Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Job 42:1-5

N: Informer

Welcome

Welcome.

Thanks to the praise band.

Thanks to the AV team.

Car port was torn down this week.

We’ll be looking at cosmetic fixes in the weeks to come.

Last business meeting we voted to adopt the master plan as the concept for the building going forward, and have already started work on Phase 1. We’ll keep you informed as things develop.

Announcements

Men’s Breakfast 4/9: Invite guys to come!

Easter Schedule (Informer)

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Opening

Final week in our “Hot Topics” series of sermons.

I can say that this series has been a roller coaster for me as far as studying and preparation, and I pray that it’s been effective for you in addressing questions or doubts, and perhaps has been used by God to strengthen your faith and perspective on these particular topics.

All of the messages are available on our website, our Facebook page, and our YouTube channel if you’d like to go review them.

Let’s dive in with our focal passage this morning, which comes from the book of Job.

PRAYER (Albuquerque Chinese Baptist Church, Pastor Voon Min Liew)

In the book of Job, we find a righteous man who went through tremendous suffering.

He experienced tremendous relational and economic loss, a terribly painful infirmity, and if that wasn’t enough, conflict with his friends and even his wife over the the fact that he was suffering these things.

They thought that what Job suffered was his fault: that, “God gives bad things to bad people, and good things to good people, so Job… you must be a bad person—look at all the bad stuff that’s happened to you.” (this is called retributive theology) Throughout Job’s responses to his friends’ arguments (and they kind of get meaner and meaner about it as they go), he confesses that he doesn’t understand, and wants God to answer for the suffering he has experienced.

“Why, God?” is basically his question.

Then God shows up and speaks of His character: His power, His goodness, His wisdom, His knowledge; reminding these guys that He knows things and can do things that they can’t.

And this passage from Job 42 is Job’s response.

“I thought I understood, but I realize now that I didn’t have a clue.”

Job’s response was a humble expression of trust in God’s goodness, His greatness, His plan, His power, and His character.

This morning, we are going to address what is for many the single greatest theological issue: why do evil and suffering exist in the world?

And before we dive in, I want to make a couple of things clear:

First, nothing that I say this morning is meant to in any way suggest that suffering and evil are not a big deal.

Everyone hearing me has experienced the pain that comes from suffering and evil.

Some of us are dealing with excruciating grief that comes from the suffering that we have gone through, and continue to go through.

I never want to make light of what you are experiencing, so please know that this message is meant to be a biblical and philosophical response to the problem of evil and suffering in the world, not a message about dealing with pain that has come as a result of suffering and evil.

God absolutely cares about the pain that you are going through, and He loves you and wants to walk with you through the pain that you are experiencing.

And we must confess that your pain is certainly real, but our goal today is to consider the extremely difficult topic of the problem of evil and suffering, not how to get through it, even though I’ll speak a little to that for the believer.

Someday I’m certain that I’ll preach on God’s comfort in our suffering, but that day is not today.

I do not mean to dismiss or downplay your very real pain.

I pray that what I do bring on the topic of dealing with pain is helpful for you.

Second, while I believe that the answers that the Scriptures give us to the problem of evil are good answers, I’ll also confess that for some, the answers aren’t completely satisfying, because at some point, we have to respond the way Job did: in humble trust that God is who He says He is based on the biblical witness and evidence in creation, that He is in control, and that He will ultimately make everything right.

But we also have to remember that God will make everything right from HIS perspective, not from ours.

We simply CANNOT think the way that God thinks.

However, for people who want easy, complete, super-clean answers to what is really the most difficult theological question of the ages, I’m afraid that I’m going to let you down today.

I’m not that smart.

I’ll give you the answers that make sense to me and conform to the biblical witness, but there are still aspects that we have to take on faith, trusting in God’s goodness, because of our lack of complete understanding.

So with the table set as much as I can set it, let’s start at the very beginning.

It’s a very good place to start.

1) Evil was not God’s plan.

