All right, let's get started this morning. I'm gonna open us with a word of prayer, okay? Father, we come to you this morning and are so thankful for your word. It gives us all that we need to know that pertains to life and godliness, Father, we're thankful for that. We thank you that the comfort that is found in your word as we see how you are sovereignly in control of all things. As we deal with this difficult subject, we pray that you would give us good wisdom and insight and understanding. and not rely on our own thoughts, but rather what the word of God says. In Jesus' name, amen. OK, as you know, we've been in a couple of weeks into a series that's the sovereignty of God or the providence of God, God's ongoing interaction with his creation. And I got a whiteboard, which is really good. And last week we started the section on God's relationship to the bad stuff, okay? Evil or the bad stuff that goes on in the world. And as you recall, people are okay with God's sovereignty in almost all things. But the two areas that they start having trouble is when you understand that scripture teaches that God is sovereign over everything, including the bad stuff, evil things that go on in this world, and also in the area of salvation. People have a very hard time with the biblical truth that God is the one that saves. And apart from God's call to salvation and saving grace, none of us of our own free will would choose God for salvation. But we're not on the salvation part right now, we're on the bad stuff and the evil because that tends to really cause a lot of problems for people as they're trying to understand the God as they have imagined God in their own mind. I think, and I said this last week, there's probably two main reasons that people have a hard time in these areas. One is they don't know what God's word actually says on these issues. They are scripturally ignorant, which is easy to be in a lot of churches today because they don't teach scripture, they don't preach scripture. It's kind of a Kiwanis club meeting, okay? I'm okay, you're okay, let's love Jesus and let's all be buddies with one another. And that really grows a lot of big churches. The Seeker Friendly Movement teaches pastors that you don't want to get serious about doctrine because you're going to run people off. If you're easily offended by scripture, you won't be happy here because that's exactly what we're going to teach. We're going to look at exactly what God's word says and whether we like it or not, that's where we're going to be. The other thing that I think is contributing besides spiritual ignorance is a very man-centered theology that people have developed in today's world and a man-centered worldview. In other words, everything that happens in this world revolves around me. When in reality, everything that happens in this world revolves around God and His glory, because that's why He is orchestrating everything that's going on in this world. So last week we started this talk about God's relationship to evil, and I pointed out that there's an area of theology that's called theodicy. which is a defense of God's righteousness, goodness, and omnipotence in the presence of evil. And a lot of people just can't square those two things. And so they try to rescue God from the picture that is painted of him in scripture. They want God to have no responsibility for evil and sin in the world because God is loving and he doesn't like those things. So he certainly can't be happy when they're going on orchestrating actually what's going on. And we talked about several groups of individuals and how those worked. But what we want to do is look at scripture. And by the time we get done with this little section today, hopefully we'll finish up this part on evil today is I'd like you to be to the point where Joseph was. Remember when his brothers came to him and at the very end of Genesis, They were scared to death when Jacob died because they thought the only reason Joseph hasn't wiped us out is because dad is home. When Jacob died, they came to Joseph and were very concerned. And Joseph said, don't worry, I'm not going to kill you. Because what you meant for evil, God meant for good. All right. So that's where we are. So the folks that don't like this have this type of a theological view, and it says this, the God of the Bible is portrayed as an all-loving, holy, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being who hates sin and evil, and yet evil exists. Therefore, in their minds, the God of the Bible doesn't exist. They have to look at lots of different passages of scripture and try to explain them away or interpret them in a way that seems to get God off the hook for what's going on in this world. But the God of the Bible The correct view is this, the God of the Bible is portrayed as an all-loving, holy, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being who hates sin and evil, and yet evil exists. Therefore, the God of the Bible ordains and wills evil to exist to the praise of his glory without being evil himself. And that's what we started on last time in the first premise we looked at was that evil exists. And we looked at different types of evil. And the one that people have most trouble with is what's called moral evil. And that is mankind and sin and everything that we do as humans in this fallen world, which is a source of a lot of the bad stuff. All the wars, all the murders, all the crime, and everything else is related to that. So we looked at that, so that's our first premise, and so everybody would have to agree, right? Evil exists. Bad stuff is out there. So we cannot deny that. So the second