Again, go through where we've been. First of all, you remember we talked about the meaning of apologetics and what does it mean. It means simply to defend the faith. It's from the Greek word apologia, which was a technical word used in Peter's day to talk about a defense in a court trial. And so it's to give an answer, to offer answers for what we believe, and so we are certainly living in a world today where the world is looking for answers, and there are assaults against the church where we need to be able to provide those answers. So that's the meaning of apologetics, and then we also talked about the methodology of apologetics. You remember that we said that there are four basic methods of approaches, all biblical apologists have the same goal in mind, to defend the faith, but how they arrive there isn't always the same. There are several different approaches to this, and we said, anybody remember the approaches? I'll give you an extra bulletin this morning if you can name them. It is the classical approach, and that focuses more on reason and philosophy. There is the presuppositional approach, which basically says we start from the presupposition that there is a God, God simply in the beginning says, I am, and doesn't try to explain himself, so the most reasonable place to start is with God. and that's called a presuppositionalist. They would argue and say, we all have presuppositions. The question is, where is yours? Does your presupposition start with your own sensory perception, I should say, or does it start with God? And then there's the evidential approach, and this is the approach of defending the faith based more on the evidence that is found. This is where archeology would be a strong argument, the study of history, and comparing the facts it's more evidence. And then there is finally a fideism which says that you're really not going to understand anything about the Christian life unless you embrace it by faith. Faith has to be the key element that you must embrace. And so we talked about the existence of God. Remember we said that there were two major pillars that the apologists, classical apologists, feel like we need to defend, and the first one is the existence of God, and secondly would be the defense that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. And so that's where we thought we would start. We started by talking about arguments, classical arguments for the existence of God, and then we showed the response to that of a presuppositional approach, and then we're now taking on this issue of the problem of evil in the world, dealing with the problem of evil. And you remember we started last week. How many of you were here last week for the first part of this? How many of you were not here for last week for the first part? Okay, you're behind, I'm gonna have to give you extra assignment this morning in our class. But we'll just go through this real quick, where we were last week. Why does God allow evil and suffering? And we said that this branch of theology is called theodicy, which comes from the two Greek words, theos, God, deisi, meaning the justice of, And it really is the vindication of the divine attributes, particularly the holiness and justice of God, and allowing the existence of evil in the world. And this comes from a German essay which was written in 1715, and the purpose of the essay was to show that evil in the world does not conflict with the goodness of God. And so the question is, if God exists, why does evil exist? All the way back to the early Greek philosophers like Epicurus, who said, is he willing to prevent but not able? Then is he impotent? If he is able but not willing, then is he malevolent? If he's both able and willing, then is evil? And if he's neither willing or able, then why call him God? And there are other arguments similar to this. And so we started with what we know about God. We know that God is, omnibenevolent, or always good. Have me agree with that, he's always good, of course. Of course, the Bible affirms that, right? Jesus said there's no one good but God, and God doesn't do a thing because it's right and good, a thing is right and good because God does it. He is the standard of what is good and right. And then we talk about we have to believe also that God is omnipotent, that means God can do anything, there's nothing too hard for God, and the Bible affirms that, again, in scripture, nothing is too hard for you, oh God. And we said this is an important part of the theodicy from the scripture because there are other people out there that don't necessarily believe that, and I pointed out the book written by Greg Boyd, God at War, where he says that God is locked in this constant dualism where sometimes Satan wins and sometimes God wins. That's not a God that is omnipotent. And if that's true, then how can we be sure of anything? Anything is gonna turn out if God's just doing the best that he can. And we made some quotes from that book, but then there was also another book written by the rabbi, Harold Kushner, who basically wrote this book dedicated to a son who died of a terrible disease when he was 14, and our heart goes out to anyone that would go through that. But Rabbi Kushner, in the book, basically said that God, he does his best with people, but he's not always fully able to prevent suffering. That was the conclusion that he came to. And again, the problem is, is that that takes a view of God that is not omnipotent. That God's doing the best that he can, but he's not able to prevent certain things. And this denies the omnipotence of God, it denies the sovereignty of