May 2, 2024 • 36 mins
In this podcast, we discuss the two types of evil - natural and moral - and their various impacts on humanity. Realizing God's role in these forms of evil is the first crucial step towards understanding the ultimate spiritual resolution.
In this episode, we discuss natural disasters and personal disasters. We answer tough questions like : If God knew that creation would result in evil, why did He create in the first place? The answers lie deep within the scriptures, unraveling the purpose of humanity as seen in eternity past, and God's responsibility towards sin and moral evil.
We discuss God's promise of a future free from suffering and pain, and the prospect of final unity and reconciliation of everything. We cap off the episode with verses from the Romans that encapsulate the ultimate Christian expectation - all being shown mercy and leading to an eternal glorious world. Tune in to this enlightening episode if you're seeking a deeper understanding of God's plan, or struggling with the existence of evil.
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Music.
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Good day to you, brothers, sisters, friends, and new faces, and welcome to Current
Events and Christian Expectations.
And today in this podcast, we're going to be discussing the mystery of evil,
its origin, and its solution.
We'll lead off with Psalm 119, verses 67 and 71, and we'll have other scriptures
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that we reference and read today, and we'll put those in the overview.
But with the great mystery of evil before us, let's open up the scriptures and let's dig right in.
Good evening, or morning, or afternoon, depending on when you're listening to this. Why evil?
The word evil has been in the current event news world frequently,
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especially the last several weeks.
So the question arises, why is there evil on planet Earth?
Back in 1981, 1881, a fellow named Harold Kushner, he's a rabbi,
wrote a book, which I read, When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
It was his explanation as to why there are bad things in the world,
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or evil things, and why they happen to good people.
This is known throughout theology
as theodicy, which is the way of justifying the ways of God to man.
I read the book and concluded his His problem was what we would call a weak eschatology.
That means he didn't have a firm belief in that everything was going to wind
up okay by the acts and providence of God.
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Well, think of the worst of evils. Think of the Holocaust.
Think of people perishing and burning buildings. Think of 9-11.
Think of people who do horrible, inexplicable, unspeakable things to each other.
We're going to take a look at the mystery of evil and its final solution.
We will not say everything there is to say. We will not have answers for everything, mainly again.
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We want to see what the Scripture says, because that must be our Christian expectation of this matter.
Here's a quote from Epicurus from 270 BC.
Going back a bit. Going back a bit, just to let everybody know,
this is a problem that has been contemplated before Jesus was even on earth.
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Epicurus says, is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he's not omnipotent? Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing?
Then whence comes evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
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You know, that's interesting that that goes back to 270, you know,
A.D. B.C. B.C., excuse me.
Still, those are questions that get asked. If God's all-powerful,
why is there evil? Right. Why doesn't he do something? Yeah.
And if he's good, why would he permit it?
Precisely. Precisely. In other words, God must be limited, and so evil exists.
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However, this argument has two major assumptions.
Here's the first one, that one can fully know what goodness is and what it would
look like in any circumstance.
Give an example, the cross of Jesus. Hmm.
The second assumption is this, that one can fully know what it means to be all-powerful,
which raises the question, what is the true nature of power?
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Ultimately, is it agape love, the love of the New Testament,
from God through Jesus, or is it sheer force, as in might makes right?
And if love is true power, can one fully know what that would look like seeing it in action?
Christians say it's the cross. Others say that's ridiculous,
ridiculous, ridiculous. meticulous.
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Reminds me of an artist's depiction around 150 or so AD of a fellow who had
drawn a picture of a crucified donkey and said, you know, this is Ralph's God.
I forget the exact name of the fellow. It was Greek.
So it goes way back, the idea that how can a cross be something good?
How can it even talk about power?
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Then there's this problem for the atheist from C.S. Lewis.
Quote, My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust.
But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?
A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.
What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?
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So the final problem is this, and has always been this. The world is cruel and
unjust, and therefore there is suffering. and suffering, it is asserted, is evil.
But how do we know that suffering is always evil? Or to put it as the psalmist
says, Psalm 119, verses 67 and 71, Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word.
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It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
And so, what is good, then, we want to explore lore, in the Christian context
and Christian expectations.
According to Christian theology, the suffering of Christ was and is the greatest good.
It wasn't thought so, though, at first.
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Listen to Isaiah 53 verses 4 and 5.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him
stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.
Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
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Yes, carrying our griefs, our sorrows. But we, meaning we the world,
the world as it is, said, no, this is something God doesn't want.
That's why he's on the cross.
He was perished, crushed, chastised, and had wounds, through which,
of course, we have spiritual healing, not to mention sometimes physical healing,
but above all, spiritual.
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Then we have the next couple of verses, 10 through 11.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief.
When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring,
he shall prolong his days.
The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul,
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he shall see and be satisfied.
By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted
righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
There's the great paradox. It was the will of the Lord to crush him.
Keep that in mind because there are lots of verses we'll look at that people
just have difficulty with.
But if we do not accept them, we will not see the way clear to be blessed with
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how this is all going to turn out. You know, some of that, too,
goes to the sovereignty of God.
Some people, you know, if God's real, why doesn't he prevent evil?
But then if God chooses this person over another, what gives him the right to
do that is the next question. Exactly.
Yeah. Why is that? Well, out of the greatest suffering, the Son of God,
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comes the greatest good.
Good that comes through the righteous, loving power to suffer on behalf of others.
And if there is not a righteous power to affect the greatest good,
how then will evil ever end?
Now, as we look at this subject, we must view it from our own perspective, which is humility.
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And that's our Christian expectation for dealing with this subject.
And we got to take on the perspective that Christ gives us in Luke 11, 13. Now listen to this.
If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?
He's talking to his disciples. He just got through teaching them the Lord's Prayer.
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If you then who are evil, and he just says it as a a matter of fact.
Well, there are three great truths here.
Number one, we, I'm talking about we who profess faith, we are evil in some sense. We are evil.
As the context shows, evil here means at times we hurt people.
All right, second truth, yet we know how to do good.
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We sometimes help people, help and hurt. All of life can be summed up on those two categories.
And three, we need more goodness and power which God is wanting to give, to wit the Holy Spirit.
