Latest / Harvest After Sunday / Evil & Hell: Digging Deeper
Transcript
- Harvest Media: After Sunday podcast. I'm Natalie and I'm your host and I'm here with Stefan Wilson pastor of preaching and teaching and today we get to dig deeper into Sunday's sermon. We were in Matthew 13 this week Matthew 13 24 through 43 looking at more parables and during the sermon I was thinking about two things one was what you told us last week that those who want to understand the kingdom will and then as we moved through these parables and unpacked them. was thinking, so if we're to understand the kingdom, we must renew our mind with truth. I thought of Romans 12 that says, you know, don't copy the patterns of this world, don't conform to the behaviors of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And we have the truth of God's word to renew our mind. And I think that that totally informed how we approach these passages of scripture these parables to try and have understanding of Jesus's teachings of the kingdom of God and it's got to be different than how the world would approach it and we see that ⁓ There are complex topics here ⁓ The problem of evil we as you mentioned spent a whole podcast episode talking about that several weeks ago It comes up again here in this parable that evil does exist and it leaves us grounded grappling with questions. And I think the way the world would approach it, the pattern of thinking of the world is, well, this confuses me or this is uncomfortable or this seems unfair or unjust. So it's going to then inform my line of questioning about God and his character. And I thought as believers, we have to transform our mind with the truth. So we need to look to the truth of God's and anchor ourselves in the truth of God's character this King of this kingdom that we want to understand and that totally transforms our questions as we grapple with these ideas of evil yeah and it is very obvious as you are reading scripture that the things that Jesus teaches in the parables are not ⁓ only found in the parables like they are throughout scripture He is simply putting those truths that you find elsewhere in scripture in parable form but if you go to the Psalms or you go to anywhere else in Old Testament or you go to the writings of Paul or John like they are reinforcing those same truths and I say a lot when I'm preaching we want scripture to interpret scripture and as scripture informs how we're reading scripture then we are having our minds renewed as we submit to it and we let the truth of God's Word transform us. What will end up happening if we try to, if we're conforming to the patterns of the world, I think it's great that you reference Romans 12 verse 2 because if we conform to the patterns of the world then what we're gonna do is the same thing that the world will do with the parables and say what does this mean for me? What is the, what's the way that I'm going to read this to help me to be a better person. It's, it's, or to live a better life or whatever self-focused approach to the scriptures we would take. Instead, if I'm letting the rest of scripture inform how I'm reading the parables, it stops being, what does this parable say about me and my life? And it's instead, what is this parables further unpacking about the truth of God? And now that I understand that truth about God, what does that mean for me in relation to his kingdom? It's still, it's not wrong to read the parables and ask, so how does this affect my life? I mean, it will. invariably have an impact on how I live if I embrace the truth of the kingdom of God. But it's the starting point that you're really getting at is what you're saying is we need to start from the place of saying this is telling me about God first and my place in his kingdom, not this is telling me about me and I get to create a vision of God that fits what I am reading this parable to mean. Exactly, and I thought you handled it beautifully in the first point that though evil exists we can know it is not from God because God is the fullness of all that is good and evil is the antithesis of that so it cannot be from God God is not responsible for evil and we see in the parable that the enemy is responsible for emails evil so I want to maybe the enemy is responsible for email that was a Freudian slip for something. I'm kind of for sure. But yeah, the enemy is responsible for evil. And I wondered what you could tell us about the enemy. So we see the farmer is sowing his fields and the enemy comes along and sows in weeds among what the farmer has planted, thus working against him, opposing thwarting the work of the farmer. ⁓ Who is the enemy? Is there any indication in the language here that this is pointing to like Satan you know the one who comes to kill steal and destroy is an enemy meant to represent anything that is opposing the kingdom of God Yeah, so in the parable, when Jesus interprets it for the disciples, he says that the enemy is the devil. The devil ⁓ is one term in Greek that is used to refer to a particular being. ⁓ So in the Old Testament, he's referred to as Satan. ⁓ And that's a transliteration of a Hebrew word. So transliteration is just we just take the sounds and we say it in an English way. The Hebrew word is satan, is an accuser, somebody who, somebody who accuses someone of wrongdoing or accuses someone of being out of line with something. And, and that being is a person. ⁓ and it's not a mentality, it's not a ⁓ trait that is ascribed to all humanity. The Satan in the Old Testament is