Why Evil?

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us. Happy Sunday, it’s good to see you all here. If you’re visiting us for the first time today, there should be a visitor card tucked into the back pocket of the seat right in front of you. Please fill that out and leave it behind in one of our offering plates to let us know you were here.

I do have a couple of announcements I’d like to highlight before we begin our worship. First, I’ll ask you to pray for Milford Hartman, who was in a car accident yesterday. Milford is home and well but a little sore, so please lift him up in your prayers.

Tonight is our summer sing-out from 6-8 near the prayer garden. Chairs will be provided, but you can bring your own lawn chair if you’d prefer that. Some food and drinks will be on hand, along with your favorite gospel songs and hymns. We’ll be moving that inside in case of rain, and let’s all hope for rain.

Just a reminder that our next business meeting is on September 8 at 6:30. We’re going to be discussing some important things that night and I’ll be highlighting those in the coming weeks, so please try to attend if you’re a member.

Our church is once again adopting the Weekly Religious Education program at Stump this year. There are some treats and trinkets we can provide for that, and you’ll see those listed in your bulletins.

And the men’s ministry will not meet tonight but will on next Sunday. And also there will be a men’s prayer breakfast next Sunday at 8 a.m. All men are invited to attend that.

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of life and for the grace to be gathered in your presence again this day. You created us to worship and to praise you, and we are here to fulfil this purpose.

Your light shines in darkness and darkness cannot comprehend it. We call upon your presence as we start today’s gathering. Come and let every evil and darkness disappear. As we go today, fill our hearts with joy, recharge and refill us with the sweetness of your presence. Give us the strength to live all the rest of our lives for you.

Sermon

Stephen Fry is a pretty well-known British actor. He’s also one of the most outspoken atheists. He was once asked in an interview what he would say if he died and found himself in the presence of God. Here’s how Mr. Fry answered:

“I’d say, bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right, it’s utterly, utterly evil. Why would I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain. That’s what I would say.”

Pretty harsh, isn’t it? I’m going to ignore Stephen Fry’s arrogance in thinking that he’s more moral than God and focus on what’s behind his statement, and that’s known as the problem of evil.

That’s the number one reason that people give for not believing in God. In fact, there are a lot of people who point to evil as evidence that not only does God not exist, but if God does exist, then He Himself must be evil.

On some level we can sympathize with people who think this way. Evil is something that touches us all. We can’t turn on the television or read the news without being confronted by it, and this is nothing new.

People have been struggling with this for a very long time. In fact, the problem of evil was first put forth by an ancient Greek philosopher named Epicurus. This is how he argued it:

If God is all powerful, then he can stop evil.

If God is all loving, then he would want to stop evil.

But evil exists.

So therefore, an all powerful and all loving God does not exist.

Wow, right? I mean, that’s a pretty good argument, isn’t it? That kind of makes sense. That’s why this is one of the biggest problems we’ll face as believers. In fact, I’d say that because we’re Christians, we’re going to experience more than our fair share of evil and suffering in life.

Now why is that? Well, who does Satan have a problem with most? Believers. Christians. Back when we had no faith in Christ, we really only had one enemy, and that was God.

God was who we fought, who we struggled against. But what a great enemy to have, right? Because he still loved us even if we didn’t love him. He still believed in us even when we didn’t believe in him.

But when we found that faith in Christ, all of a sudden our enemies multiplied. We didn’t struggle against God anymore, but now we had the world to struggle against, and all the temptations that come along with knowing the difference between right and wrong.

We had ourselves to struggle against, our spirit going up against our flesh. And we had the devil, who is pretty content to leave us alone as long as we’re we’re not a threat to him.

It’s the people who pose a threat to him and his influence in the world that he really goes after. So in a way, if you’re a believer and you’re suffering unjustly, if you’re being attacked by evil, then that’s a good sign you’re doing something right.

We’re going to start out this study of evil and suffering in Genesis today, chapter 3, and then move over to Romans.

To those who have a secular view of life, suffering is simply part of the natural order of things. It grows out of that idea of survival of the fittest.

That idea might go a little ways in explaining things like natural disasters, but it doesn’t really explain evil. In fact, a lot of people now really don’t like that word. They don’t like talking about evil. But the Bible is clear on this point: evil does exist.

