If God, Why Evil? – Part 2

Sermon Transcript

Actually, what we'll do is we'll spend the first 10 minutes reviewing what we did this morning. And we started out by talking about how often the Bible talks about how God is good. He's abounding in love and faithfulness. This is one of many passages we could talk about. But we started this morning saying, if this is true, why have so many people suffered so much? Many of them Christians, how can God be good when He allows His people to suffer so much? Where was God when you went through that divorce, or were you in that addiction, or you lost your job, or you had to bury a loved one, or you heard the dreaded word cancer? Where was God in all this? So we asked the question, where was He? And we said, well, maybe He doesn't exist, or maybe He's evil.

And then we said, although a lot of people think evil is a good argument against God, what if your best arguments to doubt God show that he actually exists? And we said that I think anyway that when atheists are arguing there is no God, they're actually stealing from God to argue against him. In fact, they're committing intellectual crimes. And we said this morning that these areas that atheists say point away from God are areas like causality, reason, information, morality, evil, and science. They say these things are best explained by no God. And my point is, is that none of these things would exist unless God existed.

And as we said this morning, we only have time to cover evil. And it's from the book, as Pastor John said, "Stealing from God, why atheists need God to make their case?" If we're out of it, you can get it on our website, you can get it on Amazon, wherever you get fine books. If you go to a bookstore and it's not there, it's just sold out again. Right? I'm just an optimist, okay? And so we said, we're going to tackle this in four basic steps. The first step, does evil disprove God? And then what's the purpose of evil? What about purposeless evil? And what's God's solution to evil? And this morning we covered point one and two.

And when we started to cover point one this morning, we said, "Let's put several arguments on the screen for and against God." And we put all these arguments up here. We said the beginning of the universe, fine tune of the universe, information found in DNA, all these arguments you see on the left seem to be better explained by God, but the area on the right, evil, seems to be an argument against God. And we asked the question this morning, "Does evil disprove God?" And the answer is actually no, it's an argument for God. You say why? Because objective evil presupposes objective good and objective good requires God.

And we said this morning that C.S. Lewis discovered this. And people before him had too, but he made it popular in the modern era when he wrote the book, "Mere Christianity." How many have read "Mere Christianity"? Okay, if you haven't read "Mere Christianity," consider yourself undereducated. That's a book you ought to read. You ought to read it before any of the books I've read, I've written. Get Mere Christianity and read it. Give it to someone who's not a believer and discuss it with them. Because Lewis is very profound in that book, and one of the profound things he says in the book relates to the issue of evil. He thought, he said, "There can't be a good God. There's too much injustice or injustice in the world." And then he realized his argument didn't work. I'd actually prove the opposite, and here's what he said. "As an atheist, my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how would I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? Remember, we said you wouldn't know what a crooked line was unless you knew what a straight line was. You wouldn't know what injustice was unless you knew what justice was."

We went through all this this morning. We also said that evil is like cancer. If you take all the cancer out of a good body, you got a better body. If you take all the body out of the cancer, what do you got? Nothing, right? Cancer can only exist in a good host. Rust can only exist in a car. You don't have a completely rusty car. For that, you just got a spot in the pavement, right? There's nothing left. So evil only exists in a good thing. And we also said you could put it this way: the shadows prove the sunshine. In order for there to be shadows, there's gotta be sunshine. In other words, in order for there to be evil, there has to be good. Oh, you can have good without evil. You can have sunshine without shadows, but you can't have evil unless you have good. And good is what we mean by God. If there's no God, everything's just a matter of opinion.

So we said that evil doesn't disprove God. In fact, evil destroys something good. If you want to know what evil is, it's sort of like anti-creation. God creates something good, and we destroy it. And so to sum it all up, evil doesn't disprove God, but actually proves God. Evil may actually show Satan exists. I know it sounds counterintuitive to say that if evil exists, God exists, but it's true. But it also may show there's a devil out there. And we said the hard question is not if God exists, why is there evil? The harder question is, if no God exists, why is there good? Where does good come from if there's no God? There's no answer to that. And we all know good exists. So if good exists, God exists. So the answer to question number one is actually, you know, it doesn't disprove God, it shows God exists. And we said we actually need to move evil from the no side and move it over to the yes side, that God exists because evil shows that God does exist.