So what is it to be evil? Here's a good description. Psalm 36, verses 1 and 2.
Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart.
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There is no fear of God before his eyes, for he flatters himself in his own
eyes, that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.
Yes, the NIV renders that. In their own eyes, they flatter themselves too much
to detect or hate their sin.
Some of that, it sounds like, too, is personal blindness. Blindness.
Personal blindness chosen that way. Yeah. Chosen to be blind.
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To be unaware of evil in our own lives is a problem. And therefore,
when that happens, evil reigns supreme.
Now, this is all important, for if we were totally evil, we would have no sense of what the good is.
However, we do have, as we've seen above, a sense of the good.
But we need more understanding, since our evilness prevents a full understanding of the good.
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And Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2, only the Holy Spirit can illuminate us
to understand that spiritual solution to evil.
So in Scripture, we have two broad categories of evil.
Natural evil, natural evil, as in disasters, afflictions, tornadoes,
hurricanes, storms, you name it. Car accidents.
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Car accidents that we all suffer. Yes. Psychological disaster and pain,
physical suffering, spiritual suffering. And that's regardless of our spiritual status before God.
Happens to everybody. Yes. And that was Kushner's theme there.
You know, why does bad things happen to good people?
And then there is moral evil. That's the second kind of evil.
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That comes out of our hearts, which destroys the good that God has made.
So, natural evil, moral evil. As to the first in the world's ongoing history,
and listen carefully, God takes responsibility for that. Isaiah 45, 7.
I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity.
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I am the Lord who does all these things.
Yes, He does all those things. creates darkness, creates calamity.
He takes responsibility for it.
And I take that to heart because it's very important. Without believing that,
you can't move on to the final solution.
You can't go on to step two. You can't go on to step two. It's not going to happen.
Moses. But you know, that also goes back to sovereignty of God.
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I know a lot of Christians who have a problem with the sovereignty of God to
say, well, well, what gives God the right to cause the tornado?
Yeah. Because he's God. Yeah. Yeah, because he's God. That's the ultimate answer. Absolutely.
Here is a passage from Exodus 4, verses 10 through 12.
Moses has been arguing that he's not equipped to deliver the children of Israel
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out of Egypt. This is what God says to Moses.
But Moses said to the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past
or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.
Then the Lord said to him, Who has made man's mouth?
Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?
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Now therefore go, and I'll be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.
Moses has to accept the fact that God is the cause behind those physical afflictions.
That's a painful thing because going beyond that, oh, so God,
it was you that made my child mentally disabled. Yes.
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Yeah. Yeah. You have to accept that because otherwise there's no solution to
get out of the problem. Yeah.
In other words, here with Moses, God tells Moses, who made someone mute or deaf or seeing or blind?
Was it not I, the Lord? Therefore, I'm the one who can fix your mouth.
That's got to be taken to heart. These are hard truths. Yet God also brings glory out of such.
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Remember the story in John chapter nine, The disciples and Jesus walked past
a man who'd been born blind.
And they asked the question, who sinned, the parents or this man himself?
And the rabbis believed at those times that people can sin before they were born.
But Jesus says, no, this is for the glory of God.
Glory of God. He doesn't get involved in the problem of the origin of sin and
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the way in which they want it.
So here's a clue. The answer to evil is always going to be found in the glory
of God, not in the origin of it. keep that in mind.
And as to natural disasters, listen to this. This is Amos 3.6.
Is a trumpet blown in a city and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come
to a city unless the Lord has done it?
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Yeah. Now, disaster, the word disaster in other translations says, does evil not come?
But the word evil there in the Hebrew means something as bad as happened.
It doesn't mean intentional sin done by somebody, you know, like murder somebody.
It's natural disasters, as we call the natural evil.
Other versions, as I say, have evil there. Now, look at Amos 4, 7, and 8.
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I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest.
I would send rain on one city and send no rain on another city.
One field would have rain. The field on which it did not rain would wither.
So two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water and would not be satisfied.
Yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord.
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Yet you did not return to me. But keep in mind, and this is very important so
we'll have a balance here. Listen up.
God the Father also does this, Matthew 5, 44, 45.
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
For he makes his Son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
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Yes. In a world of 8 billion people, as the population is now,
Now, overwhelmingly, more people get blessed each day with sunshine than get struck by lightning.
In a world of 8 billion people, more day get life-giving rain than get destroyed by a flood.
You don't get to hear those statistics very broadly. Only when there's a bad
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thing. A bad thing. If it bleeds, it leads. Yeah.
Yeah, for news. Yeah. Why does God send evil then upon his own people,
as we heard in Amos, to make them return to him?
Amos 4.10. I sent among you a pestilence after the manage of Egypt.
I killed your young men with the sword and carried away your horses,
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and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils,
yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord.
They didn't return. They didn't return. God's intent in bringing disaster is
to move people to repentance.
The disaster brings suffering, but it is always the remnant that takes it to heart.
Nonetheless, this is the providence of God, for which he takes responsibility,
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as is obvious from the above verses.
For if disasters just happen, and they're not part of the providence of God,
how can God ever get rid of them?
How can he create a new world to come that's free of them?
That's a good point. If he can't create them, he can't get rid of them. That's right. Exactly.
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So we must take that to heart. The classic testimony of Scripture is Job's as
to how believers are to react when disasters come, the loss of wealth and health and you name it.
Job 2, verses 9 and 10.
Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold fast your integrity?
Curse God and die. But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women would speak.
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Shall we receive good from God, and shall Shall we not receive evil?
In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. He didn't sin with his lips.
And we must confess, for many of us, it would take us a while to get to that point. It would.
It would take us a while. And I've experienced that in my own life and have
been with other people who have confessed, I can't get over this evil that's happened.
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I'm mad at God and this person over here, I can't forgive them.
So sometimes it takes time. Well, it's a natural thing. I mean...
If you're a Christian, at some point you're going to be mad at God.
Yes. You're lying to yourself if you think you wouldn't be or that you haven't been.
You know, when people say, well, I'm always fine with God. It's like, I don't think so.
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I must not have had a disaster yet in your life. Right, right,
right. And cry out, why, Lord, why? Yeah.