thing we did is say this. The God of the Bible, and I say Bible because not the God of my imagination or what I think God is, but the God of the Bible exists, okay? It's not a God that I made up in my mind that fits my picture of what God should be. It's the God of the Bible, what the Bible says about him. And we, to start that off, We saw that God was, and that's what we did last week, that God was sovereign over all things. And that's based primarily, most of these verses that we looked at last week were on his eternal decree. Where an eternity passed, he decided what was going to happen. And that's what's been going on ever since. And to give you, I'll read one verse from that. We can't repeat everything as we're reviewing here, but in Isaiah 46, eight to 10, it says this, remember this and be assured, recall to mind you transgressors, remember the former things long past, for I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is no one like me. And listen to this here, it says, and he describes himself and he says, declaring the end from the beginning. The only person that can do that is the one who has planned the end. And he's the one that can declare it from the beginning because he knows exactly what he's doing. I declared the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things which have not been done. saying, my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. Calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my purpose from a far country. He's actually talking about the Assyrians there that were getting ready to wipe out and carry off the northern 10 tribes. But then he says, truly I have spoken, truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, surely I will do it. And if you have your notes from last week, there's lots of other verses that say the exact same thing. God has everything planned in eternity past. He is not reacting to what's going on on this earth. He has no plan B. He has plan A, and he is working his plan, okay? And I hope you know that should be an extreme comfort to you, okay? And well, I have a quote from Grudem as we get to the end of this that says, the alternative view, which is not, thankfully not supported by scripture, is a scary world to live in. If you think God is not in control of everything, you need to think in your mind, if that's the case, what hope do I have that he will ultimately control anything or that he can actually make all of his promises come true for us, right? So we'll look at that as we get there. So today we're going to look at the truth that God is sovereign over evil, okay? So we looked last time, sovereign over everything, but it didn't specifically say the bad stuff. All right? It just used all-inclusive words like all, which what does that mean in Hebrew? All. If you do a big word study on that, it doesn't say everything but the bad stuff. It means all. So we're going to look at verses today that talk about specifically sovereign over evil, okay. Now what I want you to, there's four things that you need to understand before we look at these verses and keep these in It's a miracle. OK. So when we look at these verses, I want you to see what God's relationship is to these things. Because he is just not allowing stuff to happen. He is actively doing this stuff. All right? God is very active in these verses. And you don't see him as a God that is trying to distance himself from evil. He's not trying to get rid of this terrible picture of him that's painted in scripture. He isn't trying to be a god that's unrelated to all of the terror and the evil and the sin and the wars that are going on in this world. He is perfectly happy to be the sovereign of the universe, which he is, even over the sinful things, the bad things, and evil events. But four things you gotta know for sure. Scripture never, this is all scripture, never shows God, is never responsible personally for moral evil. The stuff that humanity is doing, all right, is never shown in scripture to be responsible for that. He is always the primary cause. of things because his eternal decrees in eternity passed. So you'll see. So you'll know God is always the primary cause. Man is always the secondary cause. All right? And that makes man culpable and responsible and deserving, I don't spell too well up here, punishment for what he does. All right? Just because God decreed this to happen in eternity past does not get us off of the hook. Very important to understand. So, two. God's never blamed in Scripture for the bad stuff, okay? He's never, never takes pleasure in the bad stuff. These are in your notes, so I'm kind of doing a quick notes version here. But Scripture never excuses man. And this is important. This last one is kind of a big deal. So you've got to think through this. God never ordains sin or evil simply for sin and evil. but rather he has a bigger purpose, his glory and our good. Okay? Does that make sense? He's not doing this just to see sin be sin. He's not doing this so the bad stuff happens. He has much bigger goals in mind. And that's, we don't like that as humans, but that's why we see such a man-centered theology in today's world. Everybody would like to think that everything that God does is supposed to make our lives here perfect and happy on this earth. Right? It's all man-centered, this theology that is rampant in today's world. However, God is doing what he's doing primarily for his glory and secondarily for the good of those he has called to salvation. So that's where he's headed. I've got some quotes there by Thomas Watson. I'm gonna read just this first paragraph. You gotta think, this guy's one of those old