Let Freedom Ring II, Why Does God Allow Evil?

Good to see everyone and Gosh, there's a lot of kids around here. I got mowed down in the back hallway today There are a lot of kids and those of you responsible for having them. You have a probably a message on moderation pastor Scott I don't know. It's just Wow We love kids and we do everything we can to make room for me boys It's a blast, but it's really something back there Wow Well today's message is going to be a big Stretching exercise mentally and spiritually for all of us. It certainly has been for me just in preparation time I'm going to talk about the problem of evil and I've had not a few people interestingly pastor Scott mentioned they came because they saw them the title on the sign and People are asking this question why do awful things happen in the world in which we live And by the way, I want to say just as a sidebar that I think over the last two months since the 9-eleven event We as a church have sought to kind of Navigate our way through these events and make some sense of them and help you to navigate And I think through prayer and information and fellowship. We have been doing it a really good job of it I want to thank our team for their efforts and many of you who lead small groups. And so we've We're on course here to continue to just listen to God in the midst of what's happening because it's not done I really believe it's not over But this question of evil is one that's been haunting thinking people for millennia and You can't really be disengaged in this message. I want to just kind of tell you up front This is not a ho-ho-ho message with lots of funny stories Evil doesn't tend to be funny when it happens to you So I need y'all to sit up a little bit and get ready. Okay, are you ready for this? Because this this one's going to challenge you But I hope at the end of the discussion you'll feel more equipped for the world in which we live Sixteen years ago a British tall ship was racing back across the Atlantic Toward Britain when just off the coast of Bermuda The Marquis with 28 aboard most of whom by the way were high school students on a training adventure suddenly capsized killing 17 of those students Intense investigation followed and the official Cause for the accident was called a rogue wind. There was no weather in the area There was no explanation that just out of nowhere this intense blast of air came knocked the ship over Capsizing it and killing the students. Have you ever heard that term rogue wind? Let me ask another question. Have you ever had a rogue wind hit your life? Trouble that came in with such intensity that you didn't know what hit you So much so that it turned your life upside down two months ago Thousands of Americans in New York and DC and here in Pennsylvania and we had one of those days, didn't we? But can I tell you that every day in this church somebody faces one of those things This week alone there have been people have had enormous rogue winds that have hit their life Some of you received your pink slip this week and out of nowhere your job has been terminated Some of you heard from a spouse that you know, you're at the end of the line and this relationship is not going to make it Some of you heard the call from the police officer about your kid And now you're not sure what to do. So you got the medical report Tom Marie Tom and Michelle Marie wonderful members of our church Tom and Michelle come every Saturday night to worship with us on our Saturday night service October the 6th five weeks ago Tom was sitting here Just like you are today Listen this room when I got something to eat went home that and I wasn't feeling well thought it was what he ate But he got intensively worse Contractive fever his wife got so concerned. She made him go to the emergency room They admitted him they couldn't figure it out But it got so bad that his body functions began to shut down his kidneys began to fail and he almost died The doctors were totally baffled they called for extreme measures and prayer went out all over for him. They finally Discovered it was pancreatitis and apparently he came very close to losing his life Now I can tell you know five weeks later Tom is on the road to recover. He's gonna be okay He's in some rehab now and we're grateful left all of us here and Saturday night wondering, you know What are we putting in the coffee? But it's okay to laugh a little bit. Okay But God often uses these things to bear good fruit, I Mean, you know sometimes in tragedy and evil and suffering people rally around one another don't they? Sometimes people even come to faith because of it But even though good things can happen honest people like many of you stay up at night sometimes looking at the ceiling And wondering why? Does evil happen at all? And why does it happen to me And maybe even a bigger question is why doesn't the sovereign God that I know and love and who loves me Why doesn't he step in and stop it from hitting my life? You've asked that question, haven't you? Most victims of rogue wind kinds of experiences can't help but ask the question. Why does it happen? I've tried to tell people it you know, stay away from that. But you know what I've asked him myself Billy Graham Who I think had an awesome contribution to the National Prayer