We hear rumors of nuclear and biological weapons and people asking is this the beginning of World War III? These certainly are uncertain times.
Then you add personal news to the national news and we're also dealing with what some of you or your family members are currently having to endure. There are many dealing with cancer, heart issues and various debilitating conditions and loss. And it seems every time we have to deal with pain and tragedy - as Christians, since we know that God is in control - we're confronted with the question - How can a good God...
I. Allow bad things?
This continues to be one of the biggest struggles that people have when bad things happens. And how do we answer people? There are no easy answers, but we do know where answers are found. In the Old Testament when the nation of Israel was facing captivity in a foreign land, we see this in scripture, where God says...
Isaiah 46:3-11 (NIV)
Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. (4) Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you. (5) To whom will you compare me or count me equal? To whom will you liken me that we may be compared? (6) Some pour out gold from their bags and weigh out silver on the scales;
they hire a goldsmith to make it into a god, and they bow down and worship it. (7) They lift it to their shoulders and carry it; they set it up in its place, and there it stands. From that spot it cannot move. Though one cries out to it, it does not answer; it cannot save him from his troubles. (8) Remember this, fix it in mind, take it to heart, you rebels. (9) Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.
(10) I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. (11) From the east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose. What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do.
God promised His people that He was in control and would orchestrate everything for His purposes. And if you look back a few chapters before this passage, you find God speaking of Cyrus, a man whom He would use to restore His people. And we see this in Isaiah 45:4 (NIV)...
For the sake of Jacob my servant, of Israel my chosen, I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge me.
This prophecy was written down 150 years before Cyrus even became King of Persia - but God promised His people deliverance by means of this unbelieving man. And following his conquest of the Babylonian Empire, history records that Cyrus restored the Israelites to their homeland. If God can work His purposes through Cyrus - is God surprised by anything Putin or Zelensky or any national leader will do?
I don't claim to know the mind of God - but scripture is clear that God is ultimately in control of history. So how do we reconcile our knowledge of a 'Good God' with allowing these 'bad things' we see? People struggle when they see individuals suffering, and even more so when faithful Christians battle with multiple serious medical issues and then die. Why would a 'good God' do that to one of His faithful servants?
I don't want to give an overly simplified answer, but many of us have learned that there is a difference between...
A. Do and allow
And I don't want to seem like I'm splitting hairs or making an argument over semantics - but this is important. There is a difference in our understanding and especially in how we respond to God if we believe that God does 'bad things' or that He may 'allow bad things'.
First, we can't ignore that in the Old Testament there are plenty of instances where God specifically did things, or commanded people to do things that certainly appear to be pretty awful things. God struck people dead; He ordered the slaughter of entire peoples. So I don't want you to think that I'm trying to 'pass the buck' or say, "God didn't do that, He just looked the other way when someone else did it".
I'm not making excuses for God, but also understand that God doesn't have to justify His actions to me or anyone else. What God did in the Old Testament - He did. Yes, God does act severely in scripture - He does things that some might even call 'bad'. But these incidents are in response to people making choices - many times 'evil choices'. And God allows bad things to happen as a result of those choices.
Some ask, 'Why did God create evil?' God didn't create evil... Let me ask, 'Did God create 'dark'? - Is 'darkness' anything? Once you have total darkness, can it get any more dark? Can you actually measure 'dark'? In the beginning - God created 'light' - 'darkness' is only the absence of light. - Did God create 'cold'? Once you hit absolute zero, can it get any more cold? - God created energy and heat - cold is a 'measure' of a lack of heat.
So, did God create evil? - Darkness is a lack of light. - Cold is a lack of heat. - Evil is a lack of 'good'. Evil is real, but it's not a creation of God's, but a rejection of God's presence. And God has given us...
B. Freedom to choose evil
In order for us to genuinely choose to follow God, we all have been given the choice to reject Him. God gave Adam and Eve a command - to not eat from this one tree. But He also gave them the choice to obey or to disobey. So, when God kicked them out of the Garden of Eden after their disobedience - did God do something bad? - Or did their choice have consequences which God allowed? Was it 'God's Will' that Adam and Eve would now have to live separately from God and many of His blessings...?
If we look back to that passage from Isaiah - people chose to reject God, to make idols...
Isaiah 46:6 (NIV)
Some pour out gold from their bags and weigh out silver on the scales; they hire a goldsmith to make it into a god, and they bow down and worship it.
Of course we don't do that - but into what man made 'things' do we place out trust, over God? Our money or investments, our health or home, political leaders...? And when those things fail - do we still trust God? Now don't misunderstand - I'm not implying that when people get sick that they are somehow being punished by God. Nor can we infer that the people in Ukraine are being punished by God. - Those are very different situations.
But God does allow these tragedies to happen because we live in a fallen world, a world dominated by sin - a world that is far from the perfection in which God intended mankind to live. - A world that is fallen because of man's choice.
But you could say - "Fine, so it's not so much that God does bad things but that He allows bad things - isn't the end result pretty much the same? Bad things happen. Couldn't a 'good God' certainly stop bad things from happening? - Especially to good people, to people who are just caught in the collateral damage of other people's evil choices?" Could God prevent bad things?" Yes - God can do anything He wants. But that brings us back to our original question - why would a 'Good God' allow bad things?
To make the picture clearer, I need to first take us down a little different road. I want us to look at...
