Why is there evil in the world? - The Big Questions (Week 3)

Why is there so much evil in the world and where did it come from? 
From the fall in Genesis to the spread of sin through humanity. Listen as Pastor Andrew Strand takes us through what the Bible says about evil in Week 3 of our series, The Big Questions!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Well, I am excited for today as we continue on in the series that we launched a few weeks ago called The Big Questions. And during this series, we are attempting to answer some of the bigger questions that people have around the topic of faith. And so we kicked this series off a few weeks ago by asking the question, Did Jesus really rise from the dead? And we addressed that. And then last Sunday, Pastor Morgan Stevens, our Every Nation pastor from Austin, was in town and uh and he talked about the reliability of the Bible. How did Jesus uh view the Bible? If you missed that, I would encourage you uh to go back and check that out. Today uh we are going to be dealing with the problem of evil, the problem of evil. We're gonna be in Genesis chapter four, and so I would encourage you to go ahead and open your Bibles there. I want to welcome those of you who are joining us online today. Uh I it was probably about a year ago. I don't remember exactly how long ago it was. Maybe it was eight months, it doesn't really matter. Uh, but it it was kind of a a time where Allie and I had realized we hadn't been on a date in a while. And we try to do that monthly. And uh, you know how it goes sometimes. Those of you who are married or uh maybe are in a relationship, you know, just time passes, and if you're not intentional, all of a sudden you're like, man, it's been a couple of months. And that was the case for us, and so uh we decided we're making it happen. And so we put it on the calendar, we budgeted for it. I think we even got a babysitter, our kids were still young enough at that time, and we were like, this thing is gonna be great. And so we didn't cheap out, we we did it right, and we were gonna go and we were gonna have a great time together, we're gonna enjoy each other's company, and so we got in the car, and we were getting in the car and be like, oh man, yes, this is gonna be a great night. And we drove to uh one of our favorite local establishments, and we sat down and we ordered some sushi and got some drinks, and we were just ready for a great night of enjoying time together. And since uh this is second service and not first, in first service, uh I told it a different way, but in this service, I'll say because Allie's here, uh, that in that moment that one of us decided to choose violence on that date. And I don't remember how it happened, and I don't remember who it was that actually did, uh, but something that started out so promising and so good just quickly began to cascade downward. And about the time that one of us probably should have said, Hey, let's let's enjoy the night, let's you know, let's put a pause on this until later on. Uh, we saw another Mid-Cities per couple that came up to us. And as I'm sure you've never done, uh, we decided that we were gonna fake it until we make it. Hey, good to see you guys. We're in the middle of this fight. We just put it on pause and uh we you know, interact with this couple, they go off, and we kind of look at each other. We have this moment, like we could redeem the moment. And yet we thought, now let's have an expensive fight. This is gonna be great. And so we just kept we kept going. And I'm not kidding, I think we saw three or four, maybe even up to six mid-cities couples, and that each one of those could have been a reset. But each time, it was like it just kept cascading downward. And isn't this true in life that there are uh these moments in life where we we take something that could be so good? Maybe for you it's it's been a vacation that you've been planning for months and months and months, and then all of a sudden there's some version or something that happens, an interrupt, a flight that's delayed, or there's some sort of relational conflict, and all of a sudden it begins to cascade downward. Uh, maybe for you it's uh some sort of family event that is like a family reunion or something, and it's gonna be great. Everybody's gonna be together, and then all of a sudden it turns into the Griswold family Christmas. Or maybe on a deeper level, it's uh it's the marriage that you entered into. And it started out so promising. It started out with uh we want to honor God with this, and uh, it's gonna be a great union, and then before long there's betrayal, and it starts to go into dysfunction. And you can think about how it cascaded downward. And when we approach this topic today, the problem of evil, I think we need to keep in mind, and we'll come back to this a few different times, uh, that there is uh a world that God created, and it is good. But in the same way, uh the story that Ali and I had, or maybe some of these other things that you can relate to, there seems to at times be a cascade downward. And so today I want to uh approach this text, Genesis chapter four, and with this in mind, uh remembering that when it comes to the problem of eagle, this is exactly how the world starts. It starts out with God's good world. So Genesis chapter 4, starting in verse 1, says this Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. And she said, With the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man. And later she gave birth to his brother Abel, and now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering, fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. And the Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you must rule over it. Now Cain said to his brother Abel, Let's go out to the field. And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is your brother Abel? I don't know, he replied, Am I my brother's keeper? The Lord said, What have you done? Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. This is the word of the Lord. As we approach uh this question, why is there evil in the world? I'm very aware uh that all of us in here know that there is evil in the world. It's not hard in the culture that we live in, in the times that we live in, with the 24-hour news cycle, with uh a supercomputer in our pocket and social media uh going through our brains every single day. We see evil every day. And often we can look around us and we can see it everywhere. And it seems like it's coming at us in every single way. And for some of us in here today, for some of us watching online, uh, we can recall a time in our life, or maybe multiple times in our life, where we had evil done to us. Some of us in here can recall a time in our life, maybe a whole segment of our life where we would say, I chose evil. And I did it willfully. I knew exactly what was going on, and I chose that. And yet we all look around and we ask the question, why would God allow evil in the world? And our text uh for today is telling us the story of evil besieging God's good world. And not only does it besiege God's good world, but there's a cascading effect found in the story of the Bible. And as we approach Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2, uh, we see that that God has created a good world, that He creates humans, and and that it is good that their relationship is good, that they go on walks in the cool of the day. How cool would that be to go on a walk with God in the cool of the day? And yet, we see that the text that we read for today is talking about humans 2.0, telling us the story of Cain and Abel. And the Hebrew Bible, what we now know is the Old Testament, helps us to understand where we are, and it also helps us to understand how in the world did we get to God's good world being invaded by evil. And if we're gonna understand why there's evil in the world, we must first understand how God set things up originally. We have to understand that what God creates is good. Let me say that again. What God creates is good. And for those of you who have read through uh Genesis chapter one, probably on some level, most of us are at least familiar with this. We see over and over and over again in Genesis chapter one that what God creates is good. On day one, he creates the light and it's good. On day two, he creates the divide of the heavens and it's good. On day three, he creates the seed-bearing, uh, the seed-great, seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees, and it was good. On day four, he creates the stars in the sky, and he says that it was good. On day five, he creates the sea creatures, and he creates the birds, and it is good. On day six, he creates the wild animals, and he creates the livestock, and I want you to help me. And what God creates is it's good, and then God looks over all that he has created on day six, and he says that it is actually very good. What God creates, my friends, is good. God is the creator of all things, and what God creates is good, and this is helpful for us to remember. This is the context that we need to always remember as we approach this topic and this question of why is there evil in the world? We must view it through this lens of the first few chapters of the Bible. So then we ask the question: what happened between Genesis chapter one, Genesis chapter two, what happened to the world that you and I live in now that is full of evil? To a world where we look on our social media feeds and it's just a matter of not if we see evil, but how much evil we see. Anybody relate to this? This is why we need to be careful with how much time we're spending on social media because all of a sudden we start getting hopeless. We start getting like, I don't know if anything is right in the world, right? We can begin to project that onto the people around us. And so we look around and we see violence amongst nations, we see injustice and human trafficking, we see corrupt governments and sexual abuse and family, we see racism and we see corporate greed leading to poverty and these issues. I don't have to tell you, you know it, they are evil. And we begin to ask the question why would God allow evil in the world? And it's easy, listen up, for our question to soon become a projection upon God. We can begin to take that question of why would God allow evil, and we can begin to say that God is the one who is making the evil happen. And all of a sudden, what happens is some of us, our own experience, listen to me, young people, those who are in their 20s or 30s, all of a sudden we can take our own experience and we can begin to project that upon God. And we begin to screen the questions when are you gonna do something? Are you even paying attention to what's going on? What when are you gonna deal with this injustice? How are you gonna deal with the evil in the world? How much longer must people suffer? And some of us, our questions, our bigger questions about faith, can all of a sudden become doubting God's goodness. We can doubt what the scriptures tell us that He is good. And some of us, even earlier, as we were singing that song, we were saying singing about the goodness of God, and some of us are going, I don't even know if that's true. Because my experience has told me, and I'm gonna project that upon God instead of what the truth of the scriptures. Thank you for saying that, Pastor Daniel. The truth of the scriptures tell us that he is good. See, when we come to this question, this issue of the problem of evil in the world, we need to have the full context. Some of you uh have heard the story of uh the Chevy Nova back in the 1970s. Uh it's actually a myth, I've come to find out, that the that the Chevrolet company you know sold the Nova here in the United States, and then eventually they went to sell it down in Latin America. But the problem, for those of you who uh speak Spanish, you know, Nova. We'll get there if you don't speak Spanish. You know that it means it does not go. There it is. Some of y'all, you got there. A car named Nova that does not go. It was actually a myth. Uh that people will sometimes share to make a point uh that what actually happened was this this car actually exceeded its sales projections down in Latin America. Uh but it sounds believable, doesn't