Since today is Palm Sunday we’re reminded of the day that the crowds waved palm branches to honor Jesus as He rode into Jerusalem. Waving palm branches was the Jewish custom of honoring a king and for a brief period of time it seemed the people wanted to recognize Christ’s right to reign.
However their celebration was short lived because later that same week the citizens of Jerusalem were crying out, “Crucify Him!”
In the most evil act in the history of the universe Jesus was nailed to a cross where He suffered and died for our sins. The only innocent man who ever lived was condemned to take the place of we who are truly guilty.
Why did God allow such an evil and despicable event as the crucifixion of Christ to occur?
Why does God allow evil to exist at all?
Some of you have been seriously victimized by someone else’s bad behavior and you especially know how deeply this question can penetrate your soul. Why did God allow something evil to happen to you? Why didn’t God intervene and keep it from taking place?
When we wrestle with this question (and all honest thinking people have grappled with it) our focus is usually on the evil in others. When we think of evil we’re not usually considering the sinful things that we’ve done as “evil.” We’re usually pondering the atrocities of mass murderers, the depravity of child abusers, the way some people exploit others through abuses like slavery or prostitution. We think of war crimes, terrorism, hate speech, and various viciously hateful things people do to others.
Why does God allow these evils?
This can be very perplexing and even a potential stumbling block to some who need to come to Christ. Therefore we need to address it. And that’s one of the reasons we’ve been addressing the “God Questions” in this current series. But we’ve also been investigating the “God Questions” for our own edification.
If you’re not a Christ follower you may wonder why God allows evil to exist and it may hindering you from coming to Christ. I hope you can be helped today.
But if you are a Christ follower wrestling with this “God Question” without some sense of resolution, you may not be experiencing the level of peace and joy God intended for you to enjoy.
So as we tackle this particular “God question” I ask you, please don’t neglect to approach it on a personal level. Don’t just ask yourself why others do evil things. Ask yourself, “Why did God create me with the potential for wrongdoing? Why did He give me a free will? Why am I not a robot programmed to obediently carry out the wishes of the one who created me?”
Each of us has done wrong things. We haven’t been anything like a Hitler or a Hussein, but each and every one of us has sinned. And we often look back at our sins with great loathing. Why did God create each one of us with the potential to do something evil? Why does He allow evil to exist?
Skeptics approach the problem something like this:
A. A “good” God would destroy evil.
B. An “all-powerful” God could destroy evil.
C. Evil has not been destroyed.
D. Therefore, there cannot possibly be such a good and powerful God.
The failure of such deductive reasoning in solving this puzzlement, as is often the case with “God questions,” is that we often start with faulty and finite human reasoning.
Take the Jain parable of the elephant and four blind men.
Four blind men happen upon an elephant one day. One of them felt its trunk and said, “An elephant is like a hose.” Another felt its side and said, “No, an elephant is like a wall.” The third blind man put his arms around its leg and declared, “An elephant is like a tree.” Finally the fourth blind man grabbed its tail and insisted, “No, an elephant is like a snake.”
Supposedly this parable answers the dilemma of why there are so many different views of God. The suggestion is that we just all have different perspectives. And in our age of tolerance, it’s trumpeted that my perspective on God is not any better than yours is – it’s just “different.”
But do you know the problem with this kind of thinking? The problem with the blind men in the Jain parable is – they’re all blind! An elephant is not really like a hose, or a wall, a tree or a snake. None of them is right! If you want to know what an elephant is like you need someone who can see the BIG picture!
And when it comes to answering the “God questions” we need the value of God’s perspective because our view is limited. God’s the only one who can see the BIG picture. Without God we’re spiritually blind. We look at the question of evil from our limited view and come to conclusions that are based on partial information.
Let’s look together at the information God gives us in His Word about the existence of evil.
Why does God allow evil? What does His Word say about this thorny issue?
First of all, the Bible teaches that God has allowed the existence of evil…
1. SO I CAN LOVE GOD WITHOUT COERCION.
A computer or a talking doll can be programmed to say, “I love you,” but it doesn’t have the same significance as when a human freely chooses to love.
Created beings who are free to love must also be free to hate. They must be given the choice of following or rejecting the will of their Creator. In order for my love for God to be meaningful it must be freely given.
God won’t force you to love Him. He COULD force you to love and obey Him, but obviously He hasn’t. He wants you to willingly trust Him.
The Bible teaches us that God is Sovereign. That means He has the power, authority and capability to do anything He wants to do without consulting anyone for advice or getting their permission. The Bible teaches this in several places but here’s one ample verse about God’s sovereignty.
“How great you are, Sovereign Lord! There is none like you; we have always known that you alone are God.” 2 Samuel 7:22 (GNT)
God needs no one else to exist. Nor does He need anyone else’s permission to do the things He does.
But the question remains, how can we reconcile God’s sovereignty, His total control, with man’s ability to choose?
One very good biblical illustration is the very cross of Jesus! The greatest illustration of evil is also the greatest picture of the intermingling of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will!
Look at what the Bible says when the Apostle Peter confronted those who had instigated Christ’s crucifixion.
“In accordance with his own plan God had already decided that Jesus would be handed over to you; and you killed him by letting sinful men crucify him.” Acts 2:23 (GNT)
The death of Christ, God’s Son, was by Divine plan, and yet, at the same time, humans made the choice to reject Him and crucify Him!
The cross of Christ displays how God’s sovereignty and man’s free will are simultaneously at work in the world. Long before men knew that they were going to “choose” to reject Jesus, God "planned" it!
We should stand in awe of God’s unparalleled wisdom when we look back to the cross of Jesus!
And looking at the cross should also motivate us to love God for sending His Son to take our place!