Genesis 3 describes how Adam and Eve started this whole mess. Romans 8, which we’ll get to in a little bit, describes how God’s going to fix it. The apostle Paul writes there that no believer stands condemned in Christ, and he ends with encouragement that nothing can separate us from God’s love.

But first we turn to the 3rd chapter of Genesis, where God lays out his punishment to Adam and Eve for doing the one thing he said they can’t do: eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And here is what scripture says, starting in verse 16 and continuing through verse 19:

To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;

in pain you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be for your husband,

and he shall rule over you.”

And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife

and have eaten of the tree

of which I commanded you,

‘You shall not eat of it,’

cursed is the ground because of you;

in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;

thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;

and you shall eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your face

you shall eat bread,

till you return to the ground,

for out of it you were taken;

for you are dust,

and to dust you shall return.”

And this is God’s word.

Remember last week when we talked about how there are common threads in every major religion, bits of truth but, aside from the Christian faith, not the whole truth. This is one of them.

All the world’s major religions have their own version of the Garden of Eden, a time when the earth was perfect and people were peaceful and knew nothing of pain. We know about Adam, Eve, the serpent, the fruit, and sin. But we do’t always make the connection between the fall in Eden and the suffering of humanity today.

By verse 16, God had already dealt with the serpent. It had been condemned to crawl on its belly and live in contention with people. After dealing with Satan, God now turns his attention to Adam and Eve. They’re going to be punished too, and rightly so.

From the very beginning, God had given His highest creation — man and woman — one rule. Don’t eat from that tree. So what did that highest creation do? They ate from that tree.

They did it of their own free choice, though a lot of the blame here is placed — as it should be — at the devil’s feet. He’d lied to Eve, flat out. And of course Eve is going to fall for that lie, because why? Because she’d never been lied to before. Because Eve had no idea what a lie even was.

But she still ate that fruit, and then Adam ate as well, and now sin is in the world, and that sin must be punished. No matter how much He loves Adam and Eve, God has to punish them for what they’ve done because God is holy. Now the entire human race will suffer the consequences.

God punishes Eve first, because she was first to sin. She’s not cursed like the serpent was, but she’s still held guilty. And her punishment comes in two ways. First, God greatly multiplies her sorrow in a general sense, but especially in connection with pregnancy. And she would also be made subject to her husband.

By this, by God saying to Eve, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you,” it’s implied that at the beginning, according to God’s original plan, Adam and Eve were created to be equal in all things.

But the fall changed that, and for much of recorded history, women in most cultures culture were at best treated as less and at worst treated just plain horribly. And a lot of that still continues.

The sentence for Eve’s sin deals with the two most important aspects of a married woman’s life — being a wife, and being a mother. But, and this is important, God still gives Eve grace. He still gives her mercy.

Yes, there will now be conflict and struggle between man and woman, but there will also still be great love. And yes, there will be anguish in childbearing, but there will also still be that deep joy of bringing new life into the world.

Adam and Eve have just upended God’s perfect plan through their own free will. They’ve not only ruined their own lives, they’ve ruined the lives of every person who will ever live.

And as we’ll see in a minute, they’ve even ruined an entire world. But God still shows them grace, still shows them love. He still blesses them even in their punishment.

Now starting in verse 17, it’s Adam’s turn to face the music. If you look back up in verse 12, you see how Adam first reacted to getting caught in his sin. He blames Eve, saying “She gave me the fruit of the tree,” and he also even blames God himself — “the woman whom YOU gave to be with me.”

But God says, “Sorry, that’s not going to work with me.” Eve gave you the fruit, yes, but you’re the one who chose to eat it, so you’re going to have to be punished too. And Adam’s punishment is a severe one. Instead of protecting his wife and shielding her from evil, Adam had followed along in disobeying God’s command.

And so the ground out of which Adam had been formed, instead of being his friend and willing subject, was now going to become unfruitful. From now on, he was going to have to work. Adam was going to have to labor to have the earth produce food.

And there is a hugely important phrase that God uses near the end of verse 17: Cursed is the ground because of what? Because of you.

