Essentials, Part 2

Teaching #2. September 24, 2006.

I am posting my notes on Pastor Tom’s teaching from Sunday, September 24th. These are MY notes. Not a transcript. Not his notes. Any misquotes, mistakes, or mystifications are my fault (or something like that). All verses are from NASB 1995.

Evil

If God is good, where does evil come from?

What is the antonym of evil? Synonym? What is the opposite of evil? What is its remedy?

Quoting Mike from last week: We do not need to be instructed in selfishness or self- centeredness. We are born self-centered.

When we try to describe God, we first speak the positives: Holy, righteous, good, etc. Then contrast that with what God is not: “there is no one like Thee,” etc. We need two eyes for stereo vision, two ears. We see God more clearly by seeing contrasts.

In our culture, we are losing a clear idea of goodness. Other cultures, other religions, have more of a sliding scale of goodness to badness. More of a “see-saw” approach to goodness. Good and bad are not clearly defined.

What is good? What is bad? What is evil?

Evil poses a dilemma. How do I gain an understanding of evil, when I do not want to know about it?

The Bible is the only source of defining good and evil.

Genesis 2:9. Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In Genesis chapters 3 & 4, we see that Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel knew good and evil. You cannot doubt the outworking of evil in humanity.

Genesis 6:5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

The intent of humanity’s thoughts are evil. Not “good” and not merely “bad” but evil.

Isaiah 53:6
All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him.

All of us try to be good, we try to be better, but that does not work. Oh, we can beat it down, push it down here or there in our lives, but we cannot defeat it everywhere.

There are over 500 references to evil in the Bible.

Sin - the action of evil upon the goodness of God’s creation.

We pray to be good, to be a better Christian. How does that work? We have to give God our will. We used our will in the Garden to reject God. We have to reverse that.

Genesis 3:1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”

“Crafty” connotations of ‘subtle” and “deceitful”.

The questioning like this of God, “Has God said?” initiated the release of evil into humanity. To question God is to criticize Him, to find fault.

Revelation 12:9. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

The serpent is the devil, Satan, the slanderer, the twister of truth, the father of lies.

Who is the devil? He is a created thing, who demanded to be the Creator, God Himself. He rebelled and so fell from heaven, with a third of the heavenly host.

What is evil? Evil was not created by God. It is not the presence of something. It is not a force, not a “dark side,” not a substance. It is an absence. An absence of righteousness, of peace, of joy, of the person of God, of perfection, of goodness.

Evil is the lack of moral perfection. Evil comes in where God’s creatures (including the devil) cannot attain to God’s moral perfection.

There is not way a creature, born into the moral climate of the world, will be able to attain the moral perfection that God’s holiness requires of His creatures.

Satan has no rule, no sovereignty.

Matthew 27:18. For he (Pilate) knew that because of envy they (the Sanhedrin) had handed Him over.

It was for envy that the leaders of the Israel killed Jesus. The raging envy of the serpent, wanting to be God, desires to separate people from God, as he is separated. This is his goal.

Being better is not being good. Good is perfection.

Romans 5:8. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

God wants us to know our state, that we are eternally separated from Him. He wants to give us a choice, to chose Him.

Satan has boundaries, he is limited. He is not sovereign, he is a creature. He has his time to operate, and it will come to an end. God is not limited.

Matthew 6:13. (The Lord’s Prayer)
13 ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]’

We cannot work our way out of evil. We need a deliverer.

We do not want to be evil; we are willing to be bad, and we try to be better. But we are evil and there is nothing we can do about it.

Luke 4:17-18.
17 And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He (Jesus) opened the book and found the place where it was written,
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor....”

The Good News, the gospel, is that Jesus wants to deliver us from evil.

Jesus is the antidote to evil because He is everything that evil is not. He is good, all the time.

God reveals evil by being good.