Which is all summed up in the great cry of Jesus, my God, my God,
why have you forsaken me? Yeah, even he made that cry. Right. Yeah.
Well, earthquakes and famines are natural in a fallen world,
producing suffering, whatever God's intention may be in them.
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Listen to this from Matthew 24, verses 6 and 7.
And you will hear of wars and rumor of wars. See that you are not alarmed,
for this must take place, but the end is not yet.
For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom,
and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.
And all these are but the beginning of birth pains, Jesus says.
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Notice wars, earthquakes, it's in the news regularly, even since we started in 2024.
Now, sometimes a tornado is just a tornado springing, nonetheless,
from a cursed earth, cursed earth, which God pronounced upon the earth after Adam and Eve's sin.
And yet, even with these kinds of natural evils, and I'm struck by,
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we've been down here in Tennessee for almost coming on four years now,
and we've gone through tornadoes and two floods and another set of tornadoes.
I'm always amazed on the news to hear people say thanks to Jesus or thanks to
God as they stand in front of a rubble, a rubble. They're there and they're blessed.
For humanity then, any disaster is an opportunity either to thank God or blame
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God or to beseech him for the help and comfort and mercy that we need and others need.
Okay, besides natural evils, if that weren't enough, that God ordains,
there are moral evils, and they come from the human heart, not the acts of God.
And this is absolutely, we must be clear, God doesn't cause people to sin.
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That is a fundamental, fundamental truth.
Well, and this is also the shift. If you don't get point number one,
you're not going to get this second point. That's right.
Evil comes out, moral evil comes out of us. Matthew 15, verses 18 and 19.
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.
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For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality,
theft, false witness, slander.
Yep. These are what defile a person, Jesus says.
Defilement from within is the primary problem of humanity, not global warming, climate change.
It's not tornadoes. It's not tornadoes. It's not hurricanes,
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as horrific as those can be.
If there were no inward sins corrupting us, humanity would be able,
no doubt, with charity and mercy to address the natural evils without blaming God.
Okay. Then why? People always say, why Satan? But there's a better question than that. Why the tree?
Because if God hadn't put a tree up to say, don't eat from this tree,
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Satan would not have had an opportunity to deceive Eve and bring down Adam.
So we got to go further back. Here's the question. If God knew creation would
result in, as some people would say, the mess we're in now, then why did he create?
Ultimately, we must look at what God was doing before the world was.
Now, this next set of verses, we're not going to get involved in the Calvinistic
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Arminian issue here of the election. It is addressed to the faithful at Ephesus, believers.
So this is a truth for believers. Let's just leave it at that.
Ephesians 1, verses 3 through 6. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,
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that we should be holy and blameless before Him.
In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ,
according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace with
which He has blessed us in the Beloved.
Before there was evil, moral evil, sin, Satan, death. Before there was evil, God had already acted.
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Note that there's no reference, however, to anyone being chosen to do evil or
predestined to perdition.
It's not there. As to sin and evil, silence.
So, let's move on to another one here. We'll discuss it then with the Calvinistic Arminian solutions.
2 Timothy 1, verses 8 through 10.
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Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord,
nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God,
who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works,
but because of his own purpose and grace,
which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,
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and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior,
Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
Yes, he saved us not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and
grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.
Again, the purpose for salvation is what's seen in eternity past.
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There's nothing dealing with condemnation at all.
There's no mention of sin's origin in eternity. God, as we've already seen,
takes responsibility for the disasters He sends among us.
However, He is not culpable for sin or causes sin or moral evil in any way that must be understood.
James 1, 13-15 Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God.
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For God cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempts no one.
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin,
when it is fully grown, brings forth death.
If you go back and through your mind rehearse the story of Adam and Eve,
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you can see that he's got a theology of sin based there on that original sin of Adam and Eve.
Sin occurs in creation's history. There's no mention of it in eternity.
God's counsel is notwithstanding. It's not there. We can't find it.
I can't find it. As soon as sin occurs, God acts to address it.
We see that in the Garden of Eden, and immediately he has things to say about
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the consequences of that sin and the solution.
That's the famous proto-evangelium, Genesis 3.15, where we're told that he says
to Eve, that the offspring, he says to the serpent, the offspring,
the seed of Eve will strike the serpent's head, and the serpent will strike the seed's heel.
Heel meaning vulnerable, but victorious as it comes out.
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And here we come to the heart of the matter.
Before creation was, the Lord God was prepared for the sin problem. How?
Simply not because of divine counsels or ordinances or decrees or predestination
about sin or anything, but because of the God He is.
1 Peter 1, 18-20.
Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers,
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not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood
of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in
the last times for the sake of you.
Yes, before the world was created, as we might say in an accommodating way to
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matters beyond us, back in eternity, something was going on beyond our understanding.
And it's this truth. There has always been sacrifice in the heart of God.
From eternity past, He's always been the God who sacrifices Himself.
He didn't cause sin, but He was more than able to deal with it.
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Why, though, knowing sin and all the suffering to come, did he go ahead anyway?
Now, this is a little philosophical, but I think it's worth saying.
There are those who say, since he knew it would come, that is,
moral evil, sin, Satan, and death.
Since he knew it would come, and since in his foreknowledge and his decrees
are perfect, he couldn't change what was to be.
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But God is not imprisoned by his own knowledge. That leads to fatalism,
not the free acts of God that we find in Scripture. scripture.
As to what God was doing in eternity past, there are always just two answers,
Calvinistic answer and the Armenian.
Calvinistic answer says, God ordained sin to be. That's it, short and simple.
We could get sophisticated with arguing that, but that's the bottom line.
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Armenians say, well, he foresaw that it was going to be there and he allowed
it to happen, which is not a good answer because that means he had the purpose to allow it.
He just didn't let it slide by or go, my goodness, I can't do much about that.
No, No, he purposed, he'd have to have purpose to allow it to happen.
As John Calvin said, there's no difference between those two,
a decree and then just letting some be and letting it happen because you see it's going to happen.
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You have to have a purpose behind that as well.
There are problems with both of those views. There are problems with both of
those views because whenever we come to a passage in eternity past,
we don't have anything about what God in his internal counsel was doing about
the sin thing other than he is this kind of God. He sacrifices himself.