guys, Puritans, that talks funny, okay? So listen to what he says here, and I got several of them in there. It is consistent to say that God has decreed every action of men, yea, every action that is sinful, and every circumstance of those actions, that he predetermines that they shall be in every respect as they afterwards are, that he determines that there shall be such actions and just so sinful as they are. And yet God, and yet that God does not decree the actions that are sinful as sin, okay? He's just not doing this so he can see sin, but decrees them as good. By decreeing an action as sinful, I mean decreeing it for the sake of the sinfulness of the action. God decrees that they shall be sinful for the sake of the good that he causes to arise from the sinfulness thereof. Whereas man decrees them for the sake of the evil that is in them. All right, there's a couple more quotes there that you can read when you want. But in any event, As we work through this concept, we're going to start looking at some verses. And these first two verses, I think, show very well what we're talking about. And it shows, and we can see these four things that I just wrote down here. in those verses. And there in the book of Acts, the apostles were preaching, talking about the crucifixion of Christ, which I think we could easily say was the most evil, unjust event in the history of the world. Right? Would anybody argue with that? Sinless God, the God-man Jesus Christ, was crucified unjustly. A terrible thing. But listen to the reasons that the apostles give for this, Acts 4.27. For truly against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together. What were they gathered together for? To do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done. All right? Same idea in Acts 2.23. Him being delivered by the determined purpose of the foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death. So you see, the crucifixion, as terrible as it was, was in God's plan for eternity past. There was no plan B. God is the primary or ultimate cause, right? He is not trying to get out of the deal, is he? He's the primary cause. It was determined by him in eternity past. It also says that the Jews who incited the Romans to crucify Christ were the secondary cause, as well as the Romans who were actually involved in the crucifixion. And this, the idea that he doesn't decree sin for sin, but always for good or his glory is obvious in the crucifixion, right? Isn't there a tremendous amount of good that came out of the crucifixion? I hope you recognize that. Apart for somebody paying for your sin, which only God could, you would spend an eternity in hell. But The good is the heart of the gospel, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, what God accomplished to save his people from their sin. And that is why you and I as believers have a hope of eternity in heaven with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So the most evil event in history is producing an amazing amount of good. It's going to produce a tremendous amount of glory for God. And it is, we get a huge benefit, folks. Undeserving sinners, we get to spend an eternity in glory with our Lord and Savior. That is a deal, an unbelievable deal. So let's look at some other verses here. And I want you to think about it. Is God trying to distance himself from this or is he perfectly happy to be in the middle of it? And notice how active this is. When I say active, I mean, God is just not standing by and saying, okay, go ahead. I don't want to watch. He's doing it. Okay. Deuteronomy 32, 39. Now see that I, even I am he, there's no God besides me. I kill and I make a life. I wound and I heal, nor is there any who can deliver from my hand. Exodus 411, so the Lord said to him, who has made man's mouth or makes the mute, the deaf, the seen, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord? 1 Samuel 2, six to seven, the Lord kills and makes alive. He brings down to the grave and brings up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich. He brings low and lifts up. So, is God only sovereign over making alive and healing? Absolutely not. He's perfectly willing to take credit for the bad stuff, for killing, for wounding, the mute, the deaf, the blind, and the poor. You know, and if you understand that, you can see how the Word Faith cult which is pervading many churches today, especially in our area, this is kind of the Mecca, Kenneth Hagin, Rhema, Kenneth Copeland, Charles Capps, all of those guys, they would never agree with that. They would ignore these verses, and they would say, yes, God does the good stuff, but Satan is winning. They have a dualistic theology. They say all the bad stuff comes from Satan. All the good stuff comes from God. And if the bad stuff happens, it's because God lost and Satan won. And you just didn't have enough faith in yourself to prevent the bad stuff from happening. All right? And it puts people in a terrible position. Can you imagine believing that and having a child that was born with some terrible problems? that was going to die within a year or two because of some genetic disorder. And you're being told you just don't have enough faith. God could heal that child if he wanted to. Can you imagine how much pressure and dismay that would cause you when your child went ahead and died? But when you recognize that God was using that situation for his glory, it gives you a whole different outlook. We see people that have the correct understanding handle these situations so much better than those that are thinking that God isn't in control or he's losing the battle. All right. A God that is sovereign over