Service on The events following 9-11 in the National Cathedral. He said in his message in front of a national or international audience He humbly admitted that to the why question of pain and suffering throughout the entire course of his life He has never really been able to solve the riddle and this is a quote to even his own satisfaction And that's quite an admission from a man of his intellect and spiritual maturity Some in my view in my experience go even farther than just questioning and and struggling with it Some people when they experience a rogue wind or usually when someone else in their life experiences it they push God away And they just they can't deal with it in the movie Patch Adams Patch his girlfriend actually the love of his life is suddenly taken by a gruesome murder And he is totally baffled because she was going to help somebody end up turning on her. Here was his response to God Let's watch this little clip together So what now, huh What do you want from me Yeah, I could do it Both know you wouldn't stop me Tell me what you're doing. Hey, let's look at the logic you create man Suffers enormous amounts of pain and dies Maybe you should have had just a few more brainstorming sessions prior to creation You rested on the seventh day Maybe you should have spent that day on compassion. You know what you're not worth it. So that clip I said, oh, there's a strong words But I've had those conversations with people. I don't know if you have people for whom when God just didn't seem to be there. They didn't know what to do, but just to push away So, what do we do even though we can't come to you know, the final answer With regards to this problem of evil and suffering in the world. It is worth looking into isn't it? It's worth going through the process and that's what I'm going to engage you in doing in the remaining moments of today So when evil ends up on your doorstep and it will at some time you'll have some grid Upon which to build a response you'll know something from which to to draw upon so that you can look at the Circumstance and understand something of how you can get through it Why doesn't God step in and stop rogue winds before they come? Why doesn't he stop rogue airplanes from going into? Skyscrapers or rogue automobiles from crashing into others on the freeway or rogue bacteria. Well to answer that question You have to go all the way back to the beginning of the book of Genesis and try to figure out what was in the mind of God in creation He created these magnificent creatures human beings with amazing capacities in his image and One of the things that's in his image It's innate in the whole process of creation is the gift of free will the capacity to make autonomous moral decisions That's an amazing thing. God took an incalculable risk every parent now knows what I'm talking about. Don't you parents? I've had discussions with young couples. I don't know whether I can bring a kid into this world I don't know whether they can make make it. I don't know if I can parent them and every parent Remember the first time you flip the keys to your 16 year old to the family car I mean the downside risk of freedom is pretty high, isn't it? You knew you might not see that kid again But you didn't want to restrain their freedom Well, that's what God looked at He said, you know The alternative is to put puppet strings on these creatures and just you know Reduce them to marionettes who would dutifully respond to every one of his tugs without passion without feeling without ownership without any sense of belonging to it at all and weighing the two alternatives free will or No problems God determined I'll choose the free will route and as we say the rest is history Human beings from the Garden of Eden to today have you know, pretty much had an abysmal track record haven't we in making bad decisions. I Have to tell you folks what's going on right now in our nation shouldn't really surprise us. We're about in the right cycle of wars Just about every 40 or 50 years. We just thought we were going to evolve out of those didn't we? Now some make better decisions than others, but in the end of it all This free will thing it's been an expensive But do you like the alternative? I think if we took a poll today most of it say well I'd rather have the choice than to be a puppet. And so when someone cries out in the face of evil Why doesn't God just step in and put a stop to all this? Well, the answer is he could But when he does the moment he does the moment he stops your fist from punching my nose or vice versa Then that human experiment that I talked about ceases Because now at that point God is controlling everything and by the way, he's not just controlling the evil things He's also controlling the good things. It does away with things like love and loyalty and courage and honesty All the things that we would describe as listen volitional Requiring our will What's at stake here is the balance between our free will and having a world without any kinds of pain or problems and God determined That to be made in his image meant that we had free will By the way, a day is coming. I might have pointed this out and I don't want you to miss this you can read about in Revelation 21 a day is coming when God will remove all evil and suffering