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The End of Evil?

02/17/2008 - God's Response to Evil, Selected Scripture

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing." Did you ever hear that? I'll say it again. In fact, I'll put it up on the screen. "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing."

That's a powerful statement, isn't it? Those haunting words were first spoken by Edmond Burke. Edmond Burke was an Irish statesmen and philosopher who lived back in the 1700's. He was a member of the British Parliament and made it his goal, he said, "to have my share of doing good and resisting evil."

And he did. During his tenure in Parliament he urged the British government to give the American colonists all the rights of Englishmen. He worked hard at improving English-Irish relations and the relationship between Britain and India as well. He bitterly opposed the French Revolution and stood up against all the injustice that he observed there. He was against the slave trade and worked hard to abolish that. Edmond Burke was determined to do something about evil and he did.

One of the evils in our world today is the genocide that's taking place in Darfur, Sudan. Sudan is the largest country in Africa whose major economic resource is oil and its largest customer is China. And we're told that as much as 70% of the money that Sudan gets for its oil is used to finance the country's military which over the last five years has raped, tortured, and killed over 400,000 people, and displaced another 2.5 million people from their homes in the region of Darfur. It's a horrible situation. It's genocide.

Every week I get emails from an organization called SaveDarfur.org that encourage me to sign petitions and make phone calls and stop investing in companies that purchase Sudan's oil because those companies are funding the genocide.

Right now there's a lot of pressure being put on China to end the carnage in Darfur before the Summer Olympics begin in Beijing this August. China is Sudan's most powerful ally. They not only purchase large amounts of oil from that country, but sell weapons to them as well. This week Steven Spielberg, the famous movie director, took his own stand against evil when he withdrew from his role as artistic adviser to the summer games because of China's support of Sudan.

About that decision he said, "I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue business as usual. At this point, my time and energy must be spent not on Olympic ceremonies, but on doing all I can to help bring an end to the unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur."

We live in a global village today, more aware and more closely connected than ever to situations that take place on the other side of the world. They are our neighbors. A generation or two ago we wouldn't even know what was going on in the Sudan. But now that we do we have a responsibility to be respond because the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

But sometimes we feel that way about God, don't we? At least I do. "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in this world is for God to do nothing." And at times it appears that God is doing nothing about evil.

I open my Bible and I find that King David felt the same way three thousand years ago when he penned Psalm 13 ,How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? ²How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? ³Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; ⁴ my enemy will say, "I have overcome him," and my foes will rejoice when I fall. ⁵But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. ⁶I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.

I love that Psalm because in six short verses it runs the gamut of human emotion starting with despair, How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? Do you ever feel like God has forgotten you? He's not answering your prayers? Nothing changes. In fact, I'm convinced that everyone feels that way at one time or another. I think that's a required course in the faith journey. Where's God?

But the Psalm ends with hope. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me. We don't know the issue that David was wrestling with. We don't even know if it changed. But God changed him. He now has hope. He's able to see the goodness of the Lord. And that's the beauty of the Psalms. That's why they're timeless. They're specific enough to capture our feelings, yet general enough to address whatever struggle we might be facing.

"How long, O Lord? How long will evil triumph?" This morning we continue our series called The End of Evil? with a teaching I've called "God's Response to Evil."

In his book Evil and the Justice of God, theologian N. T. Wright says, "Evil isn't just a philosophical problem. It's a practical one. We can't ignore it or belittle it. And Western democracy is not the automatic solution to the problem of global evil. We need to take seriously both the supra-human powers of evil and the fact that the line between good and evil runs not between 'us' and 'them' but through every individual and society.

"We want an answer to the question, What does God say about evil? We want an explanation. We want to know what evil really is, why it's there, why it's been allowed to continue, and how long this will go on. These questions are in the Bible, but frustratingly they don't receive very full answers, and certainly not the sort of answers that later philosophical traditions would consider adequate.

"The Bible simply doesn't appear to want to say what God can say about evil. The Bible is not written in order to simply 'tell us about God' in the abstract. The Bible is written to tell the story of what God has done, is doing, and will do about evil."

There's a lot about evil we may never understand, but that doesn't mean God is not doing anything about it. So let's see what God has done about evil. In the first two weeks of this series we saw that God created everything and everything God created was good, very good. But everything that was very good turns very bad. And it doesn't take long for evil to turn God's dream into a nightmare. In fact, three chapters into the story Adam and Eve sin and God calls security and has them physically removed from the garden. He doesn't want them eating from the tree of life lest they live forever in a state of rebellion.

Genesis 3:22-24 puts it this way, And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." ²³So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. ²⁴After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Adam and Eve are evicted and bright, yellow caution tape is wrapped all around the garden. Paradise has become a crime scene. Off limits. But God's original command to be fruitful and multiply has not been revoked. And that's a command that Adam and Eve are eager to obey. So they have a child, a cute little boy named Cain. But in Genesis 4 we read that Cain grows up to become a murderer, killing his own brother, Abel, breaking his parent's heart. Not a good start to the human race.

And when we get to Genesis 5 we read, "Adam lived 930 years, and then he died …. Seth lived 912 years, and then he died …. Enosh lived 905 years, and then he died …. Kenan lived 910 years, and then he died … Mahalalel lived 895 years, and then he died … Jared lived 962 years, and then he died … Methuselah, the oldest man on record, lived 969 years, and then he died … Lamech lived 777 years, and then he died … and then he died and then he died and then he died." It's a parade of death. And we can't help but think of those deceptive words of the serpent back in the garden who said, "Go ahead. Eat the fruit. You shall not surely die." Bologna!