a person, he's an agent. We see him acting and referenced in the third person and we even see him dialoguing with God in the beginning chapters of Job. He is the serpent who comes to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 to to deceive them against against God's Word, and in that he is accusing God of being misleading, of withholding good from the people. in Job, he is accusing God of showing favoritism to Job, and he's accusing Job of only being faithful to God because God's been so good to him. If you take everything away that he has, he'll curse you, right? Those are all evidences of that accusation of... of what Satan does. Now, Satan as a person had an origin, right? As we read in Ezekiel and Isaiah, there are two passages that seem to be ⁓ glancing toward an original fall in the heavenly realm. That then is explicitly stated in Revelation 13. that in the spiritual realm, God created angels who were his messengers and ministers. They carry out his will and you have a third of the heavenly host who rebel against God led by an angelic being who wanted to elevate himself to the level of God. They are cast out of heaven because of their rebellion. Now this just maps right on to the rebellion of people who are made to be representatives of God and have a task to glorify God, yet they rebel and they are cast out. So. Evil in the most general sense didn't begin with the sin of Adam and Eve. It began with the rebellion of Satan and the heavenly hosts that rebelled against God. And if angels are to be messengers and ministers of God, then a fallen angel, a rebellious angel is going to be the opposite of those rather than being a messenger of the truth of God. He's going to be a twister of the truth of God and a messenger of lies rather than being minister to the people of God, he's going to harass the people of God and attack the people of God. And that's exactly what we see in Genesis 3. Twisting of God's Word, attacking of the people of God in order to get them to rebel against God. So then in the parable of the weeds, when Jesus interprets it, he says that the good seed that the Son of Man sowed, ⁓ that those are the sons of the kingdom. Those are the children of God who have embraced the kingdom of God and have entered into relationship with him by faith in Jesus. and the weeds that were sown by the enemy by the devil are the sons of the devil or sons of the enemy so they are the ones who have embraced the lives of the enemy and are opposed to the kingdom of god So I think in that parable you have, yes, you have an agent, the devil who is the enemy. That's why I referenced Genesis three in the sermon to say like, this should call to memory. The fact that, Adam and Eve in the garden rebelled against God's good design because they were tempted by Satan to question God's word, question God's good design, and go do their own thing. And in both of those rebellions in the angelic rebellion and the human rebellion in both of them is the elevation of self and the diminishment of God's role as supreme in authority over all of creation. So the the root then of evil is to oppose the goodness of God to see his way as not good and instead to see my own way as good and right. That's kind of the the foundational reality of all that we would call evil. And it certainly does exist in our world, but we can know that it's not that God is responsible for it. And we kind of I think we grappled with this at length in our other podcast episode, understanding God's sovereignty, yet the reality that evil does exist, it's good to kind of pull back to the surface, the question of, but like all this happened under God's watch. And if all of this happened under God's watch and he was sovereign and he is in, and he is supreme in authority and he knows all things before the foundations of the world. Like he, he had complete knowledge of all that would take place in human history before he ever even created the world. does that not make him complicit in the evil that was done? I I many books have been written on this but I think that it should be satisfactory to say that because of God's wisdom he though knowing it would happen is still not responsible for it happening, but for his good purposes, chose to create the world. knowing the rebellion of Adam and Eve would take place knowing that many would live in rebellion because the glory that would be his Would otherwise never be known and would never be experienced by those to whom he shows grace so when we look at when we look at the fall of humanity and we look at the existence of evil in the world and we look at the sovereignty of god as creator and his foreknowledge I don't think it's helpful and I honestly don't think it's logically valid to say, then the Bible must not be true. Because I can't understand why God would do that. I think that the better response is to say, I no doubt can't understand why God would do that, because I'm not God. ⁓ But he is. And I have seen his goodness in my life. and I have seen his character in scripture and so I can know for certain that whatever his reason was for for ordaining all of human history though not being responsible for the evil that takes place in it that there is a good outcome that otherwise would not have been and it will lead to a glory that otherwise would not have been acknowledged. And so I will trust in God's sovereignty, though I don't understand it. And I will be grateful for the fact that though I don't deserve it, he showed me grace. And you can hear you working out