And then this morning, we moved on to the second point. What's the purpose of evil? If evil doesn't disprove God, what's its purpose? And I related a story to you of an atheist who was watching our "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist" presentation at Michigan State, and he sat through the entire presentation looking like this. And I had great jokes, and he didn't laugh at all. And at one point in the Q&A, he raised his hand, and I said, "Yes, sir." And he said, "If there is a good God, why doesn't he stop all evil in the world?" And I said, "Sir, that is an excellent question. Maybe if he did, he might start with you and me because we do evil every day." I mean, if God were to stop evil at midnight tonight, would you still be alive at 12.01? No, I wouldn't be. He hasn't stopped evil yet, but if he wanted to, he could just wipe us out, and that would stop all evil. In fact, I seem to remember him doing that one previous time, don't you? Except for eight people. Yeah.

And then I said, we showed this video at Michigan State. "If there is a good God, why is there evil?" I'm going to show it to you again. For those of you that didn't see it this morning, you'll see it for the first time. It's only a minute and 46 seconds. Watch this. There's a lot going on. Is God good?

If he is, why is there suffering and evil? Let's assume for the moment that God is all-powerful. This means that God can do anything that is logically possible, so he can create galaxies and subatomic particles and rainforests and you. But God cannot do what is logically impossible. He cannot make a square circle or a one-ended stick. So can God make a rock so big that he can't lift it? No. So what if when God created human beings, he wanted them to be free? Freedom's a good thing. But if humans are to be free, they cannot be forced to obey God because freedom without choice is like a square circle. It's a logical contradiction. No choice, no freedom. God didn't want robots. He wanted real people. The first humans, endowed with the awesome power of free choice, abused their freedom. The tragic consequences of their bad choice and our bad choices ripple across the world. God is responsible for the fact of freedom, but humans are responsible for their acts of freedom. But let's remember, we don't suffer alone. God will put an end to suffering and evil. And God became a man to suffer with us. God is good, and he wants real people like you to know him. But the free choice is yours.

If you wanna see videos like that, go to our YouTube channel, the cross-examined YouTube channel. We have about 2,000 videos up there, many of them are from the college campus. That particular video is called "Is God Good?" So if you go to YouTube and put that "Is God Good?" you'll find it. And the summary of that video is basically this: "Evil exists because we have free will, which is the only way love and moral choices could exist." We didn't have free will; we couldn't love, but since we do have free will, we can love, but we can also do evil. Now, as we'll see here pretty soon, God is actually going to redeem our evil choices for good if we allow him, but we don't have to.

So after I showed the video, I mentioned this morning that it didn't really persuade the atheist because he still looked like that. He said that doesn't explain it all. Freedom doesn't explain it all because some things happen that have nothing to do with human freedom, according to him. Like, you know, why do babies die? They didn't do anything wrong. And for that, we said we had to discover what the purpose of life is. And as we pointed out this morning, the purpose of life is basically to know God and to make him known from John 17.3. "This is eternal life, that they, meaning us, may know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you've sent," Jesus praying to the Father. We're here to know God and add the Great Commission in to make him known.

And we pointed out the problem is growing in God often requires pain. And we went through this this morning, where we talked about several passages that talk about it, where James says, "Count it all joy when you fall into these trials." And nobody does that, but that's what James is saying. And Paul says, "We glory in tribulation, knowing that it ultimately produces patience and character and hope and perseverance and all these things." And we also said that if you really think about it, if you got everything you wanted every time in life, you would be worse than a spoiled brat. If everything is about you all the time and you never have any opposition, you become even more of a me monster than you already are.

And I don't know if you've noticed, but in the American church today, quite often there's a lot more me-ology than theology. It's all about what I want to do. God's going to approve of me. Me, me, me, me, me. That's not the way forward. And we talked also about the fact that more pain brings more gain, and we pointed this out from 2 Corinthians 4. Paul says, "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, for what is seen as temporary, what is unseen as eternal. When you go through difficulty here, you're enhancing your capacity to enjoy God not only now but in eternity. And if you don't go through difficulty, you don't turn out to be a very deep person.

And we also pointed out that God is a father, not a grandfather. Fathers discipline because they want to create character in their children. Grandfathers come along and mess that all up. We just spoil kids. But we want God to be a grandfather to give us all the candy we want. That's not God. God is more concerned about our character than our comfort. And so he is going to deal with us in such a way that we grow and become more like him. In fact, that's what the famous passage in Romans 8 says, that we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and those who are called according to His purpose to be what? What's His purpose? To be conformed to the image of His Son. To become like Jesus. Do you become like Jesus when you get everything you want all the time? No, you don't. You become a me monster.

