Our scripture reading is Job chapter 9, beginning at the first verse. Then Job answered, In truth I know that this is so. But how can a man be right before God? If one wished to dispute with him, he could not answer him once in a thousand times. Wise in heart and mighty in strength, who has defied him without harm? Who removes the mountains? They know not how, when He overturns them in His anger. Who shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble? Who commands the sun not to shine, and sets a seal upon the stars? Who alone stretches out the heavens, and tramples down the waves of the sea? Who makes the bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the sun? Who does great things, unfathomable, and wondrous works without number? Were he to pass by me, I would not see him. Were he to move past me, I would not perceive him. Were he to snatch away, who could restrain him? Who could say to him, what are you doing? May God bless to our understanding this portion of his work. During my ministry in Newark, Delaware, one of my members requested me to visit a lady in hospital who had no church affiliation, but who was dying of cancer. I was glad to comply with the request, and over the following few months, I visited that lady regularly and we became good friends. I realized on my first visit that she needed spiritual help. As soon as she learned that I was a minister, she said, I'm so glad to see you. Can you christen me? I have never been christened. That revealed to me that she had no idea whatsoever about spiritual things. Somehow she had gathered the idea that eternal life is obtained by a religious act or ceremony. I sat down and explained to her at length that the only hope for eternal life is through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and that he is received by faith alone. I explained it all as carefully as I could, and her response led me to believe that she was making progress in her understanding. Finally she looked directly at me and she said, that's all fine, but when can you christen me? I realized that her mind was still closed to the truth, and that she hadn't really heard what I had told her. As I said, I called on her regularly, and for weeks, virtually the same conversation took place. One afternoon, I was on my way home from Philadelphia, and I was about to drive past the hospital, but felt constrained to drop in. I had seen her only a few days before, and I made no plans to visit the hospital on that occasion. Nevertheless, I stopped and went in. She was very weak, but she greeted me with the same question, when can you christen me? This time I tried a different approach. I asked her, if you were to die tonight, and you had to stand before God, and he asked you why he should let you into his heaven, what would you answer? Though she was very frail and weak, She sat up in bed and she looked straight at me and she said, that's the question I want answered. Again I shared with her what I had tried to tell her many times before. I told her that Jesus Christ is our only hope. He is the way, the truth and the light. No man comes unto God apart from Him. She sat there listening intensely. Finally, she sank back on her pillow and went to sleep. Only eternity will reveal whether she placed her trust in Jesus Christ that afternoon. I believe she did. But that night, she was called to stand before God and give an account to Him. Actually, that is the most important question all of us have to answer. If you were to die tonight and had to stand before God, and if he were to ask you why he should let you into his heaven, what would you answer? In other words, how can we know if the problem of evil has been solved, that our sin is forgiven, and that we will be able to stand before God with a clear conscience? Nothing, nothing is more important for us than to know that we are just or right before God. In Job chapter 8, Bildad asks, does God pervert justice, or does the Almighty pervert righteousness? In his understanding, God would not have sent trouble and affliction if Job didn't deserve it. To do so would have been a perversion of God's justice. Later in the chapter he says, God will not cast away a perfect man. To build that, it appeared that God had cast Job away by allowing trouble to come. Therefore, Job could not be a perfect man. In his response in the following chapter, Job acknowledges that some of what Bildad has said is true, and he denies what is false. In chapter 9 and verse 2, Job says, truly I know that it is so. Actually, that is a very forceful remark. It is about the equivalent of saying, I'm willing to take an oath on it. Does God pervert justice or does God pervert righteousness? Job responds with a sounding affirmation, no, no, a thousand times no. Job makes it clear that he never considered that God perverted his justice or his righteousness by sending affliction. In verse 2, Job asks the all-important question, How can a man be just or right before God? In answering Bildad, Job is really saying, The way you talk to me, Bildad, it would be impossible for any man to be just before God. You would have us believe that a man cannot be just unless he is completely without sin. If a man has to be sinless to stand before God, that disqualifies us all. Now that raises the question for us. How can a man be just before God? Is it possible for us to be just and righteous before God, though we have sin dwelling within us? Bill, that problem is the same problem that many people have. We consider