Many people in the body of Christ don’t spend a lot of time in abstract thought or theological musings; we learn in part from theological teaching we’ve received coupled with our own experiences. But nevertheless, our ideas about God — how we see God, how we perceive him — are of tremendous importance regarding our relationship with God. One such example of a relationship-impacting belief is our beliefs about God’s role in evil.

What Pastor Joe discovered in examining some widely held notions about God and evil is that they were “proof texted,” meaning that an idea was proposed, and then a scripture was slapped next to it to prove the idea was true. By finding one isolated text, one can make an erroneous idea look biblical and right. Instead, one should compare an idea with the whole counsel of God from the Word, which sometimes paints a different picture. 

Here Pastor Joe briefly examines three of five questions we must ask when considering evil:

1) How does God exercise His sovereignty? Is everything that happens an expression of God’s will? Do men really have freedom, or is God controlling us?

2) Is spiritual warfare real and is it necessary?

3) How do we explain the existence of evil? Can God limit his control in the universe?

Part two continues in next week’s episode with two more questions: 4) Can God change his mind? and 5) Can God Suffer?

These episodes are pulled from Pastor Joe McIntyre’s introductory sermon in the series, “Don’t Blame God.”  Each sermon in the series covers one of these five questions at length.

Listen to the episode here.

Mentioned in this Episode

Terence Fretheim

Additional Resources

Don’t Blame God – Full MP3 series

Full Transcript

All right. Now, welcome, by the way. I want to just kind of say a few introductory remarks before we look at the first outline tonight, but our view of the Lord, how we see God, how we perceive him, is of tremendous importance regarding our relationship with God. Now, most of us if I were to poll you, many of you would say that you never read theology. And for good reason. It’s a it’s a science of its own with technical terms of language that if you’re not familiar with can be overwhelming. Some of its exceedingly boring, and some theologians are extremely dry. But reality is all of us are theologians, because we all think about God. And we’re all either blessed by the theology that is filtered down to us, or we’re hindered by the theology that’s filtered down to us through the ministry. Because people in the ministry do read theology, they are influenced by it. And the average believer picks up all kinds of ideas through the ministry, or through his own or her own reading, that puts ideas in our minds that either are accurate biblical concepts, which draw us to God, or they’re traditional concepts that don’t necessarily make us love God. 

The test of good theology is it makes me want to serve God more. It makes me want to love God more. It makes me want to obey God more. It makes me want to be like God, more, you see. And for many years, I had been convinced that there was a lot of poor theology that hindered God’s desires for his people. Particularly if you teach about divine healing, you come up against all kinds of objections, that ultimately, after a number of years of studying this, I came to the conclusion, they were really rooted in the view of God held by the objector. And I discovered that God had adjusted my view of him, so that I didn’t have the objections they had, because I didn’t have the assumptions about God that they had. And many of you have experienced the same thing as you interact with other people. When they talk about God doing all these evil things, you cringe. Because you’ve come to know God not as the one who’s causing the evil, but the one that’s trying to empower his people to overcome the evil. 

But there are a lot of ideas that we have. And as I have been sharing on some of these ideas, and talking with various members of the body, and other people that I know about these issues, we discover that people who don’t necessarily think through a lot of these ideas, they’re not, many people in the body of Christ don’t spend a lot of time in abstract thought or theological musings. But nevertheless, ideas about God govern the way they walk with God and the way they talk about God. And so, in recent years, a number of theologians have challenged a lot of traditional ideas about God, and have presented a view of God that they claim is more biblical than the traditional view. 

Now, the question isn’t, do I like it better? Does it fit my needs better? Is it a God, which I think God is as he ought to be? The question is, is it biblical? You see, I mean, some have embraced a God of their own imagination, who just doesn’t care about sin. “I love you. Just sin away.” You know, there are some people that feel that way. But other people have this cold, austere judge who’s ever looking to find the sin in your life so he can judge you and have his wrath. I mean, he’s got this pent up wrath he’s just looking to get expression for. People view God that way. 