So I explain this, and the atheist still look like this, and he still said, "You haven't answered the question. Yeah, I see that some evil brings forth good, but what about evil that doesn't bring forth any good?" This is called purposeless evil. Like, why does a baby die, for example? Well, if things happen in your life that you scratch your head, and you go, seven-year-old gets killed in a car wreck. A baby gets sick here at church. Everybody prays, the baby dies anyway. A missionary goes off to—I heard of a missionary once that went to Africa. He got there. He went in the water, stepped on a stonefish, and was dead. And you go, "He's just, he's there to preach the gospel. He steps on a stonefish? What are the odds of that?"

This doesn't make any sense, does it? And then I began to read a lot, and I learned of something that really revolutionized my thinking. It helped solve the problem. And look, if life is only from the womb to the tomb, yeah, there's a lot of things that can't be explained. But if life does not end at the grave but continues on into eternity, then much of this can be explained. And the idea that I learned that really helped me is something called the ripple effect. Have you guys heard of the ripple effect? It's also sometimes called the butterfly effect, that say a butterfly flapping its wings in South Africa can create a series of events that actually brings a hurricane to New Orleans, right? We can't trace all those ripples, but an omnipotent being can.

And what we're saying here is when we see something inexplicable, like why does a baby die? I can't—I mean, I can tell you why babies die in general, why? Because we live in a fallen world. Nobody's guaranteed 80 years or whatever. But if you ask me, why did this particular baby die? I don't know why, but I know why I don't know why. I'm inside a time. I can see this much of reality if that. I can't see the future. I can hardly remember the past. And I'm very limited in my ability to see what's going on right now. But maybe a baby dying today ripples forward into the future through a series of events that, actually, 500 years from now contributes to bringing forth a preacher who's going to save millions of people. Can I trace all those ripples into the future? No way. I can't do it. But someone outside of time who can see everything at once can see, well, I can bring good from this, even though they might not be able to see it.

And so the ripple effect helps explain inexplicable things. I can't see it, but does that mean there isn't a good reason? Because I can't think of a good reason, or I don't know what the good reason is. Of course not. I mean, think of how many ripples have occurred in your own life. Think about how many things had to happen even to exist. I mean, your parents needed to meet. Their parents needed to meet. Their parents needed to meet. I mean, think about the odds of that happening. Yet here you are. And there have been ripples, whether good deeds or bad deeds have brought you right to where you are right now. You can't trace them, but God can. And if we can trust God with what we do know, do you think we can trust him with what we don't know?

Yes, in fact, you can even see the ripple effect in the Bible. You know the story of Joseph in the Old Testament? When Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers, and by the way, which brother sold him into slavery? Judah. From where we get the term "Jew" from? Who's a descendant of Judah? Jesus is a descendant of Judah. Wow. They're admitting that Judah was a bad guy, and he's in the bloodline of the Messiah. There's a lot of shaky people in the bloodline of the Messiah, which shows you they're not making it up, right? Anyway, Judah sells Joseph into slavery, and you know the story. He's falsely accused in Egypt. He's in prison. He interprets a dream. He comes out. Somehow, he works his way up to be the second or third man in charge in Egypt. He puts a whole bunch of grain aside in case there's a famine. And then when there is a famine, his own family that sold him into slavery leaves Israel, comes to Egypt, and Joseph recognizes them.

And what does he say as soon as he sees them? "You dirty rat, you're going to pay for what you did to me." He doesn't say that. What does he say? He says, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." He saw the ripple effect. In fact, the very people that did evil, the evil they did rippled forward to later help them. Now, you wouldn't have ever thought that would have happened, but God allowed it to happen for this purpose. So the bottom line to this is, while respecting free choice, God can bring good from evil, even when we can't see it. In fact, most of the time we can't see it. By the way, think about this: Have you ever prayed for something that you thought you wanted? And then years later, you go, "I remember praying for that. Thank God he didn't answer that." You think he knows more than you know? Yeah.

Now, sometimes this problem is set up this way: If God is all loving and all powerful, why doesn't he stop evil? Well, maybe he's not all loving, so he's evil, he wants to do evil to us. Or maybe he's not all powerful—I mean he's loving, but he can't do anything about it. And this is supposed to be some kind of problem that we can't solve, but you know what's left out of the problem? Yes, God is all powerful and all loving, but he's also all wise. And we forget that. In fact, one of the most profound things ever said on this topic was said by a Roman Catholic priest who was at Notre Dame in Paris 150 years ago. And here's what he said about this issue related to the ripple effect: "If God would concede me His power for 24 hours, you would see how many changes I would make in the world. But if He gave me His wisdom too, I would leave things as they are." You can't see the future. I can't see the future. We're supposed to fight evil and leave the results to God. And when evil occurs, we go, "Okay, God's going to bring good from it somehow, somewhere. I don't know where, but we're going to continue to fight it."