everything gives you much more comfort in your life and keeps your eye on the true goal that you should be achieving, seeking to achieve. And that is how can I best glorify him? Okay, Lord, you've done this. How am I going to respond? How can I glorify you? How can I tell other people the good news of Jesus Christ in this situation? How can I share the gospel with others in this situation? That's what it should cause you to do and recognize that even though you don't understand all the ins and outs, God does, and we have his promise that he is working everything out for his glory and as believers for our good in eternity with him. It gives you a whole different outlook, folks. Okay, other verses that show God actively doing bad stuff. Psalm 105, 16. He called for a famine in the land. He destroyed all the provision of bread. And what happens after that? People start dying, right? Okay. Second Kings 17, 25. And it was so at the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the Lord. Therefore, the Lord sent lions among them and killed some, which killed some of them. Lamentations 3, 37 to 38. Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass when the Lord has not commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that woe and well-being proceed? Right? God's taking credit for the woe. He doesn't mind. We should embrace him in that. In Amos 3.6, if a trumpet is blown in the city, which is kind of like sounding the alarm because the bad guys are coming, will not the people be afraid? If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it? All right. Genesis 7.23, God destroyed everybody on the planet. and every animal that breathed air except eight people that he saved in the ark. And it tells us that in 7.23, so he destroyed all the living things. God is the one that did that. This is an interesting verse, Proverbs 16.4. The Lord has made all for himself. Yes, even the wicked for the day of destruction. Interesting verse, isn't it? So does God not want the wicked people out there? Tells us right here that he made them so that he could judge them. Very interesting. But that's what scripture says, right? Yes, it is. But not at the expense of their own guilt. Oh, absolutely. And honestly, we're going to get to this because people say, oh, so you're telling me that God is forcing these people to be wicked? Absolutely not. All God has to do for people to be wicked is to let them have their own way. And we'll see that when we get to God's providence and relationship to our salvation. The first thing we're going to look at is total depravity. All right? And that's man's total inability to save himself or to make a decision to save himself apart from God. And so, in fact, in Romans 1, Paul talking about, says basically the cliff notes version is this, God has shown every human being on this earth that there is a God through two things, creation and conscience. Every person's conscience tells him there's a God. Every person in the world that's born can look at creation and that tells him that there's a God, but it says man rejects that. And so what was God, and it says God's wrath was displayed against this by doing what? Turning them over, okay? He said, okay, you don't want me, that's fine, you don't get me. I'm just going to release my hand of control over you where I'm causing you to do good stuff. And I'll let you go your own way. And then it lists all the terrible sins after that that people fall into. So always remember, God is forcing no one to be wicked. He is simply allowing them to be wicked by not restraining their wickedness. All right? Because, just think about it, when it says, the Lord made all for himself, yes, even the wicked for the day of destruction, that would be every single one of us, except for God's saving grace on those he chose in eternity past to save for himself. Make sense? These are hard things. This is probably one of the most theologically hard things for people to get their mind around. It's very, very difficult. So don't feel bad if this is tough, but remind yourself, don't use your human reasoning. Look at scripture because if it doesn't line up, if your thoughts don't line up with scripture, guess who's wrong? you are, all right? So, in Exodus, it talks about God hardening the heart of Pharaoh. And these verses were specifically told that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, which resulted in all the bad stuff that happened to the Egyptians, all right? Including the death of all the firstborn and all of those things. But we're told in Romans 9, he says, for this very purpose I have raised you up, that's Pharaoh, that I may show my power in you and that my name may be declared in all the earth. Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills and on whom he wills he hardens. So see his ultimate cause by orchestrating all of the bad stuff that happened in the Exodus in relationship to The Jews got a good deal. Egyptians got a bad deal. But it was so God could show his power, which is part of his glory, and that his name would be declared in all the earth, which is part of his glory. I remember when they made it to the promised land, the Jews did, those There are several passages that talk about these people were scared to death of the Jews because they knew what had happened to the Egyptians All right so Here we go and in Joshua 1 of 120 For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts he's talking about the Canaanites that they should come against Israel in battle, which was a bad thing people were gonna get killed and that he might utterly destroy them. You know what utterly destroy means in the Old