So our question is not, “let’s make up a god we like.” I mean, you know, we’re not here to make up a god we like. What we are here for, is to examine some popular ideas about God and see if they’re really biblical. Because if they’re not biblical, we want to get rid of them, particularly if they hinder our ability to trust God and to love God. I was reading a theologian who did a book on the distinctive ideas of the Old Testament. And he made a statement in passing that was quite profound to think about. He said, “The Bible talks about God loving us, but it doesn’t talk a lot about us loving God.” And he said, “There’s a reason for that. And that is our love for God is expressed in faith and trust.” That’s a profound thought. That the way we show God we love Him is trusting him and believing him. That’s how we express our love to God. Now we do feel warm emotions. But how many know there’s a lot of wonderful, charismatic people who feel real warm emotions in church, but don’t obey God? Now, do they love God? Well, they feel an emotion of love. But you see, if I love you, and you tell me something is true, I’ll believe you, and and I’ll put that into my life as fact. 

So love for God is demonstrated in believing and trusting what he says about himself and about what he will do. But some people come up against a huge block in the area of trusting God, because, I believe of some wrong concepts of God, that the church is taught, that don’t really find a basis in Scripture, and therefore need to be examined and weighed, because if they’re wrong, we want to get them out of our life. All right? 

So tonight, what I want to do is just give you an overview of some of the questions that we want to look at this weekend. And I know you’ve driven and you’ve had most of you worked today, and it’s been a long day. And so we’re not going to get into a lot of challenging stuff tonight. I just want to give you an overview of what we’ll be looking at. But I expect you to engage your brain tomorrow. If it’s a challenge tonight, to engage your brain, that’s okay. But tomorrow, I expect you to get a good night’s sleep, wake up, have a nice breakfast, be all relaxed, and come and ready to think seriously about what you believe about God. Because what you believe and think about God is determining your walk with God. So we want it to be right, don’t we? 

Alright, I’m going to start with our outline now. First, we have a quote, “The scriptures contain such vast and varied material, that it is not difficult to surround an idea with biblical quotations. The crucial question is whether the idea is faithful to the overall Bible portrait of God. The picture that emerges from the full range of biblical evidence.”

What I discovered in examining some widely held notions about God, is that they were proof texted. Do you understand what that means? That means that an idea was proposed, and then a scripture was slapped next to it to prove the idea was true. All right? But you see, the difficulty with that is you could take an idea that’s not biblical and find one isolated text, put it by it, and it could look like it’s right. That’s how the Jehovah’s Witnesses have constructed their entire doctrine. They proof text their doctrine. One of the best ways to baffle a Jehovah’s Witness is to get him to read the verse before the verse he wants to read, and the verse after the verse he wants to read. And almost always, you’ll destroy his argument, because he’s pulling a text out of context and attaching it to an idea he wants to convince you of. 

But the sad truth is, evangelical theologians have done the same thing with some ideas. They proof texted them, rather than taking the whole counsel of God from the word that paints a different picture. And they promoted certain ideas about God, that are part of the picture of God. But they’ve refused to balance them with the rest of God’s revelation about himself, and therefore they’ve come up with a distorted view of God, that doesn’t help us to walk with him, at least in my opinion. How we view and understand God determines, to a large extent our ability to trust in and walk with God. Many in the body of Christ find it difficult to trust God because they perceive him through the eyes of men’s traditions, and their own negative experiences in life, and therefore don’t trust the God of the Bible. Rather, they distrust the God of their own imagination. 

I’ll give you a real relevant example of that. How many have heard the report that Jane Fonda has received Jesus as her Savior? Okay, that’s been in the news and in a lot of Christian media. Well, how many know that they approached Ted Turner about that issue? And his response was, “When I was young, I prayed to God when my sister got sick, and she died. I don’t have anything to do with that Christian stuff.” Now, where did he form his theology? Out of experience. He made certain assumptions about God which were unfulfilled. He was disappointed in his experience, he drew certain conclusions about God from that experience, therefore rejecting the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Now, the sad thing is, a lot of Christians are somewhere struggling with the same issues, even though in their heart they believe Jesus is Lord. In their mind, they wonder about the father’s goodness. And they wonder why he allows many things to happen. So we’ll be examining some of those things. This is a quote from Terence Fretheim, “We have learned over the years that idolatry’s do not need the plastic form to qualify as such. One can move directly to mental images which construct a false  image of God, and have the power of wreaking havoc in people’s faith and life. Metaphors matter.”