and pain and sorrow and death and He'll wipe away the Bible says every tear from our eye and we'll never cry again But it will be those who have chosen made the volitional choice in this life to live with God forever That day is coming and I how about you? I get excited when I think about no more suffering pain and death and cancer and heartache and that day is coming Now given that as a backdrop, let me just run you through and don't be fearful that oh my gosh He's just starting and you got all this to go. I mean, it's not that long But let me share with you four realities about evil and suffering When you want to cry out to God When you feel pain in your life, like you don't know how to handle when I go through those kinds of moments and believe me I do Here's some things I've discovered number one. I've discovered a letter a sometimes that I am the cause of it I'm the one that's caused it not God When I'm in a relational nightmare or In some kind of a meltdown of another sort or whatever I realized it was something I said or didn't say something I did or didn't do or far worse at times I contribute on occasion to the rogue winds just by the way that I act and so do you I got a call from someone not long ago who has a serious drug and alcohol problem And he called me and he was back into his addiction. He said no, why does God let me go? Just right back into this I called out for him to him for help and he just didn't show up. Why doesn't he help me? So I asked him a couple questions. I said Did you know you were beginning to slip? Yes Did you have phone numbers from people who said call me anytime night or day and I'll be there for you Yes, did you call any of them? Did you go through the pattern you usually do when you've made bad decisions before? Yes, then I said well Let's not blame God for this one then Let's just say that you chose to do What you knew was wrong why because our hearts deceive us to think we're not responsible. Look at the next verse The human heart is most deceitful and desperately wicked who really knows how bad it is. The Prophet Jeremiah says That's the problem that we have loved ones. We we deceive ourselves. It's amazing to me. How many people Have Responded in the face of tragedy when I've gone to maybe add some comfort after they've had a road wind hit their life People who've never thanked God for all the blessings He's provided in 20 30 or 40 or 50 years of life and something devastating happens to them And the first thing out of their mouth is why did God do this to me? That's what they say And I think to myself wait Don't put your finger God's face first Look inside first of all And so the morally compromised guy who says after a multiple number of affairs How could my wife leave me and take our family and ruin? our dreams Or how can the guy who never asked God? What are your principles about handling money? Just does it his own way and then something goes upside down in the market He goes bankrupt and he says how could God do this to me? I mean, this is just self-deception And we're all susceptible to it. I Do a speaking engagement to do God's will When I was pulled over on your state 79 I was a little late and I knew what the speed limit was and I was pulled over and I had to wait You know how they make you just wait they sit back in the car and I know they're you know They're having doughnuts or whatever. They're doing while they're waiting for you to just get crawling in your skin They finally come up and I'm talking to God said Lord, you know, I was heading down to do your will here That was a short conversation. I mean God Knew the speed limit was 65 and I was going 67 Sometimes I cause it but sometimes trouble comes our way and I didn't create it. You didn't create it But upon closer inspection you discover the pain was caused by some other human being Who was acting out of their own depravity? It's not your fault. It was someone else's fault Ever have that happen to you? Things happen like that that just tear you up Sometimes they're little things and sometimes they're big things. It starts at a pretty early age usually Even little children. I remember I was six or seven years old I had a my I had a bike that I loved and I just kept it sort of in the backyard near the back porch And I lived in a pretty safe neighborhood I thought one day I came out and someone had taken my bike and Ridden it through the woods and broken some we had metal spokes back then I know what they had no but the spokes were broken and seat was you know Bent over and there's scratches and I was all just so upset about that And my dad traveled quite a bit as a salesman and he called in that night, and he said what's wrong He said and I see I said dad They just just destroyed my bike and I wanted to come home, you know and hunt down and maim the perpetrator and And he just said to me no son. He said The world has a lot of nasty people in it. You better just get used to it. I was seven years old It was a little hard to figure out, you know philosophically, but I was understanding what he was talking about Get used to it People do stuff and sometimes they do it and they don't even think any more about it most of you know I like to keep my cars kind of clean and shiny and so on and just it's just a sort of a an Outlet