Testament? Kill every man, woman, child, animal, everything. There's nothing left. Everything is killed. And they might receive no mercy, but that he might destroy them as the Lord had commanded Moses. That's what God wanted to do with the Canaanites. And he was going to use the Jews to do it. But it says, He hardened the Canaanites' hearts to make them come against the Jews in battle. Interesting version, Judges 14.4. But his father and his mother, this is Samson's parents, did not know it was of the Lord that he was seeking the occasion to move against the Philistines. For at that time, the Philistines had dominion over Israel. So what is of the Lord? Samson wanted to marry a pagan woman, which is a sinful thing, right? Jews weren't supposed to do that. They were not supposed to intermarry with the pagan tribe. Samson wanted to do that, but God's plan was to destroy the Philistines and he was gonna do it by allowing Samson to marry this pagan woman, all right? And he didn't react to Samson. He actually caused Samson to do that. This is a sad verse. Eli was rebuking his sons for the evil deeds they had done. Was it Hophni and Phinehas or something like that? And we're told in 1 Samuel 2.25, nevertheless, they did not heed the voice of their father. because the Lord desired to kill them, all right? So the Lord was, his decision in eternity past was he was gonna kill those two boys, you know? I was convicted of this personally, because I threatened to kill my three boys multiple times when they were growing up. And then this verse reminded me, that's the Lord's job, okay? I'm sure some of you have boys that you could relate that to. Three. Yeah, three. Yeah, I got you. I had three, too. I told them I had four, and there was a little mound of dirt in the backyard. And when they were little, I said, I brought you into this world. I can take you out. In fact, your oldest brother lived off one too many times, and that's him underneath that pile of dirt back there. It didn't work for very long. They figured that out. So we're told in 1 Samuel that God, the Lord sent an evil spirit to distress Saul. David's life is full of God using evil things directly. When David sinned with Bathsheba, Nathan came and said this to David, thus says the Lord, behold, I, okay? Who is I in this verse? The Lord will raise up adversity against you from your own house. I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor. That was Absalom. And he shall lie with your wives in the sight of the son. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel. God's perfectly happy to be in charge of this stuff, folks. Which is fine, because he is. He's not asking us to figure out a way to get him out of the picture. And also, remember, the child born to David and Bathsheba died. And there's verse after verse in scripture that talk about these things. But what... Things that you've got to get from this is we listen through these things. When you understand these verses and that God is in charge of everything, it allows you to truly understand that God is doing things for His purposes, okay? For His glory and our good, all right? Because if we didn't think that was happening and God wasn't in control, how can you look at a verse like Romans 8, 28 that says, God causes all things, to work together for good, to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. That should give you great comfort, knowing that God is not out of control. All right? This is helpful, too. God is best glorified in the presence because it shows the huge difference. It increases the gulf between the two. All right. Um, uh, cause those are some of these hard verses. We looked at this one already. The Lord has made everything for his purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble. Uh, surely the wrath of men shall praise you. How does the wrath of men praise God? Um, Psalm 97, when the wicked springs up like grass and when all the workers of iniquity flourish, it is that they may be destroyed forever. And then you see all these verses in the gospels where God is not allowing people to understand the truth of the gospel. Luke 8, 10, and he said, to you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand. And there's a whole group of those verses in the Old Testament with the prophets. God tells, like Isaiah, you're going to go to these guys, but they're not going to listen. They're going to see, but they're not going to see. They're going to hear, but they're not going to hear. Because I'm not going to allow them to hear, OK? And these verses are hard. But the quote on the bottom of the page that says two on there again, I'm sorry. This quote, it's all in bold. It says, these verses are very hard, but in essence, God can best demonstrate his mercy in the presence of sin. God can best demonstrate the glories of heaven in the presence of hell. God can best demonstrate his saving love when sinners are saved. In short, the greatest good is God's glory and God can be best glorified for his goodness, mercy, love, and salvation of some in the presence of sin, evil, and hell. We must remember that more important than the happiness of man is God's desire to display his attributes, his glory, all right? And we see some verses that point that out, and you're probably familiar to you in Romans 3, 5. But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall I say? Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? I speak as a man, certainly not, for then how will God judge the world? God's righteousness is shown to be exponentially greater if you compare it to sinful man. If everybody on earth was just nice folks and not, you know, just everybody's Pollyanna and everything's good, God's righteousness compared to that would not be as great. But it's super great when you compare it with the sinfulness of man. And here's Romans 5 8 but God demonstrates His own love towards us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us Christ is saving wretched sinners. He's not saving good people Okay, and it gives him greater glory when he saves sinners We saw this verse already for scripture says to Pharaoh for this very purpose. I have raised you up that I may show that My power in you and that my name may be declared in all the earth. God could best show his power, his glory, and his name declared in all the earth by what he did with Pharaoh. All right. Romans nine, what of God wanting to show his wrath? and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had prepared beforehand for glory." God did what he did to show his wrath, and that's interesting. That tense there where it says, show his wrath, is called the Aorist Middle Tense, which I have no idea what that means. I read some Greek guy that said this, okay? And it means to demonstrate for himself. In other words, God is showing his glory for himself to make his power known and show the riches of his glory. Here's a couple of good quotes from some men. Whitfield says, God takes no pleasure in the death of sinners so as to delight simply in their death, but he delights to magnify his justice by inflicting the punishment which their iniquities have deserved. A righteous judge who takes not pleasure in condemning a criminal may yet justly command him to be executed, that the law and justice might be satisfied, even though it may be in his power to procure him a reprieve. And then Letzer says this, God's other attributes such as mercy, love, and righteousness cannot be fully displayed except against the backdrop of evil. With the entire human race falling into disobedience and sin, God, though he owed salvation to no one, elected some to eternal life, thereby showing his love and mercy. Then he ordained that Christ publicly die on the cross to demonstrate his righteousness. There, every righteous demand that God required for sinners was fully met. He's talking some about that, okay? So, breathe. In these verses below that I have there these are related to that moral evil of mankind where Men as sinners are doing all this bad stuff and It shows that man is culpable, not God. And it says this, him being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands. And then in Acts 4, we already looked at that, he points out Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles and the people of Israel, they're the ones that are culpable. and will receive punishment. Matthew 2, 22, 22. Truly the son of man goes as it's been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed, talking about Judas. Okay. Matthew 18, seven, woe to the world because of offenses, for offenses must come, but woe to the man by whom those offenses do come. You know, so Even though God is the primary cause or the ultimate cause behind morally evil events, including sin, the secondary cause, which is man. is the one that personally does the action, receives the blame, and will be judged for the evil that occurs. All right? Calvin, I got a couple quotes there from Calvin. You can read those. But I do want to read this one quote by Grudem, because I think it's important to understand, because it's very helpful. We should notice that the alternatives to saying that God uses evil for his purposes but he never does evil and is not to be blamed for it are not desirable ones. If we were to say that God himself does evil we would have to conclude that he is not a good and righteous God and therefore he is not really God at all. On the other hand if we maintain that God does not use evil to fulfill his purposes then we would have to admit that there is evil in the universe that God did not intend, is not under his control, and might not fulfill his purposes. This would make it very difficult for us to affirm this, and we know that all things work together for those who love God, those who are called according to his purpose. If evil came into the world in spite of the fact that God did not intend it and did not want it to be there, then what guarantee do we have that there will be not more and more evil that he does not intend and that he does not want? And what guarantee do we have that he will be able to use it for his purposes or even that he can triumph over it? Surely that is an undesirable alternative position. I would say this, if that was what scripture taught, that's what I would be teaching you. But fortunately, scripture doesn't teach what those alternatives that Rudman just pointed out. Okay? So, fourth thing, God rightfully judges. Okay? He rightfully judges moral creatures for the evil they do. So, scripture's clear. Man is responsible for his own sin. God does not make a person sin. He's doing what comes naturally when he sins. And man will be judged for that, even though God wills that evil to exist. And there's some verses in here that point those things out. Isaiah 66, three and four, they have chosen their ways, their soul delights in their abominations. I also will choose affliction for them and bring their fears upon them because when I called, no one answered. In other words, they weren't paying attention to God. When I spoke, they did not listen, but they did what was evil in my eyes and chose that in which I did not delight. See how the responsibility is rightfully put upon mankind there and not God at all? Ecclesiastes, God made man upright, but they have sought out many devices. Romans 