There was originally a harmony between the body and the soul, but that harmony was broken the moment that sin was introduced, and that broken harmony spread over the entire material world. It didn’t just ruin Adam and Eve’s souls, it ruined nature itself.

Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, says verse 18. It’s like a sickness that’s spreading to all corners of the world now, like a shadow that touches everything. And then at the end of verse 19 comes the most dire consequence of all: for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Not only has sin entered the world, death has now entered the world too. Not only did Adam and Eve become mortal when they ate of the fruit, they came under the power of death.

In other words, evil has now come into the world, and that evil takes two different forms. There’s moral evil, which we see here with Adam and Eve eating the fruit, and we see much more graphically a few chapters on when Cain kills Abel. It’s murder, it’s slaughter, it’s all the awful things we’ve been doing to each other ever since. And then there’s natural evil, the earthquakes and the brushfires and the hurricanes.

It’s important to distinguish between the two, because one of those is a lot harder for us to square with a good and loving God. We tend to see the evil that we do to each other as just that, evil, and we even go so far as to say that not only is that kind of evil real, it’s our fault.

Remember what Stephen Fry said: “bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault.”

What he’s talking about here is natural evil, evil that Stephen Fry says isn’t our fault. But the Bible says differently. The Bible says, Yes, that’s our fault, too. That first sin broke everything, not just God’s heart, not just our own souls, but the entire world.

So where’s the hope in all of this? What does all of this mean? For that, let’s turn to Paul. Flip over to the book of Romans. We’re going to be looking at chapter 8, verses 18-25:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

What Paul tells us here is the most important thing we need to know when we’re confronted by evil. There’s a reason for it. As Christians, our suffering isn’t in vain.

Those who suffer with Christ will be glorified with Him. And what we see in verse 18 is one of the greatest promises in all of scripture: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

Up in verse 17, Paul says that we’re heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Being an heir means that one day we’ll receive an inheritance, and in our case the inheritance is eternal life, which will be something far beyond anything that we can possibly imagine.

In fact, that inheritance is so wonderful, so perfect, that even the greatest suffering of this life can’t even be compared to the glory that waits for us.

Any trial, any affliction, any persecution, any sickness. None of them can even begin to measure to the glory that waits us and to the reward that we will receive for our faith. It’s something we wait for, but only for now. It’s the hope that sustains us.

And we’re not the only ones waiting for this glory. In verse 19, Paul says that creation itself waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. Again, we see how the natural world and us are connected. God made the world for us, and placed us here to care for it.

But if you remember the curse placed upon Adam and Eve and all of their descendants, the earth itself suffered as well. Everything is subject to natural evil. Just as we will be redeemed in heaven, the world will be redeemed in the new earth. Everything will be put to right. God will make everything as it always should have been.

We’ll receive new bodies in heaven, but those bodies will still be ours. They’ll just be perfected. We’ll be the most perfect people we can be, inside and out.

It’s the same with the earth, which is what all of those Old Testament prophets talk about when they write things like deserts rejoicing and blossoming, and wolves laying down with lambs.

But notice how the world is waiting. Eager longing. What’s that mean? The Greek phrase there literally means stretching your head out as far as it will go in order to see something, straining to catch just a glimpse. It’s an intense wish, a longing that we crave so much that it nearly hurts. It’s Christmas Eve when you’re a kid, or the last day of school.

All the world, every mountain and stream and rock and blade of grass, waits like this for Christ to be fully revealed and us to be revealed with Him in glory. Every limitation, every imperfection, will be erased.

But until then, we still must have that suffering. Until then, we still have to pay the price of that first sin. That’s why Paul says in verse 20 that the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, not because of anything the world itself did, but but by God, who had to punish the first man and woman to this state of suffering.

Ever since sin entered the world, nature has struggled under the same curse that has also wreaked havoc on humanity. The difference between the devastation felt by creation and the devastation felt by us is that creation is innocent in all of this.

But, just as God will restore His people, He will also heal the world. The futility that creation endures now will be wiped away when Christ returns.

It’ll be transformed into hope, hope that, Paul says in verse 21, “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

When God’s timing is fulfilled, that hope creation has will be turned into freedom. If you remember way back in Genesis after God finished creation, what did he say about the world? He called it “good.” And what did he say when he created man and woman and placed them in the garden? Very good.