God, We looked at some scriptures there with reference to that. We also believe that God is omniscient, that means he knows all things, past, present, and future, and I like the way Grudem defines this, that God fully knows himself and all things, actual and possible in one simple act. And we said that this is important because there are guys out there that don't believe that. There's what is called an open theism theodicy where Greg Boyd again writes a book where he says there are two motifs of Scripture, the motif of future determinism where God knows what's going to happen because he's going to determine it, but there's also the motif of future openness where he doesn't know what's going to happen. There's a part of the future out there that he doesn't really know that's what's going to happen. And so his answer then for why evil and suffering would be because God doesn't see it coming. He's not omniscient. And John Sanders also wrote along this same line, who's also an open theist, and he said that the creation of man in the very beginning was God's experiment. He was practicing on being a parent. He wasn't sure how it was gonna turn out. When everything went bad and man was filled with evil, God decided to scrap the whole experiment, destroy the world. But the pain that it caused God from the destruction of the world, God didn't anticipate that, and God said, that hurts so much, I'm never gonna do it again. and he put a rainbow in the sky after the flood. And the whole point that John Sanders is making is God's learning and growing in this thing. He's learning and growing. He's doing the best that he can as he grows in his knowledge. And that again, we have a problem with that, don't we? Because that means that God is not omniscient in that view. And so that's their explanation. God doesn't know everything. and he's trying the best that he can. He's learning and growing with this whole thing. That, by the way, is based on, open theism is based on a foundation of what we could also call process theology, where God is in the process of learning and growing and so on. And then we said there's the Christian science theodicy, where they basically said that all sin and badness and disease are figments of our imagination, that it's not real. And we talked about that, and I'm not gonna go into that again and give Mary Baker Eddy any more time. So none of these theodicies work. We have to build a theodicy on the fact that God is omnibenevolent, he is omnipotent, he is omniscient, and evil does really exist. Because to say any of those other things denies the God of the Bible when they create their own God, which doesn't fully explain or answer the question, why does God allow evil in the world? And we know that there's evil, it's all around. We see it every day, there's natural evil, there's calamity, things that happen in nature. The Bible says in Romans 8 about creation, the whole creation groans. and is waiting for the redemption, the full redemption of us as believers because the redemption of creation is tied in with our complete redemption. When we get a new body, creation gets a new body. And there's a brand new heaven and a new earth. But there is natural evil and it's all over. We looked at the book The Great Influenza, we talked about that where it talked about this, a few guys from Kansas right before World War I got a virus and that virus spread and they couldn't stop it. the science was not to where they could do anything about it and basically a hundred million hundred million people died as a result of that and And so and if it and if something like that happened again, we could go through the same thing We live in a world where there's real evil. There's moral evil where people do bad things against others Supernatural evil where there is a real Satan and demons. How many believe in the devil and his demons? They're out there. In our theology study this Friday morning, we were dealing with that one issue right there. I think sometimes we live in a world where people laugh at the idea of the devil and demons, but the Bible's very clear. There's supernatural evil in the world and so on. And then there's eternal evil. The worst kind of calamity that ever happened to anyone is they die without Jesus Christ and they go to a place called hell. So we said that a valid theology must affirm these things. We have to affirm that God is good. We have to affirm that God is all-powerful. We have to affirm that God knows all things. We have to believe that evil really does exist in many forms. And we also have to believe that God is sovereign because this is the God of the Bible. This is the way God is presented in the Bible as being in control of all things. And this is important because there's what is out there is called a free will theodicy, or is also called an autonomous theodicy, which basically says that the cause of evil is the abuse of free will. God has allowed free will because it's the highest good. In order to protect the highest good of free will, God will allow the possibility of evil in order to preserve that. And so therefore, God gave angels free will. They operated completely apart from his divine purpose. God gave man free will, who operated completely apart from God's divine purpose. Both have self-determined freedom to act, and that's why we're in this mess. That's why we're in this mess. And of course, we know that sin originated with the devil. I wouldn't argue with that. The Bible says that God created a perfect angel, and the Bible says he was perfect in all of his ways until what? Until iniquity was found in you. Sin originated