righteousness to be something inherent. That is, we see it as a natural characteristic or quality. Now it is true, of course, that God is inherently righteous. On the other hand, as sons of disobedient Adams, we are inherently unrighteous. Righteousness is not one of our natural characteristics or qualities. The Prophet Isaiah makes this clear when he says, we are all as an unclean thing. All our righteousnesses are but filthy rags. Isaiah 64 and verse 6. Or as the Apostle Paul says in Romans, there is none righteous, no not one. So then if we are talking about inherent righteousness, no man is just before God. When it comes to inherent righteousness, we have to ask with Job, how can a man be just before God? In other words, when it comes to righteousness within us, how is it possible to solve the problem of evil? As a pastor, when I ask people what they will say when they stand before God, And he asks them why he should let them into his heaven. The most frequent answer is something like this. They respond by saying, well I've done the best I can. Or, I have tried to live by the golden rule. I joined the church when I was a teenager and I've been pretty faithful in attending ever since. I've lived a good life. Now all those answers, and many others like them, have to do with inherent righteousness. Deep down inside there is a hope that somewhere God will find enough good within us to admit us into his heaven. That, however, is not the answer to the problem of evil. Inherent righteousness, as I've already said, is not one of our natural characteristics or qualities. Did you ever stop to consider how good a person would have to be to get into heaven? Jesus made it clear that we would have to be 100% righteous. I remember talking to a Jewish lady some years ago, and she told me that she tried to keep the Ten Commandments. I looked at her and asked her, have you kept the Ten Commandments? And she shuffled from one foot to the other and said, well, no, I haven't. Though she was trusting in inherent righteousness, she realized that she was not 100% perfect. How then can a man be just before God? The first obstacle we have then in solving the problem of evil is that we have a wrong concept of ourselves. We have a wrong concept of ourselves. We look at ourselves as inherently righteous. A second obstacle toward solving the problem of evil is that we have a wrong concept of God. Not only is the difference between God and man a moral difference, there is a difference in our nature. In Job chapter 9 and verse 32, Job says, He, God, is not a man as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment. Now, if we were to die tonight, and we were brought into God's courtroom, charged with unrighteousness, charged with having broken God's holy law, what defense could we offer? How could we argue our case? How could we plead? None of us, I'm sorry most of us, would have problems in the courts of men. We do not understand the legal terms or the procedures. We do not understand the intent or the subtlety of the question. I do not mean to imply of course that God's court is to be compared with the courts of men. He is not out to trick us into making unguarded statements or looking for loopholes in the law. The difference is that He already knows the facts. More than that, He knows the intent, He knows the motives of our hearts. The fact that He is God and we are men places us at a distinct disadvantage. We are no match for him, no matter how brilliant, no matter how clever we might consider ourselves to be. All the problems we have concerning God stem from an inadequate concept of God. When trouble or adversity comes, we feel free to criticize God. We imply that if we were in control, we wouldn't let bad things happen to good people. We express anger that God really doesn't know what he's doing. We express our hatred in that we say God doesn't have our interest at heart, that he doesn't know what is good. Actually, what we're trying to do is to place God in a class equal or inferior to ourselves. Of course that in itself shows how unrighteous we are. That shows that evil is within us. But such is the nature of evil. It not only gives us an inflated concept of ourselves, it gives us a deflated concept of God. In Isaiah chapter 46 and verse 5, God asks To whom will you liken me and make me equal? To whom will you compare me that we may be alike? In that entire section of Isaiah from chapters 40 through 48, God shows that He cannot be compared with anything or anyone. He is above all, He is beyond all that He has created. The nature of evil is such that we try to make him our equal. In Psalm 50, Asap looks at the same problem from a different perspective. Psalm 50, verse 16. He says, unto the wicked God says, verse 17, you hate instruction and cast my words behind you. When you saw a thief, you consented with him. and have been a partaker with adulterers. You gave your mouth to evil, and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother's son. These things you have done, and I kept silent." Now God is showing here what the wicked have done. They've done all these things. But then notice how he continues in verse 21. He says, you thought that I was altogether like you. One commentator says, all caricatures of God which ignore his intense hatred of sin reveal more about man than about God. Because we are evil, we see God like ourselves. And when we see God like ourselves, we do not hesitate to transgress his law. If God is like us, we do not