This freedom that Paul is talking about, when Christ returns and our new home is made on the new earth, that is what God means by “very good.”

But until then comes that groaning, that eager longing, and until then both we and nature are trapped in the bondage to corruption that Paul writes in verse 21. What is that? It’s that cycle we’re trapped of birth, life, death, and deterioration.

But as believers, we have the promise that this cycle will be broken. We have the assurance that things won’t be like this forever. They’ll change not just for ourselves, but for creation itself. God will literally leave no stone unturned in His work of restoring His handiwork to its original state.

Paul uses another human image to illustrate his point in verse 22: he compares it to childbirth, saying that the whole of creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth from the very first moment of the fall all the way up to the present moment.

The whole creation, every creature, all living things are united together in this longing for things to be renewed. They’re groaning under the weight of sin.

No matter how common natural disasters and diseases may seem, they’re not a part of God’s first plan for nature, just like even though sin is everywhere, that was never part of God’s plan either.

But these pains that nature feels aren’t the result of wounds that won’t heal. Instead, they’re more like a woman’s labor pains as she draws closer to the point of delivering her child. These pains are like the pains that come just before new life is born.

This verse lays out the answer behind all those questions about evil and suffering. Why is there evil, whether moral evil or natural evil? Paul would say it’s because that’s just the condition of everything since the fall.

Everything is broken, but it’s not going to stay broken. Even now, God is in the process of putting all the pieces back together.

But since all of creation is broken, we’re broken, too. In fact, the only reason creation is groaning together in the pains of childbirth is because of that first sin, because of us.

Verse 23 says that we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Not only does creation groan for renewal, we as Christians groan, too. This world isn’t our home. Our home is the next world, that new earth. That’s where we belong. For now, we’re just passing through this world on our way there.

The reason why we’re so restless in this life, always looking for something that will satisfy us but never really finding anything, is because all the things that we truly need and everything that will truly satisfy us is waiting in the next life.

That’s why Paul says we wait eagerly for that time. The King James says we groan within ourselves. We sigh for deliverance. The expression there is of a strong internal desire. It’s a deep anguish of spirit, a constant craving.

That’s what Paul is getting at in verse 24 when he says, “For in this hope we were saved. New hope that is not seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?”

The very essence of the Christian life is hope in the future. It’s faith that God does not change but God will change everything. That’s his promise, and we have to lean on that promise to get through this life.

Sometimes our trials and sufferings are so great that nothing but the promise of future deliverance will hold us up. Very often in life, hope is all we have.

But that hope is a complex emotion. It’s made up of two things — a deep desire for a thing, and an expectation of obtaining that thing. Both have to be present for it to be called hope.

But when what we hope for is seen, when it’s in our possession, then it can’t be said to be an object of hope, right? If we can see it, if we have it, then we don’t have to hope for it.

That’s why Paul says that hope that is seen is not hope. That word “seen” is used in the sense of possessing, or enjoying. We can’t hope for what we already possess.

But that hope requires something, and we see what that in verse 25: patience.

Patience comes up a lot in the Bible, especially in the New Testament. Paul mentions it in Galatians as part of the fruit of the Spirit. But patience doesn’t come easily to us, does it? Waiting isn’t natural to us, so we have to rely on the strength of the Holy Spirit.

And, as Paul told the Roman believers earlier in this letter, endurance, which is an element of patience, leads to character and what? And hope.

And hope is an important theme for Paul. Just as creation waits for restoration in anticipation, God calls us to eagerly wait for the fulfillment of our hope.

As we wait, we live as His children now, but we look forward to the glory that will be revealed in us. To do that, we have to calm the noise of the world and focus on the Holy Spirit who leads us.

“How can God allow this to happen?” is a question that we all ask, whether we’re believers or not. Doesn’t matter how much faith we have, even how much hope we have.

We can’t look at the world, can’t live in the world, without evil and suffering becoming an issue. We’re faced with it every day, and it’s easy to see why it’s the biggest stumbling block between a lot of people and their belief in God.

But let’s take a closer look again at that argument that was first put down by Epicurus. Remember how it goes:

If God is all powerful, then he can stop evil.

If God is all loving, then he would want to stop evil.

But evil exists.