What is the biblical answer? This is very simple. Deuteronomy 29, 29.
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The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed
belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of his law.
Right, secret things belong to God.
And this business of what was he doing in eternity past, we do not know,
and it's futile to try to figure it out by great theological.
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Pondering. People still try. People still try. Yeah, absolutely.
There's more commentary on Scripture than there is Scripture. Right.
And here we are at a paradox, which perhaps one day we might understand. I don't know.
The love of God is quantitatively better known through the suffering of Christ
than through the pleasures of Eden.
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In fact, it is a love we could only know through Calvary.
God takes responsibility for natural evils, as we've seen, and for the evil
that sprang from those he created, sin and death.
He also takes responsibility for that, even though he didn't cause it,
since who else can deal with the problem?
He makes our sin his own. 2 Corinthians 5.21, For our sake he made him to be
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sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might,
And in the world to come, He has promised you to complete the work of righteousness
that evil corrupted, and He takes responsibility.
He takes responsibility for putting everything back right that we ourselves
brought to pass that ruined it.
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Listen to this from Ephesians 1, verses 7-9.
Which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the
mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ.
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Yes, as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him,
things in heaven and things on earth. Two points.
He made known to us the mystery of his will. What was he thinking about in times past?
This, one day I'm going to put everything right. And from that,
we cannot deduct what he was thinking about concerning sin, whether the decree
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of it or the foreknowledge of it, it's not mentioned.
To unite all things, pretty conclusive.
All means all. All means all. To unite all things in him, things in heaven.
You say, well, what in heaven needs unity? Well, that's interesting, isn't it?
And things on earth. Not only is there finally going to be a complete unity
of heaven and earth, there's also going to be a reconciliation of everything
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involving heaven and earth. Listen to this, first of all, from Colossians 1, 15 and 16.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.
All things were created through him and for him.
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All things were created through him and for him. notice all things were created
through him because he's deity and for him.
So they're going to end up being for him. Listen to verse 20.
And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,
making peace by the blood of his cross.
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Again, all things. Reconcile everything to himself, whether it's in heaven,
on earth, making peace by the blood of the cross.
Some people would have problems with all meaning all. Yes.
But nonetheless on these what they call these exclusive universal kind of passages,
there's no caveat about but there's this and that
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to worry about it's just it's the way it's going to end up this is
how it's going to end up and then there's the question of course of the prophecy
and revelation of the coming immortality that we're going to have never to die
this is when john sees the new heaven and new earth the next the last book of
the bible revelation 21 verse 4,
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He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.
Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more,
for the former things have passed away.
Exactly. Death shall be no more, be no more mourning, no crying, no pain.
Everything has passed away. That time is yet to come, but it will come.
And yet, as we finish up in the book of Revelation, in the very last chapter.
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We have these interesting words, which from my own experience,
I can tell you commentators sometimes just say, we have no idea what this means.
But nonetheless, it's important, I think, to accept it just as it says it and
realize what that means.
And this is verse 1 through 3 of chapter 22 of Revelation.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, brightest crystal,
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flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.
Also on either side of the river, the tree of life, with its twelve kinds of
fruit, yielding its fruit each month, the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
No longer will there be any accursed, but the throne of God and the Lamb will
be on it, and His servants will worship Him.
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So you have the servants, that's people we would refer to of faith, Christians.
But notice that phrase, the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
There is healing to be done. The Greek word is where we get therapy.
Yeah. Interesting, is it not? What I see here is that even at this point in
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the future, there is still some kind of healing to be done.
There is still, therefore, some kind of death.
Beyond this, at the end of all the ages, Ephesians 2, verse 7,
Paul says, in the ages to come, God's going to keep showing us the mercies in and through Jesus.
One day, God will be all in all. Now, some people think the last picture we
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have of the future to come is from Revelation 22.
No, the last word on everything, and once again, it deals with everything all
in all, is from 1 Corinthians 15, 24 through 28.
Listen to this. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the
Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.
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For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
But when it says, All things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is accepted
who put all things in subjection under him.
When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected
to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
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Yes, and that last verse again for clarification. When all things are subjected
to him, the Son, then the Son himself will also be subjected.
And again, if there's an exception to be made to that, Paul doesn't mention it.
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A lot of people don't realize that in the end, Jesus is going to turn things
back over to God. Yes, yes.
He is the, well, the Lord's Prayer.
We're supposed to say, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come. And Jesus administers, but it's the Father's kingdom.
One day, God will be all in all. What does that mean? It means something wonderful.
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One day, no more corruption. All the universe will be united,
reconciled, immortalized, and not one place where God is not worshipped,
praised, or adored forever.
I know that raises some questions, but nonetheless, all these passages looked
at, they don't worry about an exception. They are absolute.
Paul means all. He redeems it all. Yeah. So we end with this great doxology
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from Romans 11, verses 32 through 36.
Keep in mind that in chapters 9, 10, 11, those three chapters,
Paul's been showing how God works through history to bring everything to a grand conclusion.
And finally, in chapter 11, down these last few verses,
he reaches the grand climax of what he's been aiming for, which is that,
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once again, all have been disobedient, but all are going to be shown mercy.
Listen to this as Randy reads it.
For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.
Oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are his judgment! How inscrutable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?
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Or who has given a gift to him, that he might be repaid?
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever.
Amen. Right. For God has consigned all to disobedience. That's everybody.
That he may have mercy on all, same all, because it's parallelism, everybody.
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How is this going to happen? How can it be done? And what about his connection
to sin and all that? Paul says, you can't search out his judgments.
We are not able to do that. We're not God. His ways are inscrutable.
You cannot figure them out, which is exactly what theologians have been trying to do for 2,000 years.
Listen to this. who's known the mind of the Lord? Nobody.
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Who's been his counselor? God, you should have done it this way. No, no, no.
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever.
Okay. Well, that's the Christian expectation.
God, eventually, we don't know when, and we must be patient.
That's why the Bible is big on perseverance.
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All things will be brought to a grand, glorious eternity to come.