where? It originated in the heart of the devil. It originated in the heart of Lucifer. Started right there. God created a perfect angel. We understand that. And some people say, well, this gets God off the hook with the problem of evil, right? God is not responsible for evil. The devil is. Adam and Eve are. Why did God create them? With that possibility. That's the question you would have to entertain. If God is omniscient, he knew it was coming, right? Sure, he saw it was coming. It didn't surprise him. He's omnipotent. He could have stopped it. He said, well, he wanted to preserve free will. You think it was too hard of the thing for God to preserve free will and yet stop evil from coming at the same time? Sure he could have done that. How many think he could have done that? Of course he could have. And so God knew what would happen. He could have prevented it. Why didn't he? This doesn't necessarily get God off the hook because still we have to go and say God permitted it. God allowed it to come. So a valid theodicy must be built upon God. All things ultimately go back to God. You can't just build your answer on Adam and Eve. And you can't just build your answer on the devil. And scholars and theologians know this, that's why they call this dilemma theodicy. It's defending God. Because you wouldn't have to defend God if you believe that God's not, that he's not in control and that it came in by Satan and Adam and God, there was nothing he could do about it. course there was something you do about it he's God he's sovereign so that means that he allowed it and so the question of theodicy deals with the righteousness and justice of God and allowing evil and basically a free will theodicy in my opinion reinvents God the Bible does not present a God who values human will over his own will that's not the way God is portrayed in the Bible or a God whose own will can be thwarted by free will choices of humanity. You actually think that my will can overturn the purposes of God or the will of God? That's a God that's not in control. That means I'm in control. You see, And so to design a God that has limited power, limited knowledge, that gives his creature sovereignty over himself is to design a false God. This is a God that has no control over man or demons or the universe, and therefore we can't be sure, we can be sure of nothing that he has promised. If God is not ultimately in control of all things, then how can we be sure that everything's gonna turn out the way God said it's gonna turn out? No, the Bible presents God as sovereign, and that means exhaustively sovereign. He's sovereign over life and death in Deuteronomy. God says, I, even I am he, and there is no God with me. I kill, I make alive, I wound, I heal. Again, in Job, where Job said, after his children were taken, the Lord gives, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And James says, you know, we ought to say if the Lord wills, we'll live and do this. Because if I live tomorrow, it's only gonna be because God has determined and allowed that I'm gonna live. If the Lord wills, we'll live and we'll do this. We like to boast about what we're gonna do, but no one's guaranteed tomorrow. We only live because God allows us to. Because he's in control of that. The Bible says he's the one who killeth and maketh us alive. He's in control of disease and defects. God said to Moses, who made man's mouth, who make it the dumb or the deaf or the seeing or the blind have not I, the Lord, God's in control that. The Bible talks about King Jehoram, how the Lord smote him with an incurable disease, and how the Lord plagued Pharaoh's house. So God is in control of disease. He's in control of natural disasters. In Genesis 7, it says God says, I'm gonna cause a drain, I'm gonna send the flood. You think the flood was just an accident of nature that God foresaw coming? No. God said, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna flood the world. The Bible says in Psalm 105, verse 16 and 17, moreover, he called for a famine on the land. God called for the famine. God sent it. In Psalm 147, 18, he sendeth out his word and melteth them. He causes his wind to blow and the waters to flow again. Fire, hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind fulfilling his word. When you're this winter shoveling out your driveway, just say, thank you, Lord. He sent the snow. It was His will. All right? and so on, we can just continue on. So beautiful passages in the book of Job, where it says, by the breath of God, frost is given, and the breath of the waters is straightened. Also by watering the weary, the thick cloud, he scattereth his bright cloud. It is turned round about by his counsel, that they may do whatsoever he commandeth them upon the face of the world and the earth, he causes it to come. whether for correction or for land or for mercy, God will send a flood according to his purpose, whether he wants to correct someone or just water the land or just because he's being merciful. Even animals. God's in control of even the animals. Think about this. In the story of Jonah, it says the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. Do you think when those guys threw him overboard, the whale was just there and happened to go, hey, whoa. This is an accident. No, God sent him. You say, what about the whale's free will? We could call the whale Free Willy, right? He was doing exactly what God commanded him to do. In fact, the whole book of Jonah illustrates God's exhaustive sovereignty. He sent the wind to cause the storm, Job says. God sent the whale He's sovereign over the animal