Good God 4

"...he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, 'Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.  Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.' And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him.  And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground."  Luke 22:41-44  (English Standard Version).

These words were spoken by an individual who chose to be sinless. He was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet He chose not to sin (Hebrews 4:15). Sin had been mankind’s master and ruled over him because man gave him the right. When sin said “Obey me!” man said “I will,” and we allowed him to master us. But we were not made for sin; we were made for righteousness. So, God came in the person of Jesus Christ and showed us that it was not necessary for us to be a slave to sin. Sin could be mastered and the purpose of man could be found apart from sin. Jesus lived without sinning, and because He was able to live a life without sin, He condemned sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3). He showed us that sin was not the real master, God was. But it was not an easy lesson to teach. It was costly!

From the birth of Jesus Christ, man, spurred on by Satan, attempted to put Him to death. Herod sent his soldiers to kill the Christ when He was less than two years old. They succeeded in killing all the boy babies two and under who lived in the area, but they missed the Savior. Fleeing for their lives, Joseph and Mary took the boy and went into Egypt. When Herod finally died, they returned to the Holy Land and went to their hometown of Nazareth, where the Christ Child grew up in stature and in favor with both God and man.

As He came into manhood He went to the Prophet John and was baptized of him, even over the protests of the baptizer. "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness."

You can picture Jesus coming to John. The crusty John, in his camel hair clothes, long beard and gruff voice would have been standing and preaching to the people who came to hear the message of the coming savior. After a time he would have asked the listeners to respond and be baptized for the remission of their sins; many would. A line would form and Jesus would have been in the line. Why? Not because He sinned. No, that’s not the reason.

He stood in line because He was one of them – one of us. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. There was the nation of Israel standing before the Father condemned by their sins and national repentance was called for and the response to that repentance was baptism. Because Jesus was one of them/us He took His turn and joined hands with them in baptism. His fellowship with man, although apart from sin, was what God always wanted. Love needs to express itself and from the creation God has been showing us His love for us in fellowshipping with us. When He became flesh He became one of us.

He could not stand aloof and tell His people that He wanted no part of them because they were sinners. No. While we were still sinners, even enemies, Christ came to fellowship with us (Romans 5:6 and 10). As we look at the Apostles we can see that they often sinned, arguing who would be greatest in the kingdom, denying the Christ, cursing and lying. Yet Jesus did not remove Himself from them as if they were too sinful for Him to be around. On the contrary, He came to clean them from their sin, but He had to be one of us in order to do that.

Eventually, of course, He offered a sacrifice that no other could offer and that was a sinless by choice body. Babies were sinless, but not by choice. They knew nothing about sin. When they grew and learned what sin was they chose the sin over and over again. Jesus knew the sin and chose righteousness every time. We killed Him for it. The innocent died for the guilty and in dying He was telling us that sin could be overcome. He was also telling us just how bad sin really was. Sin killed the creator. Sin had no qualms about striking God and putting Him to death. Sin was in the crowd standing before Pilate and shouting, “CRUCIFY HIM!! CRUCIFY HIM!!” Sin thought he had won the victory and that’s just how wicked sin really was and is.

How can one stand before the almighty God and not just threaten Him, but actually beat Him, spit in His face, push a crown of thorns onto His head and nail Him to a cross? Because that’s what sin urges us on to do. Kill God and rule yourselves, but even the simple among us know that it is not within us to rule ourselves. Sin ruled…until the Christ came and overcame it. But it cost Christ His life. Hated, always criticized, ridiculed, arrested, rejected, beaten, stripped naked and crucified, He told sin this was His choice. Rather than give in to sin just once, He said He would take the abuse. And He did, showing us the only truth that can set us free.

So when we are asked why did this or that terrible thing happen? We don’t have to say it was a judgment from God because of man’s sin and then feel threatened when someone says, “show me the passage that tells you that.” All we have to do is explain that any tragedy is a part of the curse and tragedies, all tragedies, ultimately come about because of man’s sin. This is God telling us that sin is that terrible and must be dealt with. It is God saying turn to me. It is God saying I want you and there is a better life ahead, just turn away from this one and I will see you through to the real life that lies just around the corner.

We can deny this. We can say, “No. Not my God.” We can argue and criticize and say that makes no sense, but we can’t turn to Genesis three and not see that a very dramatic thing happened right after man sinned and as a result man’s existence changed dramatically. Pain, suffering, old age and death were now a part of man, and there was a very good reason for such things. Sin. All of those things are better than sin.

Good God 3

When Adam and Eve sinned and ate from the forbidden tree everything changed. They went from living in a paradise to living in a world of chaos. They went from perfectly formed fruits and vegetables to thorns and thistles. They went from bodies being fed by the tree of life, never aging, never dying to bodies that began to grow old, have hurts and pain and sickness, finally to die because they were worn out. Look at these passages from Genesis3:

To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."