and some years ago. I had a nice car that I enjoyed a lot and I cleaned it up one day and drove it over to a supermarket and Parked far away from everybody a little bit of a slope in the driveway and just I'll just get over here went in and did my little thing came out and Leaning up against pushed right up against the passenger door with a shopping cart and I walked down and it just confirmed my worst nightmare I mean this person had to have seen where the car was going they had to have seen it just picking up speed going down The hill and it smashed into that door, you know some sinner They left no note No cash under the wiper blades, you know didn't have a kid tied to the back bumper anything like that They just did it and took off Could God have stepped in and stopped that well he could have But then once again, we'd all be back into the puppet routine, wouldn't we? and by the way The power of one human being to affect us is pretty amazing and when you think about it, you know one middle-aged Arab Out of a cave somewhere in Afghanistan By barking one order has made such a devastating impact on so many millions of lives Just think about how deeply we've been affected by that And we need to realize we're vulnerable do you realize that we're very vulnerable and I pray that you'll join me in trying to take a prayerful stand Against those kinds of evil people that are out there, by the way That's why I'm so committed to doing church the right way if we build purpose-driven churches Here and wherever we go They have the opposite effect of instilling life and hope and help in our culture in spreading love and compassion and Reducing the danger factor of living with other depraved people on this planet Listen, just think about if we really did this seriously and others did this all around the world in the next 10 or 15 or 20 years and we saw half a million or a billion people worldwide come to Christ Do you think the world be a more peaceful place? If people had love in their hearts rather than hate and they had compassion Rather than destruction on their mind if they had peace rather than violence and righteousness rather than evil. I think it would be So we're committed to it And I just pray that you'll join with us and throw in your resources and your energies to help it to happen so sometimes evil comes Sometimes evil comes through me. Sometimes it comes through others and sometimes it comes Through natural order of things Let's talk about that because this is the probably the the one that we all see from time to time the natural order of things Are hurricanes? tornadoes floods those kinds of things Interestingly the insurance people call those what? Acts of God, I wonder if they call today, you know this sunny fall day an act of God. No, this is a nice day You know, but bring some awful storm along and poof. There we go. It's an act of God Now if you read the Bible, it's very clear that in the beginning it wasn't God's plan a to have these kinds of Catastrophic weather events and so on in our in our existence. Um, it seems to me if I read this in Genesis before The fall there was some kind of idyllic setting there wasn't any of that kind of stuff So you see Adam and Eve's sinful choices led even into the to the fall the cosmos into a cycle That evidenced itself in destruction and hurt in the natural order of things but Most theologians hold this kind of theory God set the world then in motion under guiding principles Now listen, and so it isn't like God is guiding every cloud that filters by in a day or every leaf that falls down You know or every wind that blows But God set some things in motion and sometimes things happen the way we want them to and sometimes they don't and so, you know It was a little cold and blustery on the day of our community outreach car cruise I don't think God just sat up there and said well, I'm gonna push this button and make it cold I just think it was sort of a cold and blustery day. You know, we had some cold weather that came down from Canada He didn't make it rain in your wedding day because he doesn't like you But I do want to hasten to add that you can pray Elijah the Bible said was a man like us and he prayed and and said God shut up the heavens for three years and it didn't rain So, I mean we can affect the natural order of things, but I don't think it's sort of a you know singular Cause and effect kind of thing each and every time All right letter D the fourth way that evil comes into our life, and this is the Perhaps the most serious one by the way, look at the verse just before we go there It's important you get that verse We know that the whole creation Has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time The Bible goes on to say that the creation's leaning on tiptoes waiting for the manifestation of God's sons because then he's going to Recreate The natural order there's a day coming I'll tell you what when we won't recognize earth because God's going to do such an amazing transformation Of this planet the final way evil comes is through the evil one It's purpose purposefully sent by the evil one now The Bible teaches that there is a real being called a devil and I know That there might be a few of you today to think well, you know I was with you pastor up until this point now You're