So therefore, an all powerful and all loving God does not exist.

Let’s look at each one of these statements and see how strongly this argument holds together.

First, if God is all powerful, then he can stop evil. As Christians, do we agree with that statement? Yes. God is all powerful, and if God is all powerful, that means he can do anything, even stopping evil.

But there’s a little more to that answer, isn’t there? Yes, God could stop evil right now. Christ could return this moment and end all of history. But he doesn’t.

That doesn’t mean God is helpless against evil. That doesn’t mean God isn’t paying attention. It just means that God simply isn’t done with us yet.

God allows evil for certain periods of time in order to accomplish the purposes He set out for us and for our creation. Once those purposes are complete, then He will put an end to all evil.

Remember, death and sin are already defeated. The cross took care of both of those things, so we can be certain that evil will be defeated as well.

So that first statement is true, but with qualifications. God is all powerful, God can stop evil, but God isn’t going to stop evil yet because His plan is still unfolding. Because God takes the long view of things instead of the short view. He thinks about eternity, while most times we think about the next few minutes.

So what about that second statement? If God is all loving, then he would want to stop evil. Is that true? Again, yes. That’s true. God is all loving, and of course an all loving God would want to stop evil. Evil is sin, and God hates sin.

But again, if God is all powerful and all loving, then everything falls under his control. Everything. That means even evil serves God’s purposes. Psalm 23 says, Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me.

It doesn’t say that God loves us so much that he’ll take that valley away. It doesn’t say that God loves us so much that he’ll steer us toward the mountaintops instead, where everything is clear and there aren’t any dangers. Instead, it says that God loves us so much that he’ll walk through that valley with us.

What does that imply? To me, hard as it is to say, it implies that we need those valleys in some way. We need those hard times, even if we don’t want them and even if we pray them away.

I don’t want to diminish the cost of evil and suffering in any way here. Those are horrible things. They hurt us, and often what hurts even more is to suffer and come face to face with evil and pray for God’s help only to hear silence in return. There aren’t many things worse than crying out to God and hearing only silence.

But still, we have to look at our own lives and answer honestly whether the times we’ve suffered, the times we’ve walked through that valley of the shadow of death, are also the times when we grew the most.

The times that our faith was strengthened. The times that we learned the most about God. Evil and suffering, hard as they are to face and to endure, often lead us straight to God. And if you take a look at the current state of Christianity worldwide, you get an interesting picture when it comes to evil.

It’s tempting to think that churches are empty everywhere, but that’s not true. In fact, Christianity is absolutely booming worldwide in a way that’s never been seen before. And if you take a look at where the faith is growing strongest, you’ll see something interesting.

It’s Asia. It’s Africa. It’s central and South America. It’s all those places that for decades and even centuries have suffered under evil and persecution.

Is God all loving? Absolutely. Does he want to put an end to evil? Absolutely.

But as God is all loving, he wants as many people as possible to turn to him. And unfortunately, the only time a lot of us ever start giving God any attention is when we’re suffering.

It’s like we’re sleepwalking through most of our lives, and it’s evil that wakes us up, and strips away all those things that don’t matter to remind us that there’s a lot more to life than what we can see and feel and know. In that regard, even evil has its place in God’s plan.

The Christian says yes, there is evil. Also yes, there is a God. And that God is more powerful than anything and more loving than anything, and there will come a day when every bit of evil will be wiped away by His hand.

But not yet. For reasons that we often can’t understand, evil and suffering are part of God’s plan. They’re not caused by Him, not made by Him, but they are still used by Him to accomplish His own holy purposes.

In other words, whatever evil befalls us and whatever suffering we must endure has meaning. There is a reason for it, one hidden now but will someday be made apparent to us.

And in the end, that means everything.

Let’s pray:

Father, in such a beautiful world that displays so much of your love and presence, there is still darkness. Every day we must face evil both outside of ourselves and inside. Help us, Father, to overcome both. Give us the strength to be the light in that long night of life, and help us to see that even life’s pains and hurts, even that evil, is part of your loving plan both for us individually and us as a whole. And give us the faith and the hope to see that on one fine day, all of that evil and pain will be banished forever, and we will live in peace and in joy. For it’s in Jesus’s name we ask it, Amen.