Now, you see, what these quotes are telling us is that certain scriptures can point to a certain aspect of God, and give us an impression about God and certain teachings can give us certain impressions about God. And we can actually, with a little biblical basis, and a lot of experiential processing, come up with an image of God, that is really an idol because it’s not true. And that idol image can control our life in the Christian walk. And so we want to make sure we don’t have an idolatrous, and not in the sense of the sinful worship of idols, we’re not talking here about, you know, trying to put a big guilt trip on anybody. What we’re talking about here is we want the image of God that’s in our heart, I mean, let me put this differently, the image of God in your heart, is probably right. It’s the one in your head you’re having trouble with. What we want to do is get them into agreement with the Bible. Yeah.

The foundational issue, our view of who God is, affects our daily walk our prayer life, and how much we’re able to please God by living by faith. It’s no light thing. In our conference this year, we’re examining some cherished but possibly erroneous notions that many hold about the God of the Bible. In order to examine these in a practical and helpful way, we have to ask ourselves some questions about how God runs the universe. “What kind of questions,” you ask. Well, we will attempt to deal with only five. 

Now, let me say something about this. This is not, my goal is not to dazzle you with a bunch of theological and intellectual concepts. My goal is to communicate simple practical things to you that actually are theologically profound. But Jesus could communicate all those things very simply. And so the essence of the wisdom of God is it’s accessible to children. All right? But now what we have to do, because we live in a society and a culture that deifies reasoning, we have to realize that we’ve had much reasoning about God put into us. And sometimes we have to unwind all of that to get back to the simple thing our heart was telling us all along about what God is like. And that’s kind of what we’re going to be doing this weekend is examining widely held notions, and seeing if there is not perhaps a different view presented by the scriptures, then those notions.

The first question that we’re going to attempt to deal with, and let me just say, each one of these questions, you could find volumes and volumes of theological literature on over a two thousand year period. So I don’t like to take on any big projects, but we’re just going to cover two thousand years of theology this weekend, okay? No big deal. Now, what I’m hoping to do is stimulate in you a desire to examine some assumptions you may have about God, and see if they’re accurate, because if they’re not, this weekend could be a turning point in your walk with God. That’s what I’m believing for. That this weekend, you will not leave with the same relationship with God that you had when you came. Now I know many of you have good relationships and I’m sorry certainly not saying that you don’t. But how many think that we can ever increase in our growth in our knowledge of God? And the more we know him, you know, we hear frequently quoted, they that know God will be mighty and do great exploits. They that know their God. Well, it’s time for us to really know our God. And I believe that the more accurately we know him, the more deeply we love him, and the more committed we are to his purposes. So this is a very practical kind of theological exercise. 

All right, now, the first question I have down there is how this god exercise His sovereignty? Is everything that happens an expression of God’s will? Many, in the history of theology, have postulated the idea that nothing happens, but that which God wills. It’s widely held idea. Nothing can happen, except what God has willed. It’s absolute control over every atom of the universe. Even your choices, which you think you freely choose, were predestined by God to be the way they are. Well, as we examine some of this, I know many of you will laugh at some of these notions, not realizing that I could name lists of popular speakers who embrace these ideas. And these are the fundamental ideas through which they filter everything they know about God. So you laugh, but I think as we go through this, you’ll see that many of us have unknowingly bought in to some of their ideas. 

Alright, can God be sovereign, here’s the question, and allow things to happen that are not His will? Interesting thought. Are we saying God’s not sovereign if things happen that aren’t his will? Or are we saying that the concept of sovereignty that the Bible reveals might not be the one embraced by popular theology? And I think it would be good if you would do a concordance study on your computer, for all the times the Bible mentions God’s sovereignty. And you’ll make this discovery. It never mentions God’s sovereignty, unless you read the NIV. Which translates the word for Lord, Sovereign Lord. But it doesn’t represent anything in the Hebrew that means sovereign. It’s just a way of expressing God’s greatness. 