The Bible says, “We love Him because He loved us first.” 1 John 4:19 (NLV)
During World War II Solomon Rosenberg, his wife and their two sons, along with Rosenberg’s mother and father were placed in a Nazi concentration camp for Jews.
It was a labor camp and the rules were simple: As long as you did your work you were permitted to live. When you became too weak to do your work – then you were exterminated.
Rosenberg sadly watched as his mother and father were marched off to their deaths. He knew that the next to go would be his youngest son, David – because David had always been a frail child.
Every evening, Rosenberg came back into the barracks after a day of hard labor and searched for the faces of his family. When he found them they would huddle together, embrace one another and thank God for another day of life.
But one day Rosenberg came back and didn’t see those familiar faces.
He finally discovered his oldest son, Joshua, huddled in a corner, weeping and praying. He said, “Josh, tell me it’s not true!”
Joshua turned and said, “It is true, dad. Today David was not strong enough to do his work so they came for him.”
“But where is your mother?” asked Rosenberg.
“Oh dad,” he said, “”When they came for David he was afraid and he cried. So mom said, ‘There is nothing to be afraid of David.’” And she took his hand and went with him.”
When Jesus died on the cross on Skull Hill that’s what He was doing for us! He went there for us! He knew that we had to die for our sins so He lovingly died in our place. He knows that we’re going to face death one day so He took our hand and said, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
God allowed evil, even the evil that took the life of His own dear Son, so that you and I could choose to love Him!
In remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice, we’re going to observe communion together right before the second point of the sermon.
The Bible teaches that God has allowed the existence of evil…
1. SO I CAN LOVE GOD WITHOUT COERCION.
Secondly, God allows evil because…
2. GOD WANTS ME TO LIVE LIKE HIM WITHOUT DISTRACTION.
Let’s read from Christ’s familiar Sermon on the Mount.
"You’re familiar with the old written law, ’Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ’Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that. "In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you." Matthew 5:43-48 (Msg)
How am I to handle the existence of evil, particularly the evil ways I am treated by those around me?
In one of the most counter-culture statements of His time Jesus taught His followers to respond to evil with good. And whom did He use for our example? The Father in heaven Himself!
I am to live like the Father in heaven. God gives the sun and rain to everyone alike – the good and the bad. People who do evil things are the recipients of God’s blessings in this age of grace just as those are who do good things.
This is not a message of pacifism. It’s a message of peace. I am to “live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward” me.
Right away our human nature rebels. “I can’t do that! When someone cuts me off in traffic I have to let them know they did wrong so I speed up and cut them off! When someone raises their voice to me I do the same. If someone makes a cutting remark to me I let them have it back! It’s humanly impossible to live the way Jesus is expecting me to live.”
You know what, you’re right. It IS "humanly" impossible. That’s why it takes the Spirit of God! It takes our moment-by-moment reliance upon God’s power. The Bible puts it this way:
"But I say, walk and live [habitually] in the [Holy] Spirit [responsive to and controlled and guided by the Spirit]; then you will certainly not gratify the cravings and desires of the flesh (of human nature without God)." Galatians 5:16 (Amp)
God has allowed evil to give us a chance to reflect His light in a dark world. He wants me to love others the way He loves me. God loves me even though He gave me a choice to do evil and even though I sometimes do evil things. I am to be like God and love others even though they too sometimes do evil things.
In Donald Miller’s book, “Blue Like Jazz,” there’s a chapter called, “Love: How to Really Love Other People.” I may have read part of this to you before but it’s really insightful and transparent and it applies perfectly to the scriptural truth we’re focused on right now.
In this chapter he tells of attending a lecture about economic metaphors that we use to describe relationships. We talk about how we “value” people, “invest” in people, how we say people are “priceless”, or that a relationship is “bankrupt.”
And Miller writes, “That’s when it hit me like so much epiphany getting dislodged from my arteries. The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money. If somebody is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have ‘value’, we feel they are ‘worth’ something to us, and perhaps we feel they are ‘priceless.’”
Miller continues, “I use to love people like money…There was a guy in my life at the time, a guy I went to church with whom I honestly didn’t like. I thought he was sarcastic and lazy and manipulative, and he ate with his mouth open so that food almost fell from his chin when he talked. He began and ended every sentence with the word ‘dude’…He began to get under my skin. I wanted him to change. I wanted him to read a book, memorize a poem, or explore morality, at least as an intellectual concept.
“I didn’t know how to communicate to him that he needed to change, so I displayed it on my face. I rolled my eyes. I gave him dirty looks. I would mouth the word ‘loser’ when he wasn’t looking. I thought somehow he would sense my disapproval and change his life in order to gain my favor. In short, I withheld love.
After the lecture on the metaphors about treating relationships like money, Miller writes, “I knew what I was doing was wrong. It was selfish, and what’s more, it would never work. By withholding love from my friend, he became defensive, he didn’t like me, he thought I was judgmental, snobbish, proud and mean. Rather than being drawn to me, wanting to change, he was repulsed. I was guilty of using love like money, withholding it to get someone to be who I wanted them to be. I was making a mess of everything. AND I was disobeying God.”
Amen to that.
Each of us not only has a choice when it comes to doing good or evil – we also have a choice concerning being like God in our relationships with others.
Will we be distracted by their faults and shortcomings – even by the wrong ways that they treat us and the bad things they say to us and about us? Or will we be like God and love them still?
In heaven, there will be no evil – that’s one of its many selling points. But God did not create us nor redeem us and ship us directly to heaven. He left evil to offer us two choices:
Will I choose to love God without coercion?
Will I choose to serve God without distraction? Will I live like Him and love like Him?
The existence of evil actually gives me a chance to find out.