getting a little weird and I want to just say I'm I Am 100% convinced of the reality of evil and the person of the devil Most forcefully I'm convinced because Jesus said it was so look at your outline He even told us to pray this way lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one Now he doesn't say evil things as evil one Later on Jesus says in John 10 10 the thief the evil one comes only to stay with me steal Kill and destroy you want to know the mission of the devil? It's the steal kill and destroy every good thing about your life If there's no other reason to be a person who's involved in local church It's if nothing else it's to be in a place where you can come under the protection of a place that will keep The evil one from stealing killing and destroying things in your life Jesus on the other hand I can't you might have life and have it more abundantly. This is important Because you see we get a little bit dulled to this, you know Our president twice in the last two months has issued what he's called a national alert Remember that and he said we have credible evidence that there's something that could be happening and people got really kind of Upset about it because they couldn't say exactly what it was and when it was going to be But he said just be more vigilant. He used biblical words. It's interesting just beyond alert. I Just want to say to us today here at North Way Our enemy is out to destroy us Look at the next verse be self-controlled and circle the word alert your enemy the devil prowls around He's looking for someone to destroy. I don't want to put fear in you today But can I say this if the devil can find a way to destroy your life? He will do it and may I ask you to pray for me because I know he'd want to destroy my life, too And he wants to destroy the ministry of this church and he wants to take away our hopes and our dreams and our families Make no mistake. We fight a real evil one. We need to be on alert So, what can I do turn your outline over here's four things that I do I'll end with this and won't take but a few minutes When rogue winds strike your life and they will and they have struck my life When it happens, I need to hang on to something I need a point of reference Let me give you four things that I hold on to And I mean I hold on to these I'm not ashamed to tell you I cry out for them from time to time. Number one. I say affirm the character of God Loved ones, please listen The Lord our God is never say that word with me never the author Of evil If I can't believe that I don't have any basis of security if I think God just might choose, you know One day he gets up and he's having a bad day. And he said I'm just gonna send some trouble down on J I'm sunk. I Don't have any place to go I'm a ship without power and a hurricane and I'm going down. I have to know that God is good As John Walton said all the time Look at the verses I just picked I could have picked scores of my just picked a couple I abhor the assembly of evildoers and refuse to sit with the wicked Your eyes the back of the prophecies are too pure to even look at evil That's not not only about the author of evil. He can't even look upon it So we have to begin even though God mysteriously from time to time allows evil to get through to me He's not the author of it and he's not sending it and one day I'm gonna ask him. Why didn't you just Stop some of it from time to time and he does I believe But he could and my I know my understanding I'm gonna ask him why he allows it at all But maybe these next points might help second You've got to know that he will not give you more than you can bear. Oh, man, is that important in the middle of a struggle? There's sometimes have you been there when you think I just can't go on another day like this. I Can't bear up under it I can't live another day in this loneliness. I can't go through another day of this Torment in my job, or I can't have another day where I I'm feeling such pain When I'm on the ropes, it's very reassuring to hear the Holy Spirit whisper to me. Yes, you can make it Isaiah 43 says when you go through the waters, you will not be overwhelmed when you pass through the fire You will not be consumed. You need to hold on to those verses read Isaiah 43 sometime Lord says Yeah, you're gonna you're gonna get into it, but you're gonna go through it. You're gonna make I'm gonna make a way for you Paul the Apostle was facing the thorn in the flesh It was it was tearing him up and he said Lord take it away three times He asked him and God said no look at the next verse. He said my grace is sufficient for you For my power is made perfect. In other words, it's fully manifested in your weakness. I've been on the ropes sometimes I've wanted to say to God faced on in my office for you. Hey, it's over. I've had it. I'm tired I can't take any more of the struggle of the battle and you know, the Lord says to me. Oh, yes, you can I'll sustain One of my inspirations in this process is a woman by the name of Corrie ten boom I've heard that name before Corrie ten boom If you've been a Christian for any length of time what an inspiration Corrie was I met her some years ago a little minute of a person, you know, just frail and Elderly at the time I met her She suffered through the Nazi concentration.