exactly in what you just stated, what we talked about at the beginning. You you're deciding you're making a deliberate choice in your mind based on the truth about God and his purpose, you know, to work for his own glory to then believe to then be at ease with your own lack of knowledge and complete understanding. mean, we will eventually come to those places where we will say, but I don't I still don't understand. Or I'm still uncomfortable and what the renewing of our mind with the truth does is allow us to say But because of the truth, I will make a deliberate choice to trust God anyway, too, you know ⁓ And I think that can be helpful for people to reflect even as we move through this conversation these passages and people have these questions come up and we can flesh out our questions and have Discussions, but there will be a point every time where we get to a certain place And we don't we can't have more understanding or more knowledge or something that makes us feel completely Okay with her emotion or the uncertainty ⁓ Because as you said we are not God and so we have to decide are we serving God and acknowledging him as king of this kingdom or are we trying over and over to place ourself on that throne right and and just to that point The book of Job is part of the wisdom literature in scripture. It is meant to teach us what it looks like to live in the fear of the Lord. So to be devoted to God is to live in the fear of the Lord. And that is a life of wisdom, that the beginning of wisdom and knowledge is the fear of the Lord. So if I am to truly live in what is right and wise, I will be devoted to God. And lot of people think that Job is a book about how to suffer well, right? Whenever somebody's suffering, they, where do we point them? We point them to Job chapters one and two, because in chapters one and two, we find that Job is suffering and his response is to not charge God with being wrong for allowing these things to happen in his life. But we forget that Job is 42 chapters long and chapters three through at 34 are a great example of how not to suffer well. because in those chapters what we find is that Job and his three friends are speculating about God and speculating about Job. So his three friends are all speculating. How did you mess up to bring this on yourself? And Job is speculating, how did God screw up to make all this happen? And he goes so far as to say, I will stand before him and demand an answer and I will be justified because I don't deserve of this and the response then is that God confronts them and and says who is this who who ⁓ darkens counsel without knowledge who is this that brings confusion because you don't understand what's really going on And then for a few chapters, God confronts Joe with here are all the things that I know that you weren't there for that you have no knowledge of. And Job's response is not no, God, this isn't fair. Job's response is I spoke and I shouldn't have. I'm going to cover my mouth and speak no more. And the reason why that is wisdom for us is because the book of Job is teaching us. We must not speculate about God when we are confronted with things that we don't understand, specifically suffering that doesn't seem to make sense. Rather than speculating, we need to just let God say what is true and believe him. And the only way that we can do that is by letting his word tell us. what he says, what we need to believe is true, and covering our mouths at the moment that we want to then speculate about how that might not be right. And that principle becomes really important in the waiting, which we touched on on Sunday, that though we can't see it, God has actually been working all along and the kingdom grows slowly. Yeah. And I thought it is hard to wait and it is hard to wait when we don't understand when there is suffering, when there's confusion. ⁓ God does not expect us to do it blindly. Scripture over and over says persevere Endure do not grow weary of doing good. I mean there is an obvious Recognition that it will be difficult for us to wait when we don't see when we don't understand When there is suffering when we're living amongst evil ⁓ So I appreciate the honesty in Scripture like he does not like it just wait and it will be easy Just you know hang in there and I appreciate that and I thought of last week's parable to just the different seeds and growing up amongst different soil. And sometimes the quick growth looks positive, but then it withers away. And what ended up being the true believer was the plant whose roots were growing, and you couldn't see it for a long time. And then the plant was growing, but then you still have to wait seasons for the actual fruit. And I just thought there's so much waiting. ⁓ It can be lonely like we talked about last week. It can be hard. There is a sense of needing to endure and what else could help us do that again by anchoring our minds on the truth that he is working. Yeah. It's pretty incredible when you read through scripture and you see how often ⁓ people are compared to trees or plants of various kinds. And I think that we can take that and misapply it ⁓ to say that trees are people too, which some have done. But I think that the right way to view the just continual intersection of people and trees or vines or plants of various kinds. is because we can learn a lot about the Christian life by just looking at the way that a tree grows. That there are seasons where it looks dead, but it's growing its roots and it's receiving nourishment from the