So the idea of God’s sovereignty, I believe the Bible teaches God’s sovereignty. But how does he exercise that sovereignty? For example, when you yelled at your wife the other day, was that an expression of His sovereignty? You’d like it to have been, then you wouldn’t be responsible for it. But if He’s sovereign, every pastor says, “Why doesn’t he sovereignly make everybody tithe?” But you see, you know, in your own experience, that you choose many things that you know, are contrary to God’s revealed will. And he didn’t make you not do them. So is he sovereignly controlling you? Some would say he is even in your bad decisions. Others would say, “Well, no, obviously I make choices, and freely choose things and do things.” Alright?

Do men really have freedom? Or is God controlling us? Or the popular ideas about the sovereignty of God from the Bible? That’s an intriguing question, isn’t it? Because many, as I say, assume things before they even read the Bible. And I believe before the weekend is over, you’re going to see that assumptions about God’s sovereignty, have caused many today to read into the text, what isn’t in the text. But they’re seeing it in the text because of an assumption they had before they read the text. I’ll give you an example. Which we’ll look at a little further later. But how many are familiar with the story of Paul thorn? Well, most of you realize that it says, “There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me.” Now, traditional theology says, “God gave Paul a thorn in the flesh.” Why? Well, because God is sovereign. Okay? Now the text says it was a messenger of Satan. Tradition says it was God. Alright? Now, if I assume God controls everything, including the devil, then God let the devil attack Paul for His purpose. 

If I assume the devil is doing what the devil wants to do, and I’m in a war with him, and God has given me weapons of warfare with which to stand against the devil. And it’s my responsibility to resist the devil, I come up with a whole different reading of that passage. A messenger of Satan becomes a messenger of Satan. Instead of a messenger of God allowed for God’s divine purpose. Because the word messenger is the word for Angel. Now, we either have to believe God is sovereign and controlling all Satan’s angels. Well, as we go through the material this weekend, you’re going to have to decide which camp you’re going to come down in. Because if God is controlling everything they do, and he, if he’s controlling all the angels, and he’s controlling you, and if he’s controlling you, he’s responsible for everything you do, too. Otherwise, that concept of sovereignty doesn’t work. So we’ll have to look at the question, are the popular ideas about God’s sovereignty from God or from man. All right from the Bible, alright?

Secondly, we’re gonna look at, is spiritual warfare real, and is it necessary? You will run into people who are really angry about spiritual warfare teaching, because they believe that the devil is only doing what God’s allowing him to do? We don’t need to resist the devil in any sense, because we’re actually trying to manipulate God or our universe, if we try to use faith or prayer to change situations in life, because after all, God is sovereign. So spiritual warfare… Now really, many Christians today are not at that extreme. But a lot are in a gray area in the middle, where they don’t know why God allowed the devil to do what he did and they don’t know if they should resist Him or accept it for spiritual growth. Now, especially when you start ministering in divine healing, “Well, what if God allowed this for a purpose?” You see? “Well, God can heal me when he wants to. He’s sovereign.” See? Does that line up with the scriptures? The people who Jesus healed in the New Testament were they healed because God was sovereign, or were they healed because they came in faith and received from the anointing that was on Messiah? If you examine the Gospels, the answer to that’s really clear. 

If God is sovereign in the way, some have been taught, isn’t Satan, the unwilling servant of God, and God’s purpose? Should we ignore the devil, trusting that he can only do what God allows him to do? Have these concepts you’ve heard anywhere? Okay? Do some concepts of God’s sovereignty lead to passivity and acceptance of evil as though it were God’s will? Well, I’m going to suggest, of course, that there are concepts of God’s sovereignty that do that. 