When we summarize the creation narrative of Genesis 1 and 2, which we considered a little bit in week 3 of our series, we find that there was only God, then God made the universe and all that it contains, and entered into a special relationship with humanity: we bear not only His breath—the breath of life—but we bear His image as well.

Mankind was made to steward the perfect Garden of Eden, which was designed for man’s flourishing.

And everything was good.

There was just one rule: Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We will look more at the doctrine of mankind next week, when we start part 2 of our We Believe series.

So this review of the Fall is a bit of a primer for that.

Now somewhere between creation and Genesis 3, the devil is cast out of his place among the heavenly host, and taking the form of a serpent, tempts Eve (and through Eve, Adam) to violate the only rule that God had given to humanity:

Their fellowship with each other and with God was broken.

They had tasted the fruit that was forbidden.

They believed that God had been holding out on them, and so they ate.

Some might argue that they learned BOTH good and evil that day.

No, they didn’t.

They had already completely experienced good: over and over in the creation narrative it’s said that it was GOOD.

The only thing they actually learned when they ate the fruit was evil: they discovered what it meant to no longer be what they were designed to be: good.

They had always only known good.

Now they knew the difference, like God does.

The ones who were to bear God’s image were broken.

And because mankind had been given the task of being the “understeward” of creation, when mankind was broken, everything was broken.

Sin had entered God’s good creation.

Evil was born in our hearts, and continues to live in each of us, because we all carry the brokenness of Adam in our very natures as humans.

And so the first thing that we need to acknowledge is that if we are broken, and creation is broken, then broken things are going to happen, because broken people plus a broken place brings broken results.

And I’ll be honest: that answer to the question of evil works for me personally.

It fits the biblical narrative, it’s true as far as reality is concerned, and it allows me to confess that I don’t and can’t know everything, so how can I evaluate everything rightly enough to sit in judgment against God?

But philosophically, while it does show humble acceptance of the reality of life, it doesn’t really address the “why” of evil and suffering’s existence in the first place.

For many, this is the issue: why, if God exists as the Bible says He does, does evil to exist at all?

This is known as the classical Problem of Evil:

The classical Problem of Evil goes like this:

1. God as the Bible reveals Him has these three characteristics (among many others):

God is omnipotent (all-powerful): He can do anything that He decides to do.

(Psalms 33:9)

God is omniscient (all-knowing): There is nothing outside of the scope of His knowledge.

(Isa.

46:9-10)

God is omnibenevolent (all good): He is absolutely good, and nothing about Him—no action or thought or motive—is evil at all.

(Psalm 106:1)

2. Thus, if this particular God exists, then evil cannot exist.

3. Evil exists.

So, as the argument goes: If every part of statement 1 is true, then statement 2 must also be true, and statement 3 must be false.

Why?

Because the assumption is that a God who has all power and all knowledge who is also all good CAN stop all evil, KNOWS how to stop all evil, and would WANT to stop all evil, so evil should not exist.

However, since evil exists, He must not be at least one of these three things.

He might be all-knowing and all-good, but must not be all-powerful and so CAN’T stop all evil.

He might be all-powerful and all-good, but must not be all-knowing because hasn’t figured out HOW to stop all evil.

He might be all-powerful and all-knowing, but must not be all good because He has decided NOT to stop all evil.

And thus, the Problem of Evil would say that God as the Bible reveals Him does not exist.

This is a classic conundrum of biblical theology, because the Bible clearly shows God as having all three of these qualities, but as we have seen in Job, it also clearly reflects the reality of the existence of evil and suffering.

So, since we KNOW from experience that statement 3 is in fact true, how can we reconcile this fact with God’s existence as the Bible reveals Him?

Many feel that this is the slam-dunk argument against God’s existence.

But it’s not.

The second premise of the argument: that evil cannot exist if God exists isn’t necessarily true.

It would be reasonable and logical for a completely powerful, completely knowledgeable, and completely good God to allow evil to exist if He had a very good reason for doing so.

The Bible tells us that God in the beginning didn’t just make Adam and Eve, He related to them.