Now I explained this at Michigan State. We're still there. And right after I got done explaining this, there was a guy sitting about 10 feet away from the atheist, and he raised his hand. And I said, "Yes, sir." And he said, "I know of a woman who was raped and the rape nearly destroyed her. And she became pregnant as a result of this rape." Then his voice began to crack, and he said, "But this woman decided that she was not going to punish the child for the sin of the father. She brought this baby to term, and this baby was a boy. And this baby grew up to be a man." By this time, he's crying in front of everybody at Michigan State. And he says, "This man grew up to be a pastor, and that pastor has led a lot of people to Jesus and has also discipled a lot of people in Jesus." And he said, "That little boy was me."

And then he looked over at the atheist, and he said, "If my mom can bring good from evil, so can God." And I said, "You're dismissed." I mean, what could I say after that? The guy had a better story than I had. Well, how do you think the atheist looked after that? He ran out of the room. Literally. He got up, and he ran out the back. But I went up to the guy, the pastor, who said what he said. I said, "Hey, what's your name?" He said, "My name's Gary Bingham. I'm a pastor in Marion, Indiana." He had driven up to Lansing, Michigan, that night to come to the event. I said, "Well, how's your mom?" And he said, "Well, she's much better now because four years ago she became a Christian." And I said, "Well, tell her all the good she did by not giving into evil. Not only did she bring forth you and all the positive ripples you've put out there, but that what she did rippled forward to tonight here at Michigan State, because now all these other people have heard it. And guess what? It's still rippling. You just heard it. And it's in the book 'Stealing from God.' It's still rippling."

So how do we sum all this up? Why does God allow evil? Here are ten ways why God allows evil. Number one, to respect human freedom, which is required for us to be agents like God, or agents of God, and for morality and love. If He doesn't give us free will, then we're not agents. We're not imagers. We're not beings who are supposed to be like God. So he's gotta give us free will. Also, the second reason he allows evil is to keep you alive, because if he were to stop all evil right now, he'd have to stop you and me, wouldn't he? So he's allowing evil to allow us to live because we all do evil.

Thirdly, judgment to punish sin. We always forget about this. Now, this is gonna sound weird for a second, do you know that God never punishes a Christian? Why? Who's he already punished? He's already punished Jesus. He may discipline a Christian—that's what it does say in Hebrews 12—but he doesn't punish you because he's already punished Jesus. Oh, you may receive the natural consequences of your sin. If you take drugs, you might get addicted. If you commit adultery, you might blow up your family. If you steal, you might wind up in prison. But that's not God punishing you. Those are the natural consequences of your own actions. But he may allow, like he did in the Old Testament, Assyria to punish Israel. He had Babylon punish Judah. They did evil against Israel and Judah, but he allowed it to punish sin, and then he later punished Assyria and Babylon himself by having other countries overrun them.

Also, why does God allow evil? To draw people to him. Many people would never come to Christ without pain and suffering. In fact, we talked about it earlier today. Also, to bring a greater good. We've been talking about that this morning and tonight. Also, to develop character and the capacity to enjoy God. We're just reviewing what we did. Number seven, so we can learn obedience through suffering. Who else learned obedience through suffering? Jesus, the perfect God-man, the human nature that didn't have a sin nature. That Jesus learned obedience through suffering. If he had to learn obedience through suffering, what does that say about us? I think it was Ben Franklin who said, "Those things that hurt instruct." If you think about this, you learn very little from pleasure. You learn a lot more from pain and suffering. Pastor John, what was that line you were talking about this morning? About the great things? The greatest things are done by those who have suffered.

If you think about it, that's true. Also, number eight, to accomplish redemption. What was the greatest evil done in history? The crucifixion of Jesus. He's the only completely innocent human being in history. If God hadn't allowed that evil, we would still be dead in our sins. Number nine, so we can feel the greater joy of redemption. You know, happy endings only make sense if it's possible for there to be an unhappy ending. And when you go through difficulty and come out the other side, when you're redeemed, that's actually better than if you never fell at all. This is kind of hard to explain. Let me give you a business example. For those of you in business, you may know that if you have a customer and the customer is upset with you, so there's a dip in the relationship, you then go above and beyond the call of duty to mend that relationship. That relationship is now stronger than it was before there was a problem. In other words, when the relationship falls and then is redeemed, normally the relationship is stronger after the redemption.