it? Sure it does. And sometimes the biggest example of lost context, some of you need to hear this, is the story that we keep repeating. Our experience has told us that the evil in the world is actually God's doing. And then we keep telling ourselves that, and then all of a sudden we begin to project it upon him, and it keeps repeating every time we see evil in the world. All of a sudden we think the evil in the world is God's fault, and this is where we need proper context because our Bible begins with the words in the beginning. It starts with the words in the beginning, but we actually are starting a bit in the middle of the story. If we want to read and understand the full context, as Paul Harvey would say, for those of you boomers, boomers, we need the rest of the story. And the rest of the story is that evil entered entered into the world long before Genesis chapter 3. See, many commentators will tell you that if you go read the book of Daniel, Daniel chapter 8, Daniel chapter 10, you can read at the end of your Bible in Revelation chapter 12 that there was a somewhat mysterious but very blatant cosmic rebellion against the one true God by Lucifer and a third of the angels. And this is when evil came into the world. There was first an angelic rebellion against God's ways and God's wisdom, followed by a human rebellion in Genesis chapter 3 of God's wisdom and God's ways. And then as we read through the beginning of Genesis, it cascades downward. I'll challenge you. Go read Genesis 1 through 10 this week, and you'll see this cascade downward. But our God, He is a God who has committed, some of you need to hear this today, to partnering with humans. Some of us would think I'm too far gone, and I would tell you today that God has not given up on you. Woo! I feel like I need to preach that for a minute. Some of us feel like, oh, I am I'm too far gone. Why would God ever want to partner with me? But I will tell you today that your testimony has power through the Spirit of the Living God. That God still wants to partner with you, that you're not too far gone. And if we see the truth in Genesis chapter 3, where God told Adam and Eve, if they eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge and good and evil, they will surely say it with me if you know it. Die. But did they die? They did not die. Because our God is gracious and our God is kind, and though he did bring justice and he did deal with them, we see that he cast them out of the garden. And so we come to our text for today as things continue to cascade downward. Genesis chapter 4, we read it earlier, tells the story of two sons being born to Eve. And there's a third one that comes after that. And as I begin to think about this story, I wonder what Cain and Abel looked like. Single ladies, I have to imagine these that these were young, strapping, hunky boys. Right? I imagine that uh that Abel, he the text tells us that he was a uh a herder of sheep in West Texas language, he would be called a rancher. And I bet if Abel lived today, he would drive an F-250 with a headache rack. And he was the keeper of the flocks, and he was doing exactly what God had told his parents to do to rule and subdue. And he was doing that with those sheep. While his brother Cain, his brother Cain was a farmer, maybe he drove a dodge, I don't know. And Cain, he was one who worked the ground, and we see that the text tells us that they bring a uh a thank you offering, and this is cool because God He appreciates when people bring an offering to Him. I think this is this is awesome that they brought this offering to God, and yet did you notice as we were reading the text that there was a difference in the two offerings? Some of you noticed this, some of you have been uh trained and taught to read the Bible, and you noticed that Abel's offering was different than Cain's. Abel's offering was uh it was uh of the first fruits of his flock. He he trusted that God would provide for him. There's something different about Abel's heart posture when he gives this offering. One's heartfelt. But Cain, he offers a begrudging, a begrudging offering. Simply put, it was done out of duty, it was done probably not out of gratitude or love, and I love the way that God deals with it, he just calls him on it. Some of you who are straight shooters, you're like, man, I appreciate that. And he asked him the question why are you mad? See, Cain gets angry, and God says, Be careful, be careful with that anger. Here's what he says in verse seven, just to refresh your memory. He says, If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? This is the way God deals with us. He he says, if you do what's right, you'll be accepted. And yet, did you notice that in this next line there's an if statement? There's an if statement in that one too. He says, But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door and it desires to have you. I want you to say this line with me, but you must rule over it. Here's the truth that we see in Genesis chapter one and two is that God has committed to partner with humans. And some of us are thinking, why would he do that? Because I know humans. And I know all the times that they've ever let me down. And guess what? God knows that too. But Genesis chapter 3 and Genesis chapter 4 goes on to tell us that humans are given a choice to partner with God or to partner with evil. And Cain had this choice right here. So what did he choose to do? He chose violence. In the same way that maybe, well, not the same way, but Ali may have chosen violence that night on our date. Actually, it's a very different way that he chose violence. He actually went on to murder his brother. He chose evil, he chose violence. In fact, one of the resources that I was reading this week, it was another Second Temple Jewish literature. It talked about how it was actually Cain murdering his brother that caused the flood. It was this cascading effect that we see all throughout the first few chapters of Genesis, but really all the way through the Old Testament and all the way up to the point of Jesus that that was what caused the violence in the world. Genesis chapter 