Well, thanks, Jim. The mystery of evil is something that perplexes all of us,
and this gives us God's own words to think about and to ponder.
And perhaps you've got some questions yourself that we didn't answer during
the podcast. If you do, please send those to events and expectations.
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That's the word events, the word and, the word expectations,
all together at gmail.com, and we'll be sure to answer you. or simply post your
question in the comments after you like this podcast on your favorite platform.
This has been Current Events and Christian Expectations. And until next time, keep looking up.
Music.
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Good day to you, brothers, sisters, friends, and new faces, and welcome to Current
Events and Christian Expectations.
And today in this podcast, we're going to be discussing the mystery of evil,
its origin, and its solution.
We'll lead off with Psalm 119, verses 67 and 71, and we'll have other scriptures
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that we reference and read today, and we'll put those in the overview.
But with the great mystery of evil before us, let's open up the scriptures and let's dig right in.
Good evening, or morning, or afternoon, depending on when you're listening to this. Why evil?
The word evil has been in the current event news world frequently,
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especially the last several weeks.
So the question arises, why is there evil on planet Earth?
Back in 1981, 1881, a fellow named Harold Kushner, he's a rabbi,
wrote a book, which I read, When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
It was his explanation as to why there are bad things in the world,
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or evil things, and why they happen to good people.
This is known throughout theology
as theodicy, which is the way of justifying the ways of God to man.
I read the book and concluded his His problem was what we would call a weak eschatology.
That means he didn't have a firm belief in that everything was going to wind
up okay by the acts and providence of God.
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Well, think of the worst of evils. Think of the Holocaust.
Think of people perishing and burning buildings. Think of 9-11.
Think of people who do horrible, inexplicable, unspeakable things to each other.
We're going to take a look at the mystery of evil and its final solution.
We will not say everything there is to say. We will not have answers for everything, mainly again.
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We want to see what the Scripture says, because that must be our Christian expectation of this matter.
Here's a quote from Epicurus from 270 BC.
Going back a bit. Going back a bit, just to let everybody know,
this is a problem that has been contemplated before Jesus was even on earth.
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Epicurus says, is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he's not omnipotent? Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing?
Then whence comes evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
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You know, that's interesting that that goes back to 270, you know,
A.D. B.C. B.C., excuse me.
Still, those are questions that get asked. If God's all-powerful,
why is there evil? Right. Why doesn't he do something? Yeah.
And if he's good, why would he permit it?
Precisely. Precisely. In other words, God must be limited, and so evil exists.
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However, this argument has two major assumptions.
Here's the first one, that one can fully know what goodness is and what it would
look like in any circumstance.
Give an example, the cross of Jesus. Hmm.
The second assumption is this, that one can fully know what it means to be all-powerful,
which raises the question, what is the true nature of power?
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Ultimately, is it agape love, the love of the New Testament,
from God through Jesus, or is it sheer force, as in might makes right?
And if love is true power, can one fully know what that would look like seeing it in action?
Christians say it's the cross. Others say that's ridiculous,
ridiculous, ridiculous. meticulous.
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Reminds me of an artist's depiction around 150 or so AD of a fellow who had
drawn a picture of a crucified donkey and said, you know, this is Ralph's God.
I forget the exact name of the fellow. It was Greek.
So it goes way back, the idea that how can a cross be something good?
How can it even talk about power?
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Then there's this problem for the atheist from C.S. Lewis.
Quote, My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust.
But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?
A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.
What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?
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So the final problem is this, and has always been this. The world is cruel and
unjust, and therefore there is suffering. and suffering, it is asserted, is evil.
But how do we know that suffering is always evil? Or to put it as the psalmist
says, Psalm 119, verses 67 and 71, Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word.
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It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
And so, what is good, then, we want to explore lore, in the Christian context
and Christian expectations.
According to Christian theology, the suffering of Christ was and is the greatest good.
It wasn't thought so, though, at first.
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Listen to Isaiah 53 verses 4 and 5.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him
stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.
Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
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Yes, carrying our griefs, our sorrows. But we, meaning we the world,
the world as it is, said, no, this is something God doesn't want.
That's why he's on the cross.
He was perished, crushed, chastised, and had wounds, through which,
of course, we have spiritual healing, not to mention sometimes physical healing,
but above all, spiritual.
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Then we have the next couple of verses, 10 through 11.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief.
When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring,
he shall prolong his days.
The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul,
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he shall see and be satisfied.
By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted
righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
There's the great paradox. It was the will of the Lord to crush him.
Keep that in mind because there are lots of verses we'll look at that people
just have difficulty with.
But if we do not accept them, we will not see the way clear to be blessed with
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how this is all going to turn out. You know, some of that, too,
goes to the sovereignty of God.
Some people, you know, if God's real, why doesn't he prevent evil?
But then if God chooses this person over another, what gives him the right to
do that is the next question. Exactly.
Yeah. Why is that? Well, out of the greatest suffering, the Son of God,
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comes the greatest good.
Good that comes through the righteous, loving power to suffer on behalf of others.
And if there is not a righteous power to affect the greatest good,
how then will evil ever end?
Now, as we look at this subject, we must view it from our own perspective, which is humility.
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And that's our Christian expectation for dealing with this subject.
And we got to take on the perspective that Christ gives us in Luke 11, 13. Now listen to this.
If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?
He's talking to his disciples. He just got through teaching them the Lord's Prayer.
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If you then who are evil, and he just says it as a a matter of fact.
Well, there are three great truths here.
Number one, we, I'm talking about we who profess faith, we are evil in some sense. We are evil.
As the context shows, evil here means at times we hurt people.
All right, second truth, yet we know how to do good.
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We sometimes help people, help and hurt. All of life can be summed up on those two categories.
And three, we need more goodness and power which God is wanting to give, to wit the Holy Spirit.
So what is it to be evil? Here's a good description. Psalm 36, verses 1 and 2.
Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart.
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There is no fear of God before his eyes, for he flatters himself in his own
eyes, that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.
Yes, the NIV renders that. In their own eyes, they flatter themselves too much
to detect or hate their sin.
Some of that, it sounds like, too, is personal blindness. Blindness.
Personal blindness chosen that way. Yeah. Chosen to be blind.