world. And by the way, who cast Jonah overboard? The sailors did. But when Jonah was in the belly of the whale, remember what he prayed? Lord, you cast me overboard. Wait a minute, I thought the sailors did it. Yeah, they did do it, but God did it. The sailors did it, but God did it. And I'm kind of introducing you to an answer we're going to get to here, but that's called in theology concurrence, where those sailors did what they wanted to do of their own free agency and free will. Yet the thing that they chose to do is according to God's sovereign purpose. Both of those things are true at the same time. They said, let's throw this guy overboard because that'll save our life. This storm here is his fault. And they threw him overboard. But Jonah recognized, God, it was you that threw me overboard. Because what they did was exactly what God wanted them to do. And the whale was right there to swallow Jonah up right where the whale should have been. And by the way, the whale was not a a tool of God's judgment. It was a tool of God's mercy. If the whale wasn't there, what would happen to Jonah? He would have died. He would have drowned. It was God's mercy, but then God sent the whale, God sent the weed. You remember later on the story, revival hit Nineveh, Jonah pouted, sat on the hill. Can you imagine what a pathetic prophet he must have been? He wanted to see those people perish. And he pouted because God sent revival. And he said, you know, Lord, just let me die here in the hot sun. You've ever been in the Middle East on a hot summer day? It can kill you. And the Bible says a weed grew up. God sent the weed and it gave him shade. And then a worm came and killed the weed and the weed went away. God sent the worm. He's sovereign over plant life, he's sovereign over the insects. God did all of that. And so my point is, is that God, the Bible presents God as being exhaustively sovereign. He's in control. There are no accidents, only acts of providence, destructive animals. We can go on in other passages of Scripture where it talks about this, for thus saith the Lord God, how much more when I send my four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword and the famine and the noisome beast and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast. We could say this also, that God is sovereign over all kinds of calamities, all kinds. Because again, in Ezekiel, it says that, in Isaiah, where it says, I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil. Now the word evil there, you have to understand, is the Hebrew word ra, which could mean calamity, hurricanes, disasters, floods. disease, and so on. It can include moral evil in that, but John Piper has proposed that this verse seems to be teaching that God is sovereign and rules over the world in such a way that all calamities, all sin remain under his control and therefore within his ultimate design and purpose. So All kind of calamities. Here's Lamentations 3, 37 and 38. Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good. Isn't God sovereign over all these events? Everything that happens? And Amos, shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it? Job 42.2, I know that you can do all things that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. And again in Daniel 4.35, and all the inhabitants of the earth are refuted as nothing, and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand or say unto him, what are you doing? Or what doeth thou? The Bible says in Ephesians 111, and whom we have, or also we have obtained an inheritance, obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who works all things after the counsel of his own will. Even the seeming chance events, God is in charge even of that. The Bible says the lot is cast into the lap, but the whole decision is from the Lord. In other words, there's no such thing as a chance from God's perspective. What's lots in the Old Testament? That's where they would take these two stones and they would kind of cast them down to the ground and they would use that in the Old Testament to determine God's will. They would ask yes or no questions like David when he was contemplating whether to pursue his enemies. He had the priest there that took these stones out of his breastplate. There was a little pocket behind his breastplate. He would take them out and David would say, Lord, should I pursue these men? And they would cast the lots to the ground. And the answer would either be yes or no. Yes, no. And the Bible says the lot is cast down, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. They believe that God was in such control that he could determine they could determine God's will by casting lots on the ground because they knew that God was in control of every detail, even that. Spurgeon, the great preacher, said this. I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes. That every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens. That the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars, excuse me, I misspelled, stars in their courses. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is much fixed as the march of devastating pestilence. The fall of leaves from the poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche. When Spurgeon was challenged that this is nothing but fatalism, this is what he said. What is fate? Fate is this, whatever is must be. But there is a difference between that and providence. Providence says whatever God ordains must be. But the wisdom of God never ordains anything without a purpose. Everything in the world is working for some great end. Fate does not say that. There is all the difference between fate and providence that there is between a man with good eyes and a blind man. And so we would say then that God is sovereign over all things. How else could we say and we know that all things work together for good? How can we claim that promise unless we believe that he's sovereign over all things? He can work all things together for good. It doesn't say that all things are good, but that he works all things together for good. The good things that come, the bad things that come, God works them all together for a good purpose. That's why we claim that verse, Romans 8, 28. And we can't affirm that unless we believe that God is exhaustively sovereign over all things. God is sovereign. So we gotta then get back to the question, did God create evil? Since God created everything, The question comes, is he the author of evil? And I wanna go to Wayne Grudem here, a systematic theologian. He says this, if God does indeed cause through his providential activity, everything that comes about in the world, then the question arises, what is the relationship between God and evil in the world? Does God actually cause the evil actions that people do? If he does, then is God not responsible for sin? And again, this is the question that we're talking about. And Grudem says this, it is very clear that scripture nowhere shows God as directly doing anything evil, but rather as bringing about evil deeds through the willing actions of moral creatures. And this is the distinction we have to understand. God doesn't do sin. God doesn't create evil directly. But God allows free moral creatures to do their thing. He allows it to come up to pass. He permits it to come. the willing actions of, again, creatures who have free agency. However, we must understand God's relationship to evil. We must never come to the point where we think that we're not responsible for the evil that we do, or that God takes pleasure in evil, or is blamed for it. God does not take pleasure in it. Such a conclusion is clearly contrary to Scripture. There are literally dozens of Scripture passages that say that God indirectly brought about some kind of evil. Here's one example that Grudem gives, and we know this story, the story of Joseph, right? We all know that story. We remember how his brothers treated him. Scripture clearly says that Joseph's brothers were wrongly jealous of him, that they hated him, that they wanted to kill him, and did wrong when they cast him into the pit, And then they sold him into slavery. These things that they did to Joseph, they did of their own free will, of their own. It was their idea, their desire, their decision. They're responsible for doing it. But what they did was that according to God's eternal plan. Yeah, it was. You would have to say that, why? Later, Joseph could say to his brothers, God sent me before you to preserve life. You see, all the way back in Genesis, God told Abraham, he said, Abraham, your descendants are gonna be slaves in Egypt. They're gonna go down, I'm gonna send someone down there to protect them. This whole story, God had prophesied. How is God going to get those people down to Egypt? Well, all the things that happened in the story of Joseph were all according to God's eternal plan. And God sent Joseph down to Egypt to preserve his people, Israel, the family of Jacob, and they were brought down to Egypt and there in Egypt, God basically made a nation of people. That was according to his plan. And the way for God to accomplish all that was for Joseph to go down there before them and not only save the life of Jacob's family, but to save the lives of many people in the world because of the famine. But in order for that to happen, this is how Joseph got down to Egypt. He had brothers who hated him, who did all this. And what they did, They meant it for evil, but what did Joseph say? You meant it evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. And here again, we see that principle of concurrence where the brothers did what they wanted to do of their own free will and free agency, those actions they chose to do. But what they chose to do was according to God's eternal plan. What they chose to do was what God ordained that would happen. And yet they're responsible for their choices. They did what they wanted to do. And yet what they wanted to do was according to God's eternal plan. And this is the way Grudem describes that. He says, here we have a combination of evil deeds brought about by sinful men who are rightly held accountable for their sin and the overriding provident, providential control of God, whereby God's own purposes were accomplished. Both are clearly affirmed. You see that? Scripture holds to both the responsibility of man and the sovereignty of God. They're both equally true in Scripture. And how they work together, admittedly, there's a mystery there to us, we would say, but both are true, right? Moreover, our analysis of concurrence given above, in which both divine and human agents can cause the same event, should show us that both factors can be true at the same time. And that's the thing that most people can't seem to grasp. They can't seem to get hold of that concept, that both things can be equally true. Even when Pharaoh hardens his own heart, that is not inconsistent with saying that God is causing Pharaoh to do this, and thereby God is hardening the heart of Pharaoh. Both of them are true. I don't know about you, but I see concurrence all over in Scripture, just all over. Think about this fulfilled prophecy. God makes a prophecy that something's gonna happen hundreds of