4 through 10 is the story of a downward spiral, a cascading evil leading towards, listen to this, a godless society. From Cain to Lamech, from Lamech to Genesis 6, where there are some illicit things that go terribly wrong between the sons of God and the daughters of men. And some of you know exactly where this leads. This leads to the Nephilim or the Anakim, and you're going, I have so many questions, I do too. But in fact, we we we wanted to take some time during this series, and we're gonna do uh a Facebook Live to address some of these type questions here in the next few weeks. So uh keep your eye out for it on uh on Facebook and on some of our socials, uh, and you you can engage with us during that. But when we ask this question, why is there evil in the world? We need to have it with the context that God is good, and that God is the one who creates all things that are good, that he has chosen to partner with humans, and humans have a choice between good and evil. And the New Testament actually talks a good bit about Cain. We see in 1 John chapter 3, verse 12, it says, We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous. The letter of Jude also talks about this, and so when we asked the question, why is there evil in the world? we have to realize that it's humans choosing to partner with evil instead of partnering with God. That's what it comes down to. And yet I think we have a choice in the matter. I was just reading this morning, I started the book of Isaiah, and Isaiah puts it this way He says, put away evil things. He says, make yourself clean, cease to do evil, and learn, I think that's a significant word in this, learn to do good. And if it were just that simple, if we could just willpower our way out of evil and into good, wouldn't that be great? But thousands of years of humans have proven that we can't do it on our own, that we cannot uh uh will by willpower get there, that thousands of years has shown that evil really is the absence of God. That Genesis 6 points out that it is a godless society, and we bring to this, it brings us to this point where God says this in Genesis chapter 6, for I am sorry that I have made them, and it's heavy.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

But God.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Somebody say, but God today, but God, he knew that we couldn't get there on our own, he knew that we uh would continue to operate in this way, and so what does he do? He sends himself through Jesus Christ to be the one who took on all of our sin and our shame. Did you notice as we were reading the text from Genesis chapter 4 earlier about Abel? Did you notice that Cain had a lot of words? And Abel, he didn't have a single word. Did you notice that he still had a voice, though? That actually it was his blood that had a voice. The voice of your brother, his blood, is crying to me from the ground. For those of us who have experienced all sorts of evil, and we're asking the question do you even see this, God? Will you ever bring justice? You can join with the prophets, you can join with the psalmist who are also crying out for God's justice. And I'm here to tell you today that God does bring justice, that God will deal with evil, that God will deal with evil, that God has dealt with evil, and that on the cross he dealt with evil once and for all. And that at the foot of the cross, that the blood of Jesus was spilled. And Jesus had very few words on the cross, but do you remember what he said? He said, Father, forgive them.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

For they know not what they do.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

When it comes to the problem of evil, God has dealt with it, and he is dealing with it sometimes through people. And one day he will deal with it forever. And as I've been preaching today, I just get a sense that there are some in here, maybe that at any point in your life, you would say, you can look back on that time and you could say, maybe it's even right now, I I've partnered with evil. Maybe there's others of us in here today that uh we can think of uh uh as I've been preaching or while we were singing about the goodness of God earlier, we would say, I don't know that I've even ever experienced that. I haven't received the gift of salvation, the forgiveness of my sins. I I hear other people talking about it, but today uh I want to receive that. And so to end our time today, I want to minister to you in really two different areas. I want to give those of you who have never responded to the gospel. You haven't received the goodness of God. Maybe you've seen it around, but you never received that. I want to give you that opportunity. And then uh right after that, I want to uh for those of you who would say, I've partnered with evil, but today I want to choose to partner with God. And so would you stand with me as we prepare to close today? I want to just pray over us, invite you to pray with me. Just ask you to bow your head. If that's you today, you say, I I've never received the greatest miracle, the gift of salvation, the forgiveness of my sins, a hope for heaven. You say, I want to do that today. Why don't you just do something for me? Just as a sign to God, just hold your hands up real high. That's you. So simple, and yet God will use the rest of your life to change you and transform you. As you make him the Lord of your life. That's you today. I want you to just repeat after me in your own heart. God, today, I receive your goodness. I receive the gift of salvation. God, I repent of my sin and I turn from the life that I've been living. And God, I want you to be the king and the lord of my life. God, I ask that you would fill me with your spirit to live for you. All right, for those of you today who would say, I have lived and partnered with evil, wouldn't you just pray this in your own heart right now? God, I turn from that. Would you help me to live by your wisdom and to live by your ways? And God, would you show me how to do that by your spirit? I need your help in Jesus' name.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

Amen.