The End of Evil?
02/24/2008 - The Solution Becomes the Problem
One of the tragic stories of last summer was the mining accident that occurred in Crandall Canyon, Utah. Maybe you caught some of it on television. On August 6, the roof of a mine shaft collapsed trapping six miners 2,400 feet underground. For eleven days heavy equipment was brought in from around the country and three holes were drilled into the canyon in an effort to free the men, but progress was slow and hope was fading that the miners would be found alive.
Finally, ten days later a decision was made to send in a rescue team. The team didn't get very far when there was a seismic tremor that caused an explosion that took the lives of three of the rescue workers and injured at least six others. It was a nightmare. And I can remember watching those images on television and thinking at first, "Oh great they found the miners." Then it was like, "Oh no. Those aren't the miners. That's the rescue team that's being rescued. The miners are still trapped."
Commenting on the whole thing the governor of Utah said, "Yesterday we went from a tragedy to a catastrophe." Sometimes things go from bad to worse. Sometimes the solution to a problem becomes the problem and the rescuers themselves need to be rescued. A tragedy turns into a catastrophe. This morning we continue our series called The End of Evil? with a teaching I've called "The Solution Becomes the Problem."
We've already seen that God hates evil. He hates all forms of evil. He hates what evil does to people and to his creation. And over the last two weeks we've been looking at God's response to evil in the first twelve chapters of Genesis. The tragedy of Adam and Eve's disobedience in the garden eventually becomes the catastrophe of a whole world gone mad. And in response God sends a global flood to destroy the earth and everyone on it except for one man named Noah. Noah, his family, and a floating zoo are rescued and given the responsibility to start everything over again.
And they do. But it doesn't take long for humankind to rebel against God once again. This time it takes the form of a tower, the Tower of Babel, a stairway to heaven designed to make a statement that, "God you are no longer needed around here. We'll do our own thing thank you very much!" But God says, "Not so fast!" And the Bible says he comes down and puts an end to their little project, confuses their language, and scatters the human race throughout the whole earth.
But that's not going to be a permanent solution. That's only going to delay the inevitable because if God doesn't do something else pretty soon we'll be back to Genesis 6 where the whole world has turned against God. Eventually it's going to happen all over again only this time God won't be able to play the flood card because he promised that he'd never to destroy the earth again with a flood.
So what's God going to do this time to stop evil from completely contaminating his creation? Is he going to nuke everybody? Is that the answer? How many times can God hit the reset button? Maybe Satan has ruined everything? Maybe he has won. Is there any hope for a solution to the problem of evil?
Then we turn the page and come to Genesis 12 the hinge on which the whole story pivots and we read 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. 2I 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."
Blessing! That's what God's into. He doesn't want to bomb his creation. He wants to bless it. That's what he wants to do for his world and all the people in it despite our rebellion. And to do that God makes an unconditional covenant, a promise that he can't break, with a man called Abram whose name means "exalted father," whom God will later call Abraham which means "father of many,' because he will be the father of a lineage of people as numerous as the sand on the beach and the stars in the sky who throughout all human history will represent God in this world. They will be a people who worship their Creator and live out God's purposes by bringing truth and blessing, hope and healing to a broken world so that God's creation can one day be finally and forever rescued from evil.
There is hope. And that hope comes in the form of a rescue team. God's going to call a man living in the midst of this evil world who will have a family that will grow into a nation that will produce a Liberator, a Rescuer, a Savior, a King who will empower ordinary people in every generation to push back the darkness and take a stand against evil. And in this generation that would be us, those who call themselves Christ followers.
I love how N. T. Wright puts it when he says, "The point is that God's covenant with Abraham is seen as a rock-solid commitment on the part of the world's Creator that he will be the God of Abraham and his family. Through Abraham and his family, God will bless the whole world. Shimmering like a mirage in the deserts through which Abraham wandered was the vision of a new world, a rescued world, a world blessed by the Creator once more, a world of justice, where God and his people would live in harmony, where human relationships would flourish, where beauty would triumph over ugliness. It would be a world in which the voices that echo in all human consciousness would blend together and be heard as the voice of the living God."
Sounds like a great plan. And it is. It's brilliant. Establish a rescue team that will God's blessing into this world. There's just one problem and that's the rescue team itself. The rescue team is flawed. Abraham and his family, the nation of Israel and now us too often become part of the problem of evil and not the solution. So eventually the rescue team will need to be rescued. And that's the drama that the Scripture unfolds.
So God calls Abraham and tells him that he's going to be a dad. He's going to be the trunk of a huge family tree. But that's hard to believe because Abraham and Sarah don't have any kids and they're old, very old. The biological clock has stopped ticking. Abraham is 100 and Sarah is pushing 90. But then a miracle happens and God opens Sarah's womb and she has a little baby boy. And at their age it's such a joke that they name the boy Isaac which means "laughter."
And Isaac grows up and gets married and has a son named Jacob. And Jacob grows us and gets married and God changes his name to Israel and he has twelve sons by four different women who become the twelve tribes of Israel. So in just three generations the rescue team is formed and Abraham's family tree begins to spread its branches.
But then trouble comes. Israel is enslaved in the land of Egypt. They're trapped and they can't get out. The rescue team that's supposed to be a blessing to the world is held hostage by Pharaoh and his army for over 400 years. And it looks like God has given up on the whole rescue operation. "Where's God?" they cry out. Remember, that's part of everyone's faith journey.
But God hasn't given up on his people. He hears their cry. He sees the misery of their suffering. And once again his solution is to call a man who will rescue Israel from the Egyptians. And that man's name is Moses.