soil and the way that it is then. nourished during that season of dormancy results in growth and further flourishing in the next season of spring and summer. the, I recently overseeded my lawn and, and there's a lot of waiting that you do with that. And you know, it looks dead. It's a brutal time for our lawns right now. And you're watering it. You're looking at just this, this sad flat dead area. ⁓ but then the growth comes. And it was actually the work in the preparation and it was the necessary seasonal variation that actually produces that lush lawn when it grows to maturity. And as it's starting to grow, there are weeds in there. And as the grass is growing, those weeds get in the way and, and they show themselves to be weeds and you have to take them out for that, for that grass to flourish. And when it comes to the fact that, that there is a lot of waiting and there is a lot of enduring, it's easy to then get to the place of saying, and you've just got to suffer through it and hopefully you make it out on the other side. But what scripture makes so plain is God gives the grace to endure. He gives the grace to continue living with Christ as holy in your life in the face of that suffering, in the face of that evil. And the greatest argument for the truth of the Christian faith is the life of the believer in suffering. ⁓ I I taught apologetics for years. I have studied it for most of my adult life where we're trying to find what are the most convincing arguments for the truthfulness of Christianity. And I just look to the suffering believer who by the grace of God is enduring evil and hardship and persecution yet is living the life that is marked by allegiance to the kingdom of God. There is no argument against that. You can do nothing other than say that person has a hope that I don't have. ⁓ I'm really glad you up hope ⁓ because I think ⁓ it maybe like we're encouraging people ⁓ just like hunker down and survive that one day it'll over so it's the sense of like once evil is ⁓ there will just be relief in the absence evil ⁓ and I don't find that very hopeful and I think that this thing that would set us apart as believers that people would notice is not just that we're enduring that we're hoping to make it through and survive it's that we have hope while we endure that we believe in a God who is just and we've talked about the fact that evil is not from God he is good and he is loving and patient and gracious and that is why he is waiting for more to come to repentance and he is just and he will deal with evil. And so we don't have to just wait until one day we're relieved of this suffering. We have hope in a God who is just so he will and must deal with evil. And scripture isn't asking us to ignore evil. It gives us clear instructions for dealing with sin here that I think we some we could really take more seriously even as believers forgiving one another and really putting into practice the tools that God's given us to address sin in the world, ⁓ among other things, but also hoping in his justice, not having to act on our own. And I'm a person who cares deeply about justice. That's a part of my personality trait, something that can lead me to feel angry when I feel like things are unjust and to step in and move me towards action and resting in the truth that my God is just and will deal perfectly with evil ultimately can cause me to endure with hope. ⁓ But I think people have questions about how he's going to deal with that. And it seems scary. Is it just is it fair? I mean, we see in this passage references to the fiery furnace. I mean, hell. So I'd to spend a few minutes talking about it. I have I don't really have a lot of understanding. And so I'm excited for you to illuminate our understanding somewhat here about hell and the fiery furnace and how our just God will ultimately deal with the problem of evil. Though the witness of scripture in the Old Testament, in the Gospels, and in the New Testament is that there is a separation coming on the day of judgment, final judgment, where every person who's ever lived will stand before the throne of God and he will separate those who belong to him and those who do not. those who belong to him will enter into his eternal rest. We refer to it as heaven. We refer to it as the new heavens and new earth. When everything is renewed, living in the new creation, the way that things are supposed to be where no evil will ever enter again. The words that the New Testament uses for that are paradise, ⁓ rest, like these things that are, like you long for them. ⁓ And we have earthly versions of these things that we look forward to and scripture is using those words to say there is an infinitely greater form of it that that those earthly versions should cause you to hunger for and look ahead to. But the those who do not belong to God will be cast into hell. Hades, Gehenna is another word that's used in the New Testament. The lake of fire is kind of the final version of that in Revelation. And what is, if we start by saying just what they are, ⁓ that eternal rest that we call heaven or the new heavens and new earth. is living in the enjoyment of being in God's and glorious presence forever. Hell then. It is not separation from God entirely. It is separation from God's good, loving, gracious, caring, kind, all those things that we like want to be near God for. Those things don't exist in hell. What exists in hell is the vengeance and justice of a wrathful God. Like we don't I think I think that some Sometimes we think about hell as yeah, Satan reigns over hell and God reigns over heaven and so on. Or the separation of like from God is how I've heard it said. Right. And I and that's not wrong. We just need to specify what we mean by separation. Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden. They weren't separated from God spatially. They weren't separated from his presence in in the in the realm in like the metaphysical realm, the realm of reality. is present everywhere in the entire universe. there's no end the psalmist says in Psalm 139, there's no place I can go where you are not. He even says, if I go to the depths of Sheol, you are there. And Sheol is the Hebrew word for the place of the dead. So if I go to the depths of Sheol, you are there. There's no place I can go in all of your creation where you are not. And when Adam and Eve are cast out of the garden, God is still present in the world. I mean, he even comes to Cain after Cain kills Abel. What are they separated from? They're separated from the personal communion with God that made the garden rest. What made the garden good? and what made them flourish in the garden. They're separated from all of that, which is death. I am separated from that which gives me life. Now I am only in a state of being in difficulty and hardship as a result of my rebellion. So that's what we see in those opening chapters of Genesis. Well. scripture doesn't forget about the garden. That imagery is woven throughout and what happened in the garden is is paradigmatic. It's showing us an instance of a much greater thing that's going to come and that is that there is an eternal dwelling place in the presence of God personally relating to him where we will flourish forever. Like garden imagery is woven throughout Revelation and its discussion of the new heavens and new earth. And that cast out language is also woven throughout scripture in the discussion of hell. So we need to we need to also import the same idea of the presence of God that hell is not a place where ⁓ God doesn't exist at all. And so it's like a free for all. No, it's it's described as the exercising of God's justice upon those who rebelled against him. So that's that's what they are. Now in the parable, it's called the fiery furnace, it's described as a place of fire and torment in Revelation 14. It says that in the lake of fire, the smoke of their torment went up forever. So it's, mean, it's very vivid language that is meant to help us to understand it is a state of being in conscious anguish. Now, Jesus describes it when he interprets the parable for the disciples. He describes it as a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. And growing up, I heard people describe that as a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth meant that you were in sorrow and that you were in great pain. But that's not how the New Testament uses the phrase gnashing of teeth. ⁓ When Jesus is confronting the Pharisees and I believe it's when he's on in his mock trial in the in the Sanhedrin and He says that the Son of Man you will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds Which is a reference to the Son of Man in Daniel 7, which is a divine figure It's a way of claiming to be God you're gonna see me reigning as God from heaven And it says they gnashed their teeth at him Well, that's not them being in anguish. That's them being angry. rage against him that to gnash your teeth at someone is to is to display an anger toward them and a rage toward them and an opposition toward them so in using those words i think that jesus is saying that that fiery furnace hell the place where god's judgment is carried out on those who rebelled against him and chose their sin over him will be a place of weeping because of the recognition that you chose wrong and a place of anger against God because you are still bent against him. It's incredible. mean, and you've said that in several of the last few episodes to help us understand this rightly, that it's ultimately those choosing to reject God like they are getting what they have chosen. Right. And so all the way until the end, they're still choosing. Yeah, I can't remember who said it ⁓ but someone somewhere said that hell or heaven is for those who say thy will be done and Hell is for those to whom God says thy will be done Like you you CS Lewis described it describes hell as being locked from the inside Not that like people locked God out but that it is the place where I got the thing that I chose in this life. And and the same is true of heaven the the reality with with heaven and hell is that god simply treats us for eternity the way that we engaged him in this life so in this life if I engage god as supreme ruler of all worthy of my affection and praise and allegiance and I Embrace his son jesus christ as the means by which I can be made right with god and I know that I need to be right with god and so I embrace his way of me being able to be right with him then for the rest of eternity he engages me accordingly that I'm his and if I live this life saying I want nothing to do with God I do not want his way of being made right with him in fact I don't want to be made right with him I want to be right in my own eyes then hell is the place where God treats you according to that And at that separation, God will treat people for eternity according to the way they engaged him in this life. Now, I think that there are some ⁓ pretty common objections ⁓ to that that would do something like ⁓ The most one, ⁓ Well, there's two, I