years, and then it happens. You know how many human decisions were involved in making that thing happen? How many contingencies, how many things had to happen in all those years in order for that thing to come about the way God prophesied that it would come about? And do you think that those people were robots acting, you know, without their own will? No, they acted and did according to their own free agency and free will. Yet, do you think that their free will is able to overturn the purpose of God? No. It didn't, listen, their free agency and free will did not overturn the purpose of God, it established the purpose of God. And both of those things are true at the same time. And again, this is a concept that's hard for people to grasp, that both can be true. I see concurrence in, I see it in the inspiration of scripture. Where did you get your Bible from? If you say God, you would be right. If you say man wrote it, you would be right. Did man write the Bible? Yes or no? This is not a trick question. Did God write the Bible? Yes. Wait a minute. How can both of those be true? Because the writers of scripture, the words that they chose were the words that God had already chosen in eternity past. They God so controlled their personality, their education, their background, their circumstance, everything so that the words that they chose. And by the way, the Bible is is word for word inspiration. I don't believe in thought for thought. I believe in word for word inspiration. The words that they chose. were the words that God had already chosen eternity past. Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. But the words they chose were the words that God had already chosen. But yet they chose according to what they wanted to choose. Let me ask you a question. Do you see the personality of the writers in their individual writings in the scripture? Can you see Paul when you read his scripture, his logic? What about John, his simplicity? Sure. You see the personality of the writers, and yet, we know that every word that they chose was ordained by God, it came from heaven. Both of those things are true in the inspiration of Scripture. Both of them. Okay? We see this in the deity of Christ. Was he 100% God? But was he 100% man? Yeah, both are true. They're both equally true. We see it in sanctification. Who lives your Christian life? You or Jesus? You're afraid to answer that, aren't you? You say, well, I live my Christian life. I say, yeah, I can tell by looking at you, you live your. You say, well, Jesus lives my Christian life. That's right. The apostle Paul said, I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ who lives. Wait a minute, Paul, which one is it? Is it you or is it him? It's both. What did he say in Philippians 2? He said, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you. Both the will to do with his good pleasure. Wait a minute. You just told me to work out my own salvation. Now you're telling me that it's God who works in me. Which one is it, Paul? Is it me or is it God? And the answer is yes. It's both. You work out your salvation, and yet it is God working in you and through you to do his good pleasure and his will. That's concurrence. Both of those things are there. And we see this also, and this is what Grudem is describing here to us, in the story of Joseph and his brothers. The brothers did what they chose to do, yet what they chose to do was according to what God's eternal plan was, and they're responsible for their choices. So much so that God's gonna judge them for it. When David sinned, the Lord said to him through Nathan the prophet, I will raise up evil against you out of your house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this son. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the son. Here's a clear prophecy of how God was going to bring judgment against David for the sin that he committed with Bathsheba. And notice the phraseology there. God says, I'm going to raise up evil in your house or out of your house. I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor. He shall lie with your wives in the sight of this son. You did it secretly, but I'm going to do this thing before all Israel. Now, how is this fulfilled in scripture? How is this particular prophecy fulfilled? You remember the story that. In 2 Samuel chapter 16, Absalom had rebelled against David. Remember, David had to run and flee from Jerusalem. And Absalom's trying to determine how he can establish that he's in control. And he calls together his counselors, and he's surmising, how am I gonna show everyone that I'm in control? And one counselor says, well, I got an idea. Here's what you should do. You should take a tent, put it on the roof of your dad's palace, and then lie with your father's concubines. This is what a king would do in the ancient world. When one king defeated another king to show everyone that he was in control, he would purposely lie with the other king's concubines. And this was the counsel that was given to Absalom. Absalom, go to the rooftop, put a tent up, let all Israel see that you're lying with your father's concubines. And Absalom said, oh, I don't want to do that. No, it's not a good idea. And they said, oh, yeah, you're going to do it. We're going to drag you into this tent. We're going to make you do this. Is that what happened? No. Absalom said, that's a good idea. That's what I'm going to do. And what Absalom did, he chose to do. It was of his own free will and free agency. He did it. And the Bible tells us very clearly in 2 Samuel 16 that he did it, and yet here God says, this is what I'm