And so armed with ten plagues, each one aimed at one of the false gods of Egypt, and the miraculous parting of the Red Sea, Moses leads God's people out of bondage and into freedom. The event is called the Exodus and to this day Jews all over the world celebrate it every year at Passover. It is the defining moment for the nation of Israel. God rescues the rescue team.
So Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and to a mountain called Sinai where God gives them an identity and a mission. He calls them his treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, a holy people who are to make him known to the rest of the world. And in response the people say, "Yes! We will do everything the Lord has said." The rescue team is ready to go.
In the meantime, Moses goes up on the mountain and receives the Ten Commandments as well as other instructions designed to help God's people shine like a light in the darkness. But while he's up there for a few weeks the people down below get antsy. They start to wonder, "Where's Moses? What's taking him so long?"
And before you know it they're asking Aaron, Moses' brother, to make them another god who will lead them. And so he has them take off all the gold jewelry they had confiscated from the Egyptians and he melts it down and makes a golden idol in the shape of calf. And they say, "This is the god who brought us out of Egypt!" So they throw a wild party and bow down and worship the golden calf.
And when God sees it he says to Moses in Exodus 32:7-14 , Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, 'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.' 9"I have seen these people," the Lord said to Moses, "and they are a stiff-necked people. 10Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation." 11But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God, "O Lord," he said, "why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12Why should the Egyptians say, 'It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth'? Turn from your fierce anger, relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: 'I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.'" 14Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
Whew! That was a close call. God was ready to hit the reset button again. But this time Moses stood up and advocated for the rescue team and said, "Wait, God! Wait! Remember your unconditional promise to Abraham and Isaac and Israel. Don't break it! Give your people another chance!" And so God backs off. But things won't get any easier. This is only the first of many times that Israel will turn its back on God and bow down to all kinds of idols instead. The solution to evil will become the problem again and again and again. It's going to get real messy and it still is.
About all this N. T. Wright says, "What does God do about evil? He judges those who are oppressing Israel and he rescues his people from their grasp. That's the story of the Exodus. And that answer resonates throughout the whole Old Testament, including the Psalms, where the righteous sufferer pleads with God to defend his cause, his person and his life against the wicked, the oppressor, and the ungodly. God will contain evil. He will restrain evil. He will prevent evil from doing its worst. And on occasion he will even use the malice of human beings to further his strange purposes.
"But the other side is that Israel who is rescued is still a grumbling, rebellious, malcontented people. Instead of being grateful, obedient and trusting, Israel spends forty years in the wilderness waiting to go back to Egypt, fearful of entering the Promised Land because there are giants there, and generally displaying all of the signs of fallen humanity to whose plight they were supposed to be the answer. In the Israel story, worshipping the golden calf is the equivalent of what Adam and Eve did in the garden. Israel was called to be God's promise-bearing people, the light to the nations, but Israel showed every sign of being in darkness.
"What God did with evil then was once more to judge, and to do so with such severity that it looked like he would have to start again from scratch with Moses as he had done with Noah. But God had made promises to Abraham that he would not break. And when Moses forcibly reminds God of this in one of the greatest prayers in the Bible, God remains faithful to the Israelites - even when they had been faithless to him."
And that's the whole story of the Old Testament. God remains faithful to his rescue team even when they are faithless to him. He wants to be their king. He wants them to be his people, a treasured possession, a light to the nations. But they don't want to be his people and they don't want him to be their king.
In fact, at one point Israel insists that God give them a human king like all the other nations around them and so he gives them Saul and then David and then Solomon who ends up leading the nation into more evil and more idolatry. They worship foreign gods, they abuse the land, they overlook the poor and the needy, the very people they are supposed to help. And so God raises up prophets to confront the nation and turn it back to him. But they stone the prophets because they don't want to hear from God.
And soon the kingdom is divided with Israel in the north and Judah in the south. And in 722 B.C. the Assyrians conquer Israel and in 586 B.C. the Babylonians destroy Jerusalem and take Judah out of the land and into captivity.
And so like Adam and Eve were evicted from the garden, Israel is evicted from the Promised Land. And where do they end up? In Babylon of all places, the sight of Babel itself. The people of the solution have come full circle. And so we read in Psalm 137, By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. 2There on the poplars we hung our harps, 3for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy. They said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" 4How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?
That's the sad story of Israel. The solution has become the problem. But what does all that mean for us? Well, one thing it means is that we serve a God who is wall to wall committed to us even when we fail him because like Israel we so often go our own way. When we look at the nation of Israel we're really looking in the mirror. Remember the line of good evil runs right down the center of each one of us and because of that our hearts are often divided as well. We want to serve God. We want to be light in the darkness, but all too often we find ourselves overcome by the darkness and our light flickers at best.
The solution becomes the problem. But God is not going to quit on us. He's in this for the long haul. And when we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
God is faithful. This week in our E100 reading we read Jeremiah 1-3 and I was reminded again of God's faithfulness to his people. Listen to these tender words of the Lord in Jeremiah 3:12-14, "Return, faithless Israel. I will frown on you no longer, for I am merciful. I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt - you have rebelled against the Lord your God, you have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every spreading tree, and have not obeyed me. Return, faithless people, for I am your faithful husband."
That's the grace of God. Rescue efforts at Crandall Canyon, Utah, continued until September 1, but then the operation was suspended and the miners were never recovered. God's rescue efforts have not been suspended. He's still working hard to reclaim and restore his creation. And he's determined to do his work through flawed people like us. Amazing!