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To be unaware of evil in our own lives is a problem. And therefore,
when that happens, evil reigns supreme.
Now, this is all important, for if we were totally evil, we would have no sense of what the good is.
However, we do have, as we've seen above, a sense of the good.
But we need more understanding, since our evilness prevents a full understanding of the good.
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And Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2, only the Holy Spirit can illuminate us
to understand that spiritual solution to evil.
So in Scripture, we have two broad categories of evil.
Natural evil, natural evil, as in disasters, afflictions, tornadoes,
hurricanes, storms, you name it. Car accidents.
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Car accidents that we all suffer. Yes. Psychological disaster and pain,
physical suffering, spiritual suffering. And that's regardless of our spiritual status before God.
Happens to everybody. Yes. And that was Kushner's theme there.
You know, why does bad things happen to good people?
And then there is moral evil. That's the second kind of evil.
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That comes out of our hearts, which destroys the good that God has made.
So, natural evil, moral evil. As to the first in the world's ongoing history,
and listen carefully, God takes responsibility for that. Isaiah 45, 7.
I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity.
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I am the Lord who does all these things.
Yes, He does all those things. creates darkness, creates calamity.
He takes responsibility for it.
And I take that to heart because it's very important. Without believing that,
you can't move on to the final solution.
You can't go on to step two. You can't go on to step two. It's not going to happen.
Moses. But you know, that also goes back to sovereignty of God.
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I know a lot of Christians who have a problem with the sovereignty of God to
say, well, well, what gives God the right to cause the tornado?
Yeah. Because he's God. Yeah. Yeah, because he's God. That's the ultimate answer. Absolutely.
Here is a passage from Exodus 4, verses 10 through 12.
Moses has been arguing that he's not equipped to deliver the children of Israel
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out of Egypt. This is what God says to Moses.
But Moses said to the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past
or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.
Then the Lord said to him, Who has made man's mouth?
Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?
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Now therefore go, and I'll be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.
Moses has to accept the fact that God is the cause behind those physical afflictions.
That's a painful thing because going beyond that, oh, so God,
it was you that made my child mentally disabled. Yes.
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Yeah. Yeah. You have to accept that because otherwise there's no solution to
get out of the problem. Yeah.
In other words, here with Moses, God tells Moses, who made someone mute or deaf or seeing or blind?
Was it not I, the Lord? Therefore, I'm the one who can fix your mouth.
That's got to be taken to heart. These are hard truths. Yet God also brings glory out of such.
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Remember the story in John chapter nine, The disciples and Jesus walked past
a man who'd been born blind.
And they asked the question, who sinned, the parents or this man himself?
And the rabbis believed at those times that people can sin before they were born.
But Jesus says, no, this is for the glory of God.
Glory of God. He doesn't get involved in the problem of the origin of sin and
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the way in which they want it.
So here's a clue. The answer to evil is always going to be found in the glory
of God, not in the origin of it. keep that in mind.
And as to natural disasters, listen to this. This is Amos 3.6.
Is a trumpet blown in a city and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come
to a city unless the Lord has done it?
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Yeah. Now, disaster, the word disaster in other translations says, does evil not come?
But the word evil there in the Hebrew means something as bad as happened.
It doesn't mean intentional sin done by somebody, you know, like murder somebody.
It's natural disasters, as we call the natural evil.
Other versions, as I say, have evil there. Now, look at Amos 4, 7, and 8.
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I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest.
I would send rain on one city and send no rain on another city.
One field would have rain. The field on which it did not rain would wither.
So two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water and would not be satisfied.
Yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord.
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Yet you did not return to me. But keep in mind, and this is very important so
we'll have a balance here. Listen up.
God the Father also does this, Matthew 5, 44, 45.
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
For he makes his Son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
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Yes. In a world of 8 billion people, as the population is now,
Now, overwhelmingly, more people get blessed each day with sunshine than get struck by lightning.
In a world of 8 billion people, more day get life-giving rain than get destroyed by a flood.
You don't get to hear those statistics very broadly. Only when there's a bad
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thing. A bad thing. If it bleeds, it leads. Yeah.
Yeah, for news. Yeah. Why does God send evil then upon his own people,
as we heard in Amos, to make them return to him?
Amos 4.10. I sent among you a pestilence after the manage of Egypt.
I killed your young men with the sword and carried away your horses,
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and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils,
yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord.
They didn't return. They didn't return. God's intent in bringing disaster is
to move people to repentance.
The disaster brings suffering, but it is always the remnant that takes it to heart.
Nonetheless, this is the providence of God, for which he takes responsibility,
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as is obvious from the above verses.
For if disasters just happen, and they're not part of the providence of God,
how can God ever get rid of them?
How can he create a new world to come that's free of them?
That's a good point. If he can't create them, he can't get rid of them. That's right. Exactly.
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So we must take that to heart. The classic testimony of Scripture is Job's as
to how believers are to react when disasters come, the loss of wealth and health and you name it.
Job 2, verses 9 and 10.
Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold fast your integrity?
Curse God and die. But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women would speak.
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Shall we receive good from God, and shall Shall we not receive evil?
In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. He didn't sin with his lips.
And we must confess, for many of us, it would take us a while to get to that point. It would.
It would take us a while. And I've experienced that in my own life and have
been with other people who have confessed, I can't get over this evil that's happened.
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I'm mad at God and this person over here, I can't forgive them.
So sometimes it takes time. Well, it's a natural thing. I mean...
If you're a Christian, at some point you're going to be mad at God.
Yes. You're lying to yourself if you think you wouldn't be or that you haven't been.
You know, when people say, well, I'm always fine with God. It's like, I don't think so.
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I must not have had a disaster yet in your life. Right, right,
right. And cry out, why, Lord, why? Yeah.
Which is all summed up in the great cry of Jesus, my God, my God,
why have you forsaken me? Yeah, even he made that cry. Right. Yeah.
Well, earthquakes and famines are natural in a fallen world,
producing suffering, whatever God's intention may be in them.
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Listen to this from Matthew 24, verses 6 and 7.
And you will hear of wars and rumor of wars. See that you are not alarmed,
for this must take place, but the end is not yet.