9, 19 and 20, you will say to me then, why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will? But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing form say to it, why have you made me like this? So these verses make it tough for us. And I want you to understand that in spite of all what we've said so far on this subject, it is hard to completely get our minds around as finite human beings on the idea that God can ordain and will evil to occur without being evil himself. But we must affirm that all we have said is true because of all of these verses we have looked at. I have not sat up here and tried to give you a logical argument with human logic as to why this is the way it should be. I'm simply pointing out what scripture says, okay? That's why I said that people don't go with this The first mistake is usually in their life is they're ignorant of what scripture says. They just don't know what these verses say. They haven't, they haven't studied it. Okay. But, uh, but we, you know, we must affirm this all to be true because scripture says it's true. And just because scripture doesn't go into the mechanism of how God accomplishes this, the details of that, um, just in great detail doesn't mean we can't embrace the truth of scripture. A good model that works well, and I think that is, I mentioned it earlier, that is talked about in Romans 1 and several places in the Old Testament. is that God accomplishes evil by allowing our own free will to do the evil. He simply lets go of us and allows us to go our natural way. He is not forcing us to sin when we do evil, but rather is simply letting us do what comes naturally. You know, when you think about it, All the good that we or anybody else as unbelievers ever do in the world is because God is squeezing them and causing them to go against their natural way. Now for believers, it takes a little bit more because we are new creations in Christ. We are indwelled by the Holy Spirit and we're not working on the same operating system that the unbelieving world is operating on. But in reality, our sanctification is totally dependent upon God as well. But that's another, we're not talking about that today. I think that apart from God's restraining hand on mankind, we cannot imagine the degree of sinfulness that would happen. My personal opinion is the exponential rise of sin in the United States in the last few years. I mean, if you've been around a while, we've been gradually getting worse. But man, we're on the exponential curve. I mean, it is just shooting off the charts. They can't even define, you ask a liberal politician today, how would you define a man or a woman? they can't even give you an answer. I mean, they make one sinful choice and then that just has a domino effect. They have to change everything else as well, you know. So it's just been a sinful exponential rise in our nation. And a lot of that is because I think God has taken his hand of restraint away. He says to us in the US, you love your sin so well, okay, it's yours. And I think that's what we're seeing. That's just my opinion. I don't have a verse on that. But anyway, the last quote I want to leave you with is Mike Riccardi. He says, because he There's a good blog, if you don't look up this blog, it's called The Cripplegate. Anybody ever look at that? That's cool. It's got a lot of really good theological little blurbs. It's not like long articles. I mean, these are little short things that they put out. But he did several on the sovereignty of God over evil, and he says this. After considering a number of passages that don't shy away from attributing to God a very active role in bringing about of evil events, we concluded with John Frame. God does bring about sinful human actions. To deny this or to charge God with wickedness on account of it is not open to a Bible-believing Christian. Somehow, we must confess both that God has a role in bringing evil about and that in doing so, he is holy and blameless. That post, one of his previous ones, demonstrated that Scripture plainly teaches both, first, that God is unquestionably righteous, and two, that He indeed ordains sinful events and actions. And if that's what Scripture teaches, and it is, it is not our place to sit in judgment upon the question of consistency of those declarations. That only breeds the worst biblical and theological mischief. To argue that God is unrighteous for ordaining evil is to sit in judgment upon both the word of God and the judge of all the world. Instead, it falls to us to receive both propositions as true on authority of God's infallible and inerrant word. Okay, so that's where we are. Let's close in prayer. Father, we just thank you and praise you for your word. And Father, we confess this is a tough subject, and this is hard to get our minds around. But yet, Father, when we keep in mind that everything that's going on in our world today is not about us, it's about you and your glory, that makes a big difference. Help us recognize that. Give us great comfort in the truth that you are sovereign over all things. There is nothing going on in this world that is apart from your control. Oh, Father, what a blessing that is, how much comfort that gives us. Because, Father, that gives us comfort that all of the promises that you have made for us as believers will indeed come true. We don't have to worry that Satan might win and you might lose. or that all of those promises may or may not happen depending on the circumstance. We praise you for your sovereign control of all things, in Jesus' name, amen. Next week, we'll start on man's free will in relationship to the providence of God.