gonna do. So the question is, who did that? Absalom did what he wanted to do of his own free will and free agency, and yet what he chose to do was according to what God said would happen. And God was sovereign over all that, yet God was not the doer of it, God did not drag Absalom into the tent, said you're going to do this. God just allowed Absalom to be Absalom. He just allowed Absalom to do what he wanted to do. And God used that to fulfill his judgment against David for his sin. And yet here is the Lord saying, I'm going to raise this evil up against you. And yet God's not the doer of it. He just allowed it to happen. He allowed the free moral choices of a wicked man to establish what he and his own wisdom ordained should happen. in this story here. So again, we see concurrence. Both things are happening. Absalom did what he wanted, yet it was according to God's sovereign will and plan. And then when Jonathan Edwards, how many have ever heard of Jonathan Edwards? A great theologian of yesteryear. Someone has called him the greatest theological mind that America has ever produced. He points to the crucifying of Christ as another example of this concurrence where both things are happening, he says, is the crucifying of Christ was a great sin. And as man committed it, it was exceedingly hateful and highly provoking to God, yet upon many great considerations, it was the will of God that it should be done. And that's true. Was it God's will that Jesus Christ be crucified? He was a lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Yet, was it a sin? Did those men sin in crucifying the Son of God? They absolutely did. They absolutely did. And as Edward says, it was highly provoking to God. It was hateful. And we see the passage here and acts for four of a truth against thy holy child, Jesus, whom thou has anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done. So we see concurrence right there in that verse. Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles and the people of Israel. They all gathered together. They were all one in purpose to crucify the son of God. But their purpose was according to what God had already determined. With he already. Was foreordained should happen and Edwards. He ponders. that someone might say that only the sufferings of Christ were planned by God, not the sins against him, to which he responds, I answer, the sufferings could not come to pass but by sin. For contempt and disgrace was the only thing that he was to suffer. Therefore, the free actions of men are subject to God's disposal. And here's a quote from one of the great confessions of faith. God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. Yet, so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. Same thing that I've been telling you here. When Edwards is asked if God is the author of sin, he answers, if by author of sin, be meant the sinner, the agent or the actor of sin or the doer of a wicked thing, it would be a reproach and blasphemy to suppose God to be the author of sin. In this sense, I utterly deny God to be the author of sin. But he continues. But he argues, willing, willingly or excuse me, willing that sin exists in the world is not the same as sinning. God does not commit sin and willing that there be sin. God has established a world in which sin will indeed necessarily come to pass by God's permission. but not by his positive agency. He goes on to say, God is the permitter of sin, and at the same time, a disposer of the state of events in such a manner for wise, holy, and most excellent ends and purposes that sin, if it be permitted, will most certainly and infallibly follow. He kind of uses an analogy of the sun, the way the sun brings about light and warmth by its essential nature, but it brings about darkness and cold by dropping below the horizon. And he said, if the sun were the proper cause of cold and darkness, it would be the fountain of these things, as it is the fountain of light and heat. In other words, what he's saying here, and I need to move forward, but what he's saying here is that the absence of the sun's warmth, we could say that the sun brings about darkness by its absence, or it brings about darkness by its absence, even so God permits sin by his withdrawing of his grace. You get the concept there? When God withdraws his grace and allows man to be man, then man inevitably will do bad things. And so he's not the active agent in it, but just like the sun causes darkness by its absence, even so God permits sin by his withdrawing of his grace. And so he says sin is not the fruit of any positive agency, influence of the Most High, but on the contrary arises from the withholding of his action and energy, and under each circumstance necessarily follows on the one of his influence." And as Augustine says, evil is a privation or corruption that exists in something that was originally good and perfect, and Aquinas says evil is signified by the absence of good. So we could say that it's the withholding of God's grace that brings it about. Did God create evil? God created every substance. Evil is not a substance, but a privation of substance. Therefore, God did not create evil as the active agent, we could say. God is perfect, and he, therefore, could not have caused it. And just another quote here from MacArthur, and then I wanna give you a few scripture verses before we end here. Ultimately, we must concede that sin is something that God meant to happen. He planned it, ordained it, or, the words of the Westminster Confession, he decreed it. Sin is not something that sneaked in and took him by surprise, caught