For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom,
and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.
And all these are but the beginning of birth pains, Jesus says.
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Notice wars, earthquakes, it's in the news regularly, even since we started in 2024.
Now, sometimes a tornado is just a tornado springing, nonetheless,
from a cursed earth, cursed earth, which God pronounced upon the earth after Adam and Eve's sin.
And yet, even with these kinds of natural evils, and I'm struck by,
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we've been down here in Tennessee for almost coming on four years now,
and we've gone through tornadoes and two floods and another set of tornadoes.
I'm always amazed on the news to hear people say thanks to Jesus or thanks to
God as they stand in front of a rubble, a rubble. They're there and they're blessed.
For humanity then, any disaster is an opportunity either to thank God or blame
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God or to beseech him for the help and comfort and mercy that we need and others need.
Okay, besides natural evils, if that weren't enough, that God ordains,
there are moral evils, and they come from the human heart, not the acts of God.
And this is absolutely, we must be clear, God doesn't cause people to sin.
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That is a fundamental, fundamental truth.
Well, and this is also the shift. If you don't get point number one,
you're not going to get this second point. That's right.
Evil comes out, moral evil comes out of us. Matthew 15, verses 18 and 19.
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.
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For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality,
theft, false witness, slander.
Yep. These are what defile a person, Jesus says.
Defilement from within is the primary problem of humanity, not global warming, climate change.
It's not tornadoes. It's not tornadoes. It's not hurricanes,
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as horrific as those can be.
If there were no inward sins corrupting us, humanity would be able,
no doubt, with charity and mercy to address the natural evils without blaming God.
Okay. Then why? People always say, why Satan? But there's a better question than that. Why the tree?
Because if God hadn't put a tree up to say, don't eat from this tree,
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Satan would not have had an opportunity to deceive Eve and bring down Adam.
So we got to go further back. Here's the question. If God knew creation would
result in, as some people would say, the mess we're in now, then why did he create?
Ultimately, we must look at what God was doing before the world was.
Now, this next set of verses, we're not going to get involved in the Calvinistic
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Arminian issue here of the election. It is addressed to the faithful at Ephesus, believers.
So this is a truth for believers. Let's just leave it at that.
Ephesians 1, verses 3 through 6. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,
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that we should be holy and blameless before Him.
In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ,
according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace with
which He has blessed us in the Beloved.
Before there was evil, moral evil, sin, Satan, death. Before there was evil, God had already acted.
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Note that there's no reference, however, to anyone being chosen to do evil or
predestined to perdition.
It's not there. As to sin and evil, silence.
So, let's move on to another one here. We'll discuss it then with the Calvinistic Arminian solutions.
2 Timothy 1, verses 8 through 10.
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Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord,
nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God,
who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works,
but because of his own purpose and grace,
which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,
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and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior,
Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
Yes, he saved us not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and
grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.
Again, the purpose for salvation is what's seen in eternity past.
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There's nothing dealing with condemnation at all.
There's no mention of sin's origin in eternity. God, as we've already seen,
takes responsibility for the disasters He sends among us.
However, He is not culpable for sin or causes sin or moral evil in any way that must be understood.
James 1, 13-15 Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God.
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For God cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempts no one.
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin,
when it is fully grown, brings forth death.
If you go back and through your mind rehearse the story of Adam and Eve,
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you can see that he's got a theology of sin based there on that original sin of Adam and Eve.
Sin occurs in creation's history. There's no mention of it in eternity.
God's counsel is notwithstanding. It's not there. We can't find it.
I can't find it. As soon as sin occurs, God acts to address it.
We see that in the Garden of Eden, and immediately he has things to say about
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the consequences of that sin and the solution.
That's the famous proto-evangelium, Genesis 3.15, where we're told that he says
to Eve, that the offspring, he says to the serpent, the offspring,
the seed of Eve will strike the serpent's head, and the serpent will strike the seed's heel.
Heel meaning vulnerable, but victorious as it comes out.
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And here we come to the heart of the matter.
Before creation was, the Lord God was prepared for the sin problem. How?
Simply not because of divine counsels or ordinances or decrees or predestination
about sin or anything, but because of the God He is.
1 Peter 1, 18-20.
Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers,
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not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood
of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in
the last times for the sake of you.
Yes, before the world was created, as we might say in an accommodating way to
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matters beyond us, back in eternity, something was going on beyond our understanding.
And it's this truth. There has always been sacrifice in the heart of God.
From eternity past, He's always been the God who sacrifices Himself.
He didn't cause sin, but He was more than able to deal with it.
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Why, though, knowing sin and all the suffering to come, did he go ahead anyway?
Now, this is a little philosophical, but I think it's worth saying.
There are those who say, since he knew it would come, that is,
moral evil, sin, Satan, and death.
Since he knew it would come, and since in his foreknowledge and his decrees
are perfect, he couldn't change what was to be.
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But God is not imprisoned by his own knowledge. That leads to fatalism,
not the free acts of God that we find in Scripture. scripture.
As to what God was doing in eternity past, there are always just two answers,
Calvinistic answer and the Armenian.
Calvinistic answer says, God ordained sin to be. That's it, short and simple.
We could get sophisticated with arguing that, but that's the bottom line.
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Armenians say, well, he foresaw that it was going to be there and he allowed
it to happen, which is not a good answer because that means he had the purpose to allow it.
He just didn't let it slide by or go, my goodness, I can't do much about that.
No, No, he purposed, he'd have to have purpose to allow it to happen.
As John Calvin said, there's no difference between those two,
a decree and then just letting some be and letting it happen because you see it's going to happen.
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You have to have a purpose behind that as well.
There are problems with both of those views. There are problems with both of
those views because whenever we come to a passage in eternity past,
we don't have anything about what God in his internal counsel was doing about
the sin thing other than he is this kind of God. He sacrifices himself.
What is the biblical answer? This is very simple. Deuteronomy 29, 29.
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The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed
belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of his law.
Right, secret things belong to God.
And this business of what was he doing in eternity past, we do not know,
and it's futile to try to figure it out by great theological.
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Pondering. People still try. People still try. Yeah, absolutely.
There's more commentary on Scripture than there is Scripture. Right.
