If God Exists, Why does he allow Evil?

Make sure you give Credit for the argument to Frank Turek. His books I don’t have enough Faith to be an atheist, and his book stealing from God.

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Introduction

Back in December sticky notes what question you got about God or Christianity. One of the ones that was left was this. Why does God allow bad things happen to those who believe?

The Lord has led me to answer this, it gives us a break from John, and a chance to answer a really hard question.

Story of Maggie’s sister who is pregnant, early on the baby was diagnosed with Holoprosencephaly (Hola prosen Cephaly) (HPE) which is a disease given to babies that their brain is not developing properly. What this disease does is it gives the baby a less than 5% chance to live once she is born. My friends sister and husband are faithful members of a church, and the sisters husband is the music minister of their church. They love the Lord, and their is no human reason why she should have through the entire labor process, do give birth to little baby Hannah, and for her to pass away only days later. Through their process together they have asked the question, Why? Why do we have to go through this?

As we go through the defence for how and why we know that God does exists, and why he allows this to happen. I am not preaching this tonight to equip you all to be smarter than someone. I am not teaching you to be non compassionate to those who are going through suffering. Rather we are going through this tonight so you can find hope in your suffering. If we believe that there is no God, and suffering and evil is just part of it we need to get over it, what is the point? But we will see there is God who knows, sees, hears and has a plan for all suffering. That this God loves you, your friends and family, and that we can have hope in times of our suffering.

Tonight will look different as we will be bouncing around from passages to support, I will have them on the screen, I highly encourage you to take notes. If there is one sermon that I feel is the most applicable to every single student in this room and it is worth it to take notes, my friends, it is this one. I am going to pray then, then we will dig in.

Point 1- Does God really Exists?

In his book Stealing from God, he shows that Atheist try to disprove God by several things. He uses the Acronym Crime; Causality, Reason, Information, Morality, Evil, Science. We will be dealing with the Evil from this acronym.

We will show that God does exists through 3 main things

Beginning of the Universe- Genesis 1.

In the Beginning the Big Bang. Since time, space, and matter all have been created. For that to be created, it had to be made and designed by someone or something that is outside of time

Objective Morality

We know between right and wrong. Sure their are laws, but how did they come up with laws?

We know murder is wrong. Well how do we know? There must be a moral law giver who is the standard of good. And that standard is not our government indiviuals. We have m

And Evil.

If there is evil their must be good. Evil is like Cancer. Take the cancer out of the body, the body is good. Take the body out of the cancer you can not have the cancer. If i cut my finger. If the cut is removed i have a good finger. If i remove the finger from the cut, can it exists? No.

Same thing for evil. When take the evil away from good it becomes perfect. But of we try to take the good from evil it can exists as their is no longer a standard for good.

Which is why we say someone is IMmoral, UNjust, DIShonest.

So, Evil proves there is a God, But then what is the purpose of Evil?

Point 2- What’s the Purpose of Evil/Suffering?

Well since God exists, why can’t he just take the evil out of the world. The response with that is, why doesn’t he start with you? We are quick to call out the sin or evilness of other people, but we rarely put the mirror in front of ourself and realize we are also the ones who are the problem for evil. I only have a few more minutes, so i will show a video to show some of this

Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death,

Show video of “Is God Good?”

The main reason why evil exists is due to our free will. God created humans to have a genuine relationship with him. You can not force someone to love you.

What’s the purpose of life?

John 17:3 “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Purpose of life is for us to know God, in a relationship

Matthew 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”

Knowing and growing in God means there will be pain.

Quote from C.S. Lewis

God Whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” - The Problem of pain.

We act this out all the time. We think we can do it all

Suffering develops Character

No courage without danger

No perserverace without obstacles

No compassion without suffering

No patience without tribulation

No character without adversity

No faith without need

Which means no pain, no gain

Actually more pain and more gain

2 Corinthians 4:17–18 “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

Illustration of my favorite player Drew Brees. Gets his shoulder mangled when he was with the Chargers. Thought his career would be over. He’s a 6 foot nothing dude, who has no shoulder, no arm strength. But the Saints take a chance on him, he goes to them. That same year he goes, a massive storm hit New Orleans, something called Hurricane Katrina. They fight through that, that year they make they playoffs, but lose soon. They finally in the 2009 season they have a squad. They started the season 13-0 but then they lose their last 3 and limp in the playoffs, The teams they play in the playoffs and their QB. Cardinals with Kurt Warner, beat them. Vikings with Brett Favre. The in the Super Bowl as the underdog The Colts with a dude named Peyton Manning. Game was tied at 17, Saints go down and score. The ball is now in the first ballot HOFer hands Peyton. He’s driving down the field with under 2 minutes to go about to go and tie it up, then the play that I see, he throws a pick 6 to Tracy Porter to essentially end the game.

Drew got Super Bowl MVP, is that game sweeter for him, or the 3rd string QB. Drew, why? He had faced more adversity, and he was the MVP.

We can apply this same thought when it comes to suffering for eternity. We go through difficulty we enhance our soul.

This suffering will bring greater good

Romans 8:28 “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

But what about the specific baby that passes away? My friends neice whose name is Hannah.

Introduce the ripple effect.

He can bring good from evil even when we can not see it

The story of Joeseph and His brother

Genesis 50:20 “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

While respecting free choice, God can bring good from evil

But God is all loving, all powerful.

He is either one or the other

But he is actually all loving, powerful, and all wise.

Story of the man at the conference. Woman who was raped got pregnant , didnt want to let the sin of father affect the child. Had the child. The child went on to be a pastor. He led people to Christ, discipled them. That child was the man sharing the story. If evil did not happen, he would not be a

Point 3- What’s God’s Solution for Evil?

Does God promise to protect Christians from evil and suffering?

Nope. Peter was crucified upside down.

All of the Biblical Character that suffered for God. Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Job, John the Baptist, Stephen, James, John, Peter, Paul, Jesus.

Why do we think we deserve better than the treatment of the perfect Messiah?

The Earth is not Heaven… Yet.

The solution for suffering/evil-

The Cold Comfort-

The Story of Job. Lost everything. God had a plan. Renewed Job. Has an entire book of the Bible to show us how to respond due to his suffering.

Illustration Going camping in Alaska sleeping in a tent.

The Warm Comfort- Hope of eternal life.

God Suffered Himself. Jesus’ pain can be our gain.

Can be, not everyone wants to be saved.

John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Illustration to the ladies- You have ever had a boy pursue you that you were not interested in?

Would a loving God send you to Hell?

No, youre own sin.

Illustration- The doctor doesn’t kill you, your disease does. Same thing.

So our solution is the Messiah.

3 Circles

Why does God allow Evil?

He exists

He has purposes all over, most are above our understanding.

Free will

The ripple effect- Joseph

But he is not out of the game. He has a solution for this evil. and that is Jesus.

Small Group questions