To Adam he said,
"Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,
'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

Pain is introduced, whether it was there prior to their sin is merely speculation. There is no hint that it was, but surely it was going to be there from then on. Other things changed as well. The relationship between husband and wife would be different; the woman was now subject to her husband and he was to rule (oh, we hate that word and thought, don’t we?) over her. It doesn’t mean she was going to allow him to, but it does mean that that was now the natural order of thing.

Adam was to be the provider and it wasn’t going to be easy. In Eden things just kept on producing and the work was light, but now… Thorns and thistles were going to fight the farmer and the good plants. Sweat would be the norm and the end of it all was to be dust. “For out of it (dust) you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Life changed for man and what once was easy was now a chore. Physical death would now be a part of every man’s life and the hurt and heartache was to be common.

Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—" therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. English Standard Version

Good and evil were now part of man, but he was not equipped to handle it. Only God was able to live above sin, so that sin could not control him. Man was weakened by his flesh and unable to live without sin. And as man sinned it became easier and easier and more a part of his psyche so that the distance between what God wanted for him and where he actually was became greater with each passing day. Man became more and more evil and corrupted. God could not allow wickedness to be eternal, so He took away access to the tree of life. Man was driven from the garden and began from that moment to suffer aging and death. Still the question remains, “WHY?” The why of corruption is easy. We can understand why He couldn’t allow sin to grow and grow until it became the only thing we ever did, so He limited us and our time here. But what about the pain and suffering? That’s the difficult part.

The simplest answer is that pain, suffering and death are things that God uses to chastise us, so that we might learn how bad sin really is and turn away from it, so that we might return to the God who loves us. One might say, “But you cannot show a verse that says Haiti’s people suffered an earthquake because of their sin,” and they would be correct. On the other hand, one needs only to examine Genesis three to see that these tragic things are what God put here in order to get our attention and turn us back to Him. If there had been no sin there would have been no reason for pain, suffering and death.

Good God 2

One of the difficulties of trying to examine an individual tragedy to find answers for the why‘s and wherefore‘s, whether it included one person or a hundred thousand is that there is often nothing specific we can put our finger on to say this is the reason God would allow such a thing to happen to this person or these people.  There are cases, of course, where we see good reason for something terrible to happen to someone.  For instance, a man walks into the Post Office and begins shooting people and the police shoot and kill the perpetrator.  We understand why the guilty man should die, but at the same time we wonder why the innocent should have been allowed, by God, to be wounded, maimed or killed.  And what about the families of the victims and even the perpetrator‘s?  Should they suffer the heartaches that the horror has brought to them?  When any type of tragedy happens there is rarely only one person who suffers from it.  So we ask, “why?”  Where are the answers for these things?

I think there is an answer to these searing questions, but we don’t want the answer I am going to give.  It can’t be that simple can it?  No!  No, no!  We can’t easily accept it, but it doesn’t change the truth of it.  The answer is sin.  The whole reason for all of these tragedies, all the hurt and heartache, all the pain and suffering is SIN.  The world in its continuous defiance of God refuses to look at sin as a reality, much less the cause of our traumas and troubles, but the truth of all the world’s angst and trials can be laid at the feet of sin.

A simple law was given in Eden, don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  A penalty was given along with the command, but it all went unheeded.  And because of the nature of law it could not be unbroken.  Once you break the law you break it forever.  There is nothing in the law that can patch it, much less restore it to it’s original flawlessness.  So when the law was broken God handed down the penalty for breaking the law.  The way to the tree of life was taken away and man began to die.  Death came into a world where there had been none.  Pain and heartache and masses of sin was both committed and understood.  Man began doing atrocious things to other men and the world itself turned against man.  Thorns and thistles began growing instead of the beauty of Eden.  Floods and droughts reached out to destroy farms and families.  Man had to fight to bring in a harvest and as he fought, he aged and with the aging came the penalties of age.  There was the weakening of the flesh, brittle bones, lower energy and a host of sicknesses and all because the way to the tree of life had been taken away.  And why did this happen?  Sin.  All because of sin.

We can treat it like it’s nothing, pooh, pooh it and say that’s crazy Christian talk.  Denial is another alternative, saying good or bad is all in the heart of man and his mind.  We make the determination and not some God up in some by and by place that no one has ever seen.  Yes.  We can do these things, but they change nothing.  The truth remains, whether we accept it or not, there it is.  Truth stands because it is absolute and therefore eternal.  All the problems of this world are a direct result of sin.

But!  But!  We shout in our anger at such an explanation…  But what about all the babies that died in Haiti or that are dying all over the world?  They never sinned but they are being punished along with the rest.  What about them? 