him off guard, or spoiled his plans. The reality of sin figured into his changeless purposes from eternity past, thus evil and all its consequences were included in God's eternal decree, therefore, or excuse me, before the foundation of the world. Yet by the same token, God cannot be considered the author or originator of sin. God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. God in no sense causes sin, incites it, condones it, authorizes it, approves it, or otherwise consents to it. God is never the cause or the agent of sin. He only permits it. So let me just, again, I have to fast forward here. just for the sake of time, Edwards teaches that God has two wills, a will of decree and a will of desire. And God's will of decree doesn't always match his will of desire. God will decree some things that he doesn't desire. God will desire some things that he doesn't decree. Why? His will of desire is subservient to the will of decree because the will of decree has a higher purpose involved. We do this. We often will determine something or make a choice, even though we may not desire it. But we make that choice because there's a higher purpose involved. And that's what he talks about here. And I don't have time to go over all these quotes here because we're out of time. But just to just to. Just to summarize what he's saying, what he says basically is God's will decree has a higher purpose, therefore he permits He doesn't desire, but he permits sin and evil, even though he hates it. He will decree that it exists, that it come, even though he hates it. Why? Because there's a higher purpose. Just to give you an illustration, when General Washington was in charge of the army, trying to win our independence, he made a decree, any traitor will be hung. And then later on, a traitor was found, and that traitor was his friend. And immediately you have a conflict in General Washington. He decreed that all traders be hung. Why? There's an overall purpose. What's the purpose? To win the freedom of the country. To give freedom. That's the higher purpose. Therefore, he made a decree, all traders will be hung. But when his friend was found to be a traitor, he didn't desire to hang him. So he has a conflict there. He can either yield to the will of desire and not hang him, or he could yield to the will of decree and go ahead and hang him because there's a higher purpose, even though he hates it. And so his will of desire was subservient to the will of decree, and the traitor was hung because of a higher purpose. He allowed the thing that he hated because of a higher purpose that was involved. Everybody with me? So this is what Edwards is saying. I'm just pulling all this stuff right here. I just summarized it for you. What is Paul's answer for evil? He says this, but if our unrighteousness serve to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? If God has ordained it in his plan that our unrighteousness demonstrate. Or show forth the righteousness of God, is that OK for God to do that, to put his righteousness on display? Israel's unrighteousness doesn't cancel God's promise, it just simply gives God the opportunity to demonstrate His righteousness. Here's the point, the reason that God, this is what many theologians have come to, and this is what Paul is actually saying, the reason that God permitted that there be sin and evil in the world is because of the higher purpose of God's glory, of God showing forth His glory. We wouldn't understand God. We wouldn't understand righteousness. without there being sin and evil. We wouldn't understand love, but God commended his love towards us. The word we see this in Romans 5 8. By the way, the word commend means to demonstrate. God demonstrates his righteousness by allowing it to be. God demonstrates his love. By allowing sin and evil to come in the world, we wouldn't know grace. We wouldn't know love. We wouldn't know any of these things. And Edward's point is this. In order to really understand God in his full glory, we have to understand these attributes of God. And if we in order to understand these attributes of God, there has to be a contrast. We don't understand love unless there's the opposite. We don't understand righteousness unless there's unrighteousness, and so on. The most glorious and magnificent demonstration of God's love was at the cross. Therefore, sin and evil must exist in order for God to demonstrate his love. And Paul also says to demonstrate his holy wrath against sin, and so on. God has just as much right to put his wrath on display as he does his grace on display. He is God. The Bible says, but our God is in the heaven. He does whatever he pleases. And here's the ultimate answer. God allowed it for a greater, higher purpose that would serve the overall good of his creatures. And so in his wisdom, he ordained that it be because there is a higher purpose involved. specifically, but not limited to that, but most specifically his glory in showing us himself. All right, that was a lot in a little bit of time. I'm sure you're gonna have questions you're gonna ask me sometime later, I don't know. When you get a chance there's more to talk about, but So kind of in a summary, Paul's answer is to commend his righteousness, to commend his love, to commend his holy wrath, to show his power. God permitted it to be. Let's all stand together and pray, and then we're gonna go to our next service here. Father, thank you for your word. Give us understanding, and Lord, help us to see that you are indeed sovereign, the all-wise God, and we praise you, Lord, for who you are, and we pray in Jesus' name, amen.