And here we are at a paradox, which perhaps one day we might understand. I don't know.
The love of God is quantitatively better known through the suffering of Christ
than through the pleasures of Eden.
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In fact, it is a love we could only know through Calvary.
God takes responsibility for natural evils, as we've seen, and for the evil
that sprang from those he created, sin and death.
He also takes responsibility for that, even though he didn't cause it,
since who else can deal with the problem?
He makes our sin his own. 2 Corinthians 5.21, For our sake he made him to be
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sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might,
And in the world to come, He has promised you to complete the work of righteousness
that evil corrupted, and He takes responsibility.
He takes responsibility for putting everything back right that we ourselves
brought to pass that ruined it.
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Listen to this from Ephesians 1, verses 7-9.
Which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the
mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ.
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Yes, as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him,
things in heaven and things on earth. Two points.
He made known to us the mystery of his will. What was he thinking about in times past?
This, one day I'm going to put everything right. And from that,
we cannot deduct what he was thinking about concerning sin, whether the decree
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of it or the foreknowledge of it, it's not mentioned.
To unite all things, pretty conclusive.
All means all. All means all. To unite all things in him, things in heaven.
You say, well, what in heaven needs unity? Well, that's interesting, isn't it?
And things on earth. Not only is there finally going to be a complete unity
of heaven and earth, there's also going to be a reconciliation of everything
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involving heaven and earth. Listen to this, first of all, from Colossians 1, 15 and 16.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.
All things were created through him and for him.
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All things were created through him and for him. notice all things were created
through him because he's deity and for him.
So they're going to end up being for him. Listen to verse 20.
And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,
making peace by the blood of his cross.
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Again, all things. Reconcile everything to himself, whether it's in heaven,
on earth, making peace by the blood of the cross.
Some people would have problems with all meaning all. Yes.
But nonetheless on these what they call these exclusive universal kind of passages,
there's no caveat about but there's this and that
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to worry about it's just it's the way it's going to end up this is
how it's going to end up and then there's the question of course of the prophecy
and revelation of the coming immortality that we're going to have never to die
this is when john sees the new heaven and new earth the next the last book of
the bible revelation 21 verse 4,
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He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.
Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more,
for the former things have passed away.
Exactly. Death shall be no more, be no more mourning, no crying, no pain.
Everything has passed away. That time is yet to come, but it will come.
And yet, as we finish up in the book of Revelation, in the very last chapter.
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We have these interesting words, which from my own experience,
I can tell you commentators sometimes just say, we have no idea what this means.
But nonetheless, it's important, I think, to accept it just as it says it and
realize what that means.
And this is verse 1 through 3 of chapter 22 of Revelation.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, brightest crystal,
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flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.
Also on either side of the river, the tree of life, with its twelve kinds of
fruit, yielding its fruit each month, the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
No longer will there be any accursed, but the throne of God and the Lamb will
be on it, and His servants will worship Him.
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So you have the servants, that's people we would refer to of faith, Christians.
But notice that phrase, the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
There is healing to be done. The Greek word is where we get therapy.
Yeah. Interesting, is it not? What I see here is that even at this point in
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the future, there is still some kind of healing to be done.
There is still, therefore, some kind of death.
Beyond this, at the end of all the ages, Ephesians 2, verse 7,
Paul says, in the ages to come, God's going to keep showing us the mercies in and through Jesus.
One day, God will be all in all. Now, some people think the last picture we
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have of the future to come is from Revelation 22.
No, the last word on everything, and once again, it deals with everything all
in all, is from 1 Corinthians 15, 24 through 28.
Listen to this. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the
Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.
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For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
But when it says, All things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is accepted
who put all things in subjection under him.
When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected
to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
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Yes, and that last verse again for clarification. When all things are subjected
to him, the Son, then the Son himself will also be subjected.
And again, if there's an exception to be made to that, Paul doesn't mention it.
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A lot of people don't realize that in the end, Jesus is going to turn things
back over to God. Yes, yes.
He is the, well, the Lord's Prayer.
We're supposed to say, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come. And Jesus administers, but it's the Father's kingdom.
One day, God will be all in all. What does that mean? It means something wonderful.
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One day, no more corruption. All the universe will be united,
reconciled, immortalized, and not one place where God is not worshipped,
praised, or adored forever.
I know that raises some questions, but nonetheless, all these passages looked
at, they don't worry about an exception. They are absolute.
Paul means all. He redeems it all. Yeah. So we end with this great doxology
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from Romans 11, verses 32 through 36.
Keep in mind that in chapters 9, 10, 11, those three chapters,
Paul's been showing how God works through history to bring everything to a grand conclusion.
And finally, in chapter 11, down these last few verses,
he reaches the grand climax of what he's been aiming for, which is that,
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once again, all have been disobedient, but all are going to be shown mercy.
Listen to this as Randy reads it.
For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.
Oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are his judgment! How inscrutable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?
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Or who has given a gift to him, that he might be repaid?
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever.
Amen. Right. For God has consigned all to disobedience. That's everybody.
That he may have mercy on all, same all, because it's parallelism, everybody.
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How is this going to happen? How can it be done? And what about his connection
to sin and all that? Paul says, you can't search out his judgments.
We are not able to do that. We're not God. His ways are inscrutable.
You cannot figure them out, which is exactly what theologians have been trying to do for 2,000 years.
Listen to this. who's known the mind of the Lord? Nobody.
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Who's been his counselor? God, you should have done it this way. No, no, no.
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever.
Okay. Well, that's the Christian expectation.
God, eventually, we don't know when, and we must be patient.
That's why the Bible is big on perseverance.
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All things will be brought to a grand, glorious eternity to come.
Well, thanks, Jim. The mystery of evil is something that perplexes all of us,
and this gives us God's own words to think about and to ponder.
And perhaps you've got some questions yourself that we didn't answer during
the podcast. If you do, please send those to events and expectations.
(36:33):
That's the word events, the word and, the word expectations,
all together at gmail.com, and we'll be sure to answer you. or simply post your
question in the comments after you like this podcast on your favorite platform.
This has been Current Events and Christian Expectations. And until next time, keep looking up.
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