think. The first one is that it's unjust. God, you you were referencing God is a just God. if God's a just God. And you and I live a finite life. And this finite life is filled with all kinds of decisions that we make in a moment. And they certainly have ramifications for the rest of our lives. But when the people affected by them die, those and you let enough time pass, mean, aren't those decisions that were made, aren't they kind of done? There's a window of time where they are affecting things. And it seems like eternal, conscious torment in a place like hell. Doesn't seem to be just in its response to sins committed in time that are finite in nature We might say like does the punishment fit the crime? That's how we think of it. Yeah, because that's how we talk in our American legal system. Yeah Now that's a I think that's a very helpful ⁓ comparison to make Because a lot of times we evaluate the justice of God based on our experience with our own legal system ⁓ if we, if we think that, okay, God's justice must look like a human justice system. We're already off on the wrong foot. But I think there's another way that we need to look at this. that's in, one is in relation to time and two is in relation to the nature of the crime. So in relation to time, while yes, I am a finite person who makes finite decisions. The ramifications of my decisions are in calculably long lasting. you can ⁓ you can make a honestly a very reasonable statistical argument and logical to say effects of those decisions continue on until the end of time. And so the finiteness of our sins is, I think, overly reduced. So it isn't unjust of God to eternally punish decisions made in finite time because they continue to have ongoing effect out many, many, many generations. But even beyond that, if we think for a moment about a crime, let's... you know, imagine me as an adult male and I get into an altercation with another adult male and in anger, I punch him in the face. That's against the law. That's assault. there is punishment for that. Now, this is a hypothetical for all listeners. This is a hypothetical. This has not happened. ⁓ what if I were to punch a child? something happened inside of you as soon as I said that and it happened inside of every single other person who heard me say that it happened inside of me when I said it it just landed different why because who the offense is against is just as much a part of the equation as the offense that I committed. And there would be in our own justice system, there would be a greater penalty for harming a child than doing the exact same thing to an adult. OK. So we're not talking about finite sins anymore because those sins are actually against an eternal and infinite God. So can we really say that those sins are confined to time anymore? They're not because the person that we actually offended is an eternal and infinite person, which means it is an eternal and infinite. sin which means the just punishment for that eternal and infinite sin is eternal punishment. So I think that that's the first objection and that's the first response. The second objection is, well, it doesn't seem very loving. It seems cruel for God to like, ⁓ John Piper's son walked away from the church and is a very outspoken atheist on social media now. And he had a video a few years ago where he said, ⁓ You know, imagine that you you were a judge and someone committed a crime and you were gonna hold them out over fire for as long as you wanted How long would you be able to do that? And his point was you wouldn't be able to do it very long because you know that the loving thing to do is to not Subject them to unnecessary torment and that's why hell is not loving And I said that's really flawed reasoning because you're appealing to the heart of a person as for what God must be like. Rather than starting from the question of what is the love of God like? ⁓ And how do we make sense out of hell with that doctrine? And yes, God is love. He is a loving God. He has a general love for his creation, but he has a special love that is reserved for those who belong to him. And if we will just call it what it is that sin is rebellion against God. It is the choosing of self and the rejection of God's rule over my life. ⁓ then what would the loving thing be for God to do? It would be to not compromise who he is and give you a pass. will always be consistent because he's unchanging and so ⁓ though it is a doctrine it does not negate the love of God nor is it cruel ⁓ it's just ⁓ and reality of should motivate us ⁓ to tell people how can avoid it ⁓ by being made right God ⁓ I'm so glad that he's unchanging and that his qualities are perfectly in balance. I was thinking even at the end there, if you have more than one child, you can imagine situations where they might want you to lean more on your love and grace or come to you hoping that you're going to enact justice on another sibling. You know, and so you see these things kind of at war with one another. And of course, a parent will never execute them perfectly. But our Heavenly Father Will and he does and we can rest in that i'm so thankful that at the end of the sermon on sunday you pointed us towards hope and ⁓ that we can rest in the truth that god's kingdom is conquering So thankful for our conversation today and hope that others it helpful as ⁓ Thanks so much for joining us for the Harvest After Sunday podcast ⁓ we help you grow ⁓ into the image of Christ by applying the truth. ⁓ in his word for his mission. We'll see you Sunday.