That's why making up is so much fun. Amen! Amen! As she looks at her husband. Or a neighbor. To feel the great joy of redemption. Chuck Swindoll once said this: "What's the greatest feeling in the world? Relief." That's the greatest feeling in the world. If, when you think a disaster is about to occur and you realize it didn't happen, or you get snatched from the jaws of defeat, that feels better than if nothing ever happened. That's the joy of redemption. So, in other words, God, even though we sin, God can actually advance us to a higher relationship than if we had never sinned. Being saved is better than being innocent forever. I know that sounds weird, but it's true. And then finally, for ripple effect reasons, only God knows. There are so many reasons we don't know about. And yet we know why we don't know. God can see everything at once, and He sees how it all turns out. We can't. We can hardly remember yesterday. We don't know what tomorrow is coming, and our senses are pretty dim about right now, aren't they?

All right. So finally, let's do number four before we get to your questions. What's God's solution to evil? We know evil doesn't disprove God. We know God has several purposes for evil. We know there are no purposeless evils because even though we might not know what the purpose is, God can still have a purpose that we don't know about. So now what's God's solution to evil? But before we get there, I need to try and address something that unfortunately many Christians in America believe. Here's my question for you. The question is, does God promise to protect Christians from evil and suffering? In fact, let me ask you, what is the common thread through all of these biblical characters? They were either martyred or they suffered greatly and/or were martyred, including Jesus himself.

Yet there's this pernicious theology in American Christianity. It doesn't play in Syria. It doesn't play in Iraq. It doesn't play in North Korea. It only plays in prosperous America. What is this pernicious theology? The word of faith movement, right? But if you just have enough faith, you're going to be healthy and wealthy. Well we know that this is complete bunk. Why? Look at all these people up here. Look at Jesus and the apostles. Are you telling me they didn't have enough faith? They were beaten, tortured, and killed. And guess what? We're promised the same thing. Not health and wealth. Don't buy into the idea that you're going to be healthy and wealthy if you just have enough faith.

This is not heaven. Yet it will be. Where's heaven? Right here—it's going to be a recreated heaven and earth. Yes, right now if you die you're going to be absent from the body present with the Lord, but one day God's going to recreate the heavens and the earth and we're going to live in physical bodies that are imperishable and glorified. You won't get what you get now, and that's dresser disease. That's when you get older, when your chest falls into your drawers. That's not going to happen anymore. I got a bunch of dad jokes. You know, there's three kinds of people in the world: those that can count and those that can't. That's the joke. She said, "What's the third one?" You're my straight man.

Let me ask you a question. Why do people sacrifice pleasure and comfort for meaning? Because the hedonist will say, "Well, it's all about just being happy. It's all about pleasure. It's all about comfort." But why do so many people even give that up for something bigger? Because we're wired for something bigger. This life isn't all about just getting enough stuff. There's something more to life. In fact, I think I told you this story last year, but I'm going to repeat it now because it pertains to exactly what we're doing.

On September 29th, 2006, Petty Officer Michael Monsour is a United States Navy SEAL, and he's operating in Ramadi, Iraq. He's standing on a roof in Ramadi, and he's standing in front of a doorway to this roof. He has two Navy SEAL teammates lying in the sniper prone position at his feet. They've already taken AK-47 fire and a rocket propelled grenade, but they're not exactly sure where the enemy is. There's a bit of a lull in the fighting. Insurgents have blocked off the streets in Ramad,i and there's someone on the loudspeaker in the town mosque yelling, "Kill the Americans!" As Monsour and his team are looking for the next attack, an insurgent from an unknown location throws a grenade up on the roof. It hits Monsour in the chest, and it falls to his feet. Due to the length of the throw, there's no opportunity to pick it up and throw it back. He has only a split second to make a decision. He can leap through the doorway behind him and save himself. But if he does, his two teammates lying at his feet will surely die. Monsour yells, "Grenade!" But instead of jumping backward to save himself, he jumps forward, chest first, onto the grenade. It detonates.

Thirty minutes later, 25-year-old Michael Monsour is dead. His two teammates lying at his feet receive only minor injuries because Monsour's body muffled the blast. One of the survivors said at Monsour's Funeral, "Mikey looked death in the face that day and said, 'You will not take my friends, I will go in their