need to take his word too seriously. When we see God like ourselves, we can sin without any consideration of the consequences. As I said a moment ago, when God is no bigger than we are, We feel free to criticize him, we feel free to murmur at his providences. As another commentator says, what a commentary on man's unbelief it is when he falls into thinking of God as if he were a poor man who is unable to deliver his friends from trouble, however much he would like to do so. The Apostle Paul brings things back into perspective by asking the question in Romans chapter 9 and verse 20, O man, who are you to reply against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why did you make me this way? The problem of evil has given us an inflated concept of ourselves and a deflated concept of God. before evil can be solved. We must understand that God is not man as we are. Job had a high and lofty concept of God. In the early part of chapter nine he speaks about God removing mountains, shaking the earth, commanding the sun, stretching out the heavens, treading upon the waves of the sea, and in making the heavenly constellation." He sums it up in verse 10 by saying, "...you do things past finding out, yea, marvellous things without number." When we see God in His greatness and majesty, we realize how insignificant we are in comparison. In Psalm 8, David gazed at the starry heavens and declared, What is man that thou art mindful of him? David too was overwhelmed with the greatness and the majesty of God and the comparative insignificance of man. The difference is that David wondered how a being so great could notice a being so small. Job's question is how a being so small can have dealings with a being so great. Occasionally we quote that verse from Isaiah 55 which says, My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. It is true that God's thoughts and ways are different because he is greater. There is another reason Have you noticed the preceding verse? Isaiah 55 verses 7 through 9. It says, Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. God's ways and thoughts are greater because of who God is and because of who man is. God's ways and thoughts are greater because we are evil and unrighteous and God is holy and righteous. Evil has perverted our thinking. Because we are wicked, because we are unrighteous, we think we can call God into our courtroom and condemn him for the way he treats us. It is the wicked man who needs to forsake his way, and the unrighteous man who needs to forsake his thought. Not God. Well then, how can a man be just with God? How can the problem of evil be solved? In our previous study, we saw that evil is too big for us to handle. We saw that we cannot control it because it controls us. In our midweek study last week, our guest speaker commented about the political candidates competing for nomination for the most powerful position in the world at the present time. And he pointed out that each candidate has his solution for world peace. Each one is saying that he would sit down and talk and negotiate with the Russians and the Cubans and so on. But the ironic thing is that those same candidates who claim to have answers to world peace almost come to blows while they discuss these things. And they are men who belong to the same country, indeed to the same political party. And they can't agree, they can't negotiate between themselves. Now I do not mean to speak disparagingly of peace efforts. I cite that as an example of man's inability to cope with evil. Not only is evil too big to handle, God is too big to approach. We have no inherent righteousness. We have neither the ability nor the right to come before God. What then are we to do? How can a man be just with God? Well, the first step towards the solution, as I emphasized in our last study, is to acknowledge just how helpless and unworthy we are to come before God. We must come to the place where we realize that in us dwells no good thing, that we do not possess inherent righteousness. And we have no alternative but to cry out, God be merciful to me a sinner. We must be prepared to forsake our ways and our unrighteous thoughts and return to the Lord who will have mercy and who will abundantly pardon. There are many people who say, my God is a God of love, he would never send anyone to hell. That is probably true. Their God wouldn't send anyone to hell. The problem is that their God is not the God who has made all things. People with that notion, you see, have an inflated view of themselves and a deflated view of God. They do not understand the nature nor the magnitude of the problem of evil. They think that God can be approached on their terms and that God will bend to their rules. When we stand before God and He asks us why He should let us into His heaven, it will be too late to discover that it is not by works of righteousness which we have done. It will be too late to discover then that it is according to His mercy, He says, When you stand before God and he asks you why he should admit you into his heaven, what are you going to answer? I must leave you with that question. I am aware that I have emphasized the problem. I have barely touched on the solution in this message. But if the Spirit of God has made you aware of the problem, and you do not know the mercy of God, I urge you with all my heart, ask Him today to be merciful to you a sinner. Now is the day of salvation. Now is the accepted time. And Lord willing, we will pursue the subject next week.