II. Salvation and sanctification
God wants us to be saved from eternal punishment. He wants us to go to Heaven, right? That's the whole point of Jesus dying on a cross in our place - so that we could avoid Hell; so that we could have salvation.
And salvation comes to us not by our own good deeds but we are saved by God's grace. Our salvation was secured for us by God, through Jesus before any of us here were even born. We are saved when we accept God's gift of grace - when we believe in Jesus and accept Him in baptism. All of that really has to do with 'work' and sacrifice on God's part.
So how does salvation relate to 'sanctification'? We don't go to Heaven because we do good things - we are called to do good things because we are going to Heaven. Our 'good deeds' are supposed to be a response to God's amazing gift of salvation. And here's where that big word of 'sanctification' comes in. Sanctification involves the idea of being made 'holy', becoming separate from the world and being devoted to God, being made useful for God's purposes.
When Jesus confronted Saul, who then became Paul, on the road to Damascus, He said...
Acts 26:16-18 (NIV)
Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you. (17) I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them (18) to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.
When we are 'cleaned up' from all of our sin, our past, by Jesus - we're cleaned up and set apart to be useful for God's purposes. And it's not because we deserved it - it was because of God's love for us. And we need to understand this as both...
A. An event and a process
Our sins are washed away in Baptism, by faith in Jesus through God's grace. But do we immediately stop sinning the moment we come up out of the water? Do we turn into perfect angels who never disobey God ever again at that very moment?
No - sanctification, being made holy is also a process. It's something that happens as we learn, as we trust Jesus, as we train ourselves to do 'good things' instead of 'bad things' - as we spend time in God's Word and in prayer. And it happens over a lifetime. When we allow God's Spirit to work in our lives, we are changed. We are transformed from who we were into who God wants us to be.
Think about it this way - last Sunday we talked about 'loving our enemies'. How did we do with that this past week...? Most of us here are already believers, we've come to the point in our lives where we have accepted Jesus - but how many of us here could come close to calling ourselves 'perfect'?
Okay - I've taken a long detour and I hope I didn't lose you along the way - but back to our original topic - why does God allow bad things? Why does He allow evil? Why doesn't God simply exempt Christians, those who love Him from bad things? What is...
B. God's ultimate goal?
God wants to get us to Heaven - so why doesn't He just immediately take us there as soon as we climb up out of the baptistery? Wouldn't that be a lot easier? Yes, God wants us to get to Heaven, but He also wants us to be sanctified. God's ultimate purpose in this life is not to keep us completely happy, safe, comfortable, healthy or even alive. His purpose is to make us more like Jesus. In fact, God can and will use both good and bad circumstances to mold us into who He wants us to be!
Ephesians 4:22-24 (NIV)
You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; (23) to be made new in the attitude of your minds; (24) and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
God can use bad things for good purposes! God can use everything to shape you into a closer image of Jesus - to 'sanctify' you, to make you holy, into the person He wants you to become! Sometimes He uses good circumstances, sometimes He actually causes what may appear to be bad circumstances. Much of the time 'bad things' just happen and for His own reasons God allows it - but God can use all of it to shape us into who He wants us to be for His purposes.
Why does God allow bad things? We won't always know. He doesn't share all the details of His plan with us. But we do know - when bad things happen, when God allows them to happen - it's not that He doesn't care. I promise you that He is right there with you in the midst of those bad times.
When something bad happens a well meaning Christian will say to a person who's hurting, "It's just God's Will." - I don't think that's overly helpful. 'God's will' is that we will all one day be in perfect fellowship with Him in Heaven and nothing bad will ever happen again. But in the meantime - I don't think that bad things are always God's Will.
Can God work through bad situations, through tragic circumstances and still bring about good? Yes, absolutely - but rather than jumping to conclusions about what God's Will might be at that moment - maybe we should focus on what we do know for sure. God does care when we hurt. And despite the temptation to blame God for allowing 'bad things', we need to look to Him as our source of hope through those difficult times.
God is not against us. His ways may not always make sense to us, but He is in control and He is a good, righteous God in whom we can place our complete trust.
So What?
The Israelites captivity in Babylon I mentioned at the beginning lasted 70 years until God restored them using Cyrus, the King of Persia. I recently saw something regarding enduring hard times that my sister Missy wrote and I asked if I could share it.
She wrote, "I always go back to the Israelites slavery of 430 years in Egypt. They believed God had forgotten and abandoned them - but in truth, God used that time to make them into the mighty nation He had promised they would become. As slaves in Egypt they were actually protected by the greatest super power in the world at that time! Had they been on their own they would have been constantly battling and challenged for land, if not completely wiped out.
During that time they grew to mighty nation - and when it was time for them to go - Egypt was still the only army big enough to overtake them. So, God wiped them out - in His time. Just because we cannot see or understand what God is doing does not mean that He is not at work. We may not even see the "why" for generations to come, (if ever this side of Heaven) but God's faithfulness, thankfully, is not bound by my limited understanding. He will always bring beauty from the ashes. God will be glorified even in this!"
God does and allows a lot of things that I don't understand. But the problem doesn't really lie with God - it's in my understanding. According to scripture - Jesus is currently preparing a place for us where there is no more sickness, or evil, or tragedies, or war or death - we are called to prepare ourselves for that home. And much of that preparation is in faithfully living out our lives in this fallen world.
God is preparing us for eternity. But until the time when we are called home, we're to work in this life to become more like Jesus and to share the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with others.