While it’s true that babies suffer, there is no truth to the notion that they are being punished.  The innocent have always suffered because of the guilty.  Jesus and dying babies are just two examples.  Babies are not being punished because there is nothing to punish them for, but that does not mean they do not suffer because of the sins of their parents.  A child who depends upon his mom and dad to bring him up, feed, clothe and care for him suffers when his father goes out and robs a bank and ends up spending twenty years in prison.  The child suffers even though he did nothing wrong.  What about the child who is in the back seat of a car driven by a mother who is high on booze and drugs and runs into another car killing herself and maiming her child and the people in the other car.  The child was innocent, yet the sin of his mother caused him grief, pain and loss.

A great problem with these examples is not that they are not true.  On the contrary, they happen every day.  No.  The problem is we fail to learn or accept the truth uttered in them.  The babies are telling us that they are suffering for us!  Their pain is suffered for us, to teach us that sin is not just an awful problem it is THE problem.

Good God 1

When man sees something as horrific as the Haiti earthquake and its results he responds in many different ways. Some scream “WHY?! Why God, Why?” and answers don’t come, except from a handful of people who answer a trite, “It’s because of sin,” then leave you there to dangle in a hangman’s noose of doubt and anger. Others completely turn from God, telling us that a good God would never allow such a thing to happen, and others nod their heads in agreement. Some, while not completely leaving God, start to doubt and in their weakened condition begin stumbling ever more frequently, until they drop from the fatigue of constant falling and getting up. Still others tell us that God had nothing to do with it, but that it was just the natural result of a shifting earth that, when stressed too greatly, quickly snapped loose and moved with unstoppable force. These and dozens of other responses come to mind, but where is the truth? It seems that easy answers are just shadows that show something, but never really explain the real thing. So we wonder where God fits into this whole question.

Many of those of the Christian faith want to remove God from the situation because they want to protect God. “No. No. God could never have allowed that.” We mumble in His defense, while at the same time wondering why He did allow that. We want it both ways. God wouldn’t, when it’s something horrific, but surely God did, when it’s something wonderful.

Some might say, “I bought some stock the other day and it more than doubled – Wow! Isn’t God wonderful!?” Or some child is healed of cancer and we shout praises to God for His mercy and kindness. We quote, “Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights…” and then stand in His defense when the gift doesn’t seem perfect or in the least bit good. I’m amazed that we give God credit for all the good that happens and put the blame on Satan, chance, natural forces or a thousand other things when the outcome is tragic or seems bad to us. Not all, of course, have thought this way.

Job was a good man. He loved God and offered praises and sacrifices on a regular basis. He was deeply concerned about the sins of his children and offered sacrifices for them (1:4-5). He treated servants, both male and female, rightly and gave food and other gifts to the widows. He taught the ignorant and lifted the hands of the weak, yet in all of these things he never thought of himself as something superior. He was a man just as those he served or who served him were men and women. He knew he was a right living individual and knowing that believed only good would come his way. Yet a day came when everything Job thought he knew fell apart.

Plunderers came and destroyed, stole and killed. Weather crushed and collapsed. He lost his children, his homes, livestock and fortune. There would be just one left from each of the separate events who would come and tell him of his great loss. Heartbroken, he stripped his clothes from his body and put on sackcloth, sat on an ash heap and wondered what was going on. His faith in God, however, remained as strong as ever and he never failed to give Him the glory. Satan was stymied at this and asked to touch his body. God allowed, as He had allowed all the other terrible things to be placed against Job. Soon, as Job sat on the ashes, he took shards from pots and used them to scratch and scrape the open sores on his body. After some time Job’s wife came to him and scolded, saying, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!"

Yes! That would make sense. If God would be so unreasonable as to allow such awful things to happen to a good man like this then who was that kind of God that we should follow Him anyway? So Job’s wife gave the best advice she could come up with. “Curse God and die!”

How many of us have felt the same emotions? Pain, hurt, loss, death and all those awful things that happen to mankind have happened in our lives and haven’t we wanted to just curse God and die? When my best friend and his wife were killed in a terrible traffic accident, while taking their son to the airport so he could go on a mission trip to Germany, (what kind of sense did that make?) we all asked “why? They were trying to do good. How could you, a good God, allow something so awful to happen when someone was trying to do good?”

“Curse you, God.” Job might have said. “You aren’t a good God or, at the very least, you are not an all-powerful God.” And if Job had said such a thing we might have agreed and said, “That’s what God deserved.” Ah, but that’s not what Job did.

Job looked at his wife and, perhaps pointedly, but I think gently, for she also had lost all in this great drama, asked her, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?"

Job was not putting the blame for what was happening on Satan or even dumb luck. No. He was stating that he believed it was coming from God, and surely it was (Job 42:10-11). We can use terms like “allow” but whatever we use, at the end of the matter, when all’s said and done, it’s still God who made the final decision. We can say, Satan did it, but God made the decision. We can say, natural forces did it and it was no one’s fault, but God made the decision. We can say what we want, but if God is all powerful, and He surely is, then He has the power to stop all harmful things from happening and there are many, many times when He chooses not to. Haiti is one of those times. So we want to know why!