And in Genesis 6 things go from bad to worse. You think things are bad in our world today. They are, but things were even worse back then. In Genesis 6:5-8 we read, The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil all the time. ⁶The LORD was grieved that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. ⁷So the LORD said, "I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created - and with them the animals, the creatures that move along the ground, and the birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them." ⁸But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

God is grieved. God is depressed. I think Genesis 6:6 is one of the saddest sentences in the Bible, The LORD was grieved that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

Did you ever have a heart full of pain? God knows all about pain. His heart was filled with pain. God can relate to your pain and my pain. He feels it deeply. God knows all about loss. God's dream of living in peace and harmony in love with his creation is all but gone. It's hanging by dental floss and that thread is one man named Noah.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. Verse 9 says, Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. Noah is the only bright spot left on the planet. And if it wasn't for Noah we might not be here today because God has finally had enough of evil.

And so we read in verse 11, Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. ¹²God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. ¹³So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth."

God has to put an end to evil. It is out control. But he can't put an end to evil without putting an end to evil doers. And so he causes it to rain for forty days and forty nights and the whole earth is flooded and everything is destroyed except Noah and his family. And the Genesis flood stands forever as a reminder that God hates evil and what it does to his creation and there are times when he will say "enough" and take drastic steps to stop evil in its tracks.

But by God's grace Noah is spared, along with his family, and God continues his plan for creation with pain and sorrow in his heart. Noah is given the same command as Adam and Eve. Genesis 9:1 says, Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth."

"Let's start this thing all over again." And they do. The earth is repopulated. Grass and trees and flowers begin to grow, but like weeds in a garden evil springs up once again in the form of human pride and arrogance. The story is known as the Tower of Babel and is found in Genesis 11.

Genesis 11:1-9, Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. ²As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. ³They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. ⁴Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."⁵But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that they were building. ⁶The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. ⁷Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other." ⁸So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. ⁹That is why it was called Babel—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Now on the surface when we read that story we might think, "Whoa. What's the big deal? People are building a skyscraper. We build them all the time. The project's providing jobs, people are working together, progress is being made. This seems like a good thing right?!"

Well evidently there's more going on here. And I think verse 4 gives us the clue as to what's driving the project, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

In other words, "Let's do our own thing. Let's make a name for ourselves. Let's not fill the whole earth as God commanded. Let's stick together. Let's show God how great we are." The Tower of Babel is another expression of human pride. It's humankind's attempt to look God in the eye and say, "Who needs you?" At least that's how God takes it and so he comes down and puts an end to the project, confuses their language, and scatters them over the face of the whole earth so they can't carry out their arrogant ambitions. That's why it's called Babel - because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. Babel eventually becomes Babylon, which in the Bible comes to symbolize everything that is opposed to God.

So here we go again. What's God going to do to stop the spread of evil throughout the world this time? He's already promised that he'll never destroy the earth again with a flood. In fact, every time we see a rainbow in the sky we're reminded of that promise. No. God has another idea. God is going to address the problem of evil in a totally different way, in a way that will eventually cost him dearly. He's going to challenge evil from within. He's going to choose a people for himself that he will empower to come right up against the darkness in this world. This time it's going to be an inside job.

And it all starts when he calls a man named Abram, later called Abraham, in Genesis 12:1-3 , The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. ²"I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. ³I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse. And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

There's nothing special about Abraham except the fact that God decides to choose him to be the answer to the problem of evil. Unlike Noah he's not described as a righteous man who walks with God. In fact, at the time God calls Abraham he's an idol worshipper living in southern Iraq. This is totally an act of grace on God's part and Genesis 12 is the turning point in the whole story of God. With Abraham God launches a whole new strategy on how he will finally defeat the curse of evil. It starts with a man, who then has a family, who will become a nation called Israel, which will produce a Liberator called Jesus, who will empower ordinary people like us called the church to take a stand against evil.

About this passage Wright says, "The entire Old Testament hangs like an enormous door on a small hinge, namely the call of Abraham in Genesis 12. This is God's way of addressing the problem of evil evident in Genesis 1-11. In Abraham God declares, as act of sovereign grace that a new way has opened up, a way by which his original purpose of blessing humankind and all of creation can be taken forward.

"There will be numerous further acts of judgment as well as mercy as the story unfolds. But unfold it will. The overarching picture is of the sovereign creator God who will continue to work within his world - that's the key - until blessing replaces curse, homecoming replaces exile, olive branches appear after the flood, and a new family is created in which the scattered languages can be reunited. It's not a matter of God as a puppet-master, pulling the strings a long way away. It's a matter of God loving his world so much that, faced with evil within it, he will work precisely within it, despite all the horrible ambiguities that will result."

We worship and serve a God who is actively at work in this world. He has done something about evil. And his strategy for defeating evil, at least right now, involves people like you and me. He's doing it from within. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ today then you are a child of Abraham and God intends for you and for me to be part of the solution. We can't sit on the sidelines and turn our head away from evil and injustice. We are meant to be a blessing to this world. And part of being blessing is pushing hard against evil. We're not going to do a perfect job, in fact, there will be times when we become part of the problem just as Abraham and Israel became part of the problem which is really what the rest of the Old Testament is about and we'll look at that next week. But that doesn't mean that we stop being part of the solution as well.

Remember, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph in this world is for good people, God's people, us, to do nothing.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Valley View Community Church, feel free to contact us at info@valleyviewseek.org or call 610.631.2707.