The third thing that we’re going to look at is how do we explain the existence of evil? Now, as we look at that question, we’re going to discover that’s only a question in western civilization. Why? Well, because in every other culture of the world, they believe in the reality of Satanic and demonic forces, and their worldview is a warfare worldview. What they want to do is enlist God’s help to help them overcome evil. Only in western post enlightenment, rationalism, affecting the church, do we have to defend God’s goodness, intellectually, because we can’t explain it biblically. 

Now, what I mean by that is that biblically, the Bible says, Cast out the devil. Cast out demons. Resist the devil. But theologians today who who debate non Christian philosophers, when the non Christian philosophers say, “Well, if God is omnipotent, having all power, and God is omniscient and knows all things, and God is all good, and is entirely good in everything, “Why doesn’t he stop the evil? Looks to me like he’s responsible for the evil.” Well, Christian philosophers and debaters have no good argument to answer that objection. If God is good, and God is powerful, why doesn’t he stop the evil? Well, because in his mysterious purposes, evil is working good. For God, if there hadn’t been a fall in the angelic realm in the human round, he wouldn’t have known what to do to mature people. Good thing there was a fall. What would Adam and Eve have done without the devil? Well, you see, there are problems with that view. There are big problems with that view. And some say, and there’s a teaching that’s going around in some of the prophetic circles, that the devil is not a fallen angel. The devil was created evil for God’s purpose. Now, how many have ever heard that? There’s a book that’s come out by a guy that is proposing that. Well, if that’s true, poor God is incomplete in his own divine nature. And he needs evil to accomplish his purposes. So he really isn’t all that great a god then. See, there are implications to all these ideas. 

The existence of evil? How many of you have ever tried to tell somebody about the goodness of God? And they said, Well, yeah, I’ve got so good, how can we let Uncle Fred died? What’s the objection? Why does evil exist? And our answer to that question, see? To me, that question is like “sick ’em” to a bulldog. Because I can preach the whole gospel on that question. Why did God let Uncle Fred die? Well, let me tell you a story. God created a perfect world, to enjoy a wonderful relationship with his creatures. But the first creatures were deceived and rebelled, and evil entered the world. But God sent His Son to deliver us from that evil, and took full responsibility for all that evil. Now, the world’s still got evil in it, but there’ll come a time when evil will be no more. And because God loves us, he’s brought his son to be the answer to that, for this life and the next life. God has addressed the question of evil. Well, why is God letting evil exist? Well, God gave authority to man, and he lets man make choices for which man is responsible. And there are also other beings in the spirit realm, who are making decisions and carrying out plans that are not the will of God as well. The Bible actually talks about God at war. Well, if God is sovereignly controlling the devil, it’s not much of a battle is it’s more like, you know, pawns in a chess game. I’m getting ahead of myself. Alright. 

Here’s a question, can God limit his control of the universe? Well, let me just give you a little thought, just initially. If you can make a choice, contrary to the known will of God, and carry it out, then God didn’t control you and stop you, did he? So apparently, for you to have any freedom, God had to limit his control. Right? Now, of course, you bring that up a notch, and you begin to look at a whole world created for beings to carry out their own choices freely. And you start to think about the fact that, you know… I trust that my wife loves me. But you know, if I found out that she was actually like data on Star Trek, what’s the what do you call, an android that had been programmed to love me? How much meaning would be in that? See, you know, she might be really nice. But you know, if she was loving me, because she was programmed to, it would take all the reality out of the relationship. And if you were to love God, because you were programmed to, he would take all the meaning out of the relationship. 

And you know what God is about, don’t you relationship. The Bible says God is Agape, self giving love. Now, would a God whose very essence is self giving love, create beings who are programmed to either accept him or reject him, and had no real choice of their own? Or would it be more consistent with that view of God, that he would create beings who had the awesome freedom to lovingly enter into relationship with him, but in order to give them that freedom, they had to be free to reject that love too. Now, that’s risky. But our question is, is God that kind of a risky God? Does God take risks? Or is everything absolutely solid, there are no surprises to God, because He predestined everything that ever happened? A large part of the church believes that. Is it true? I don’t think so. And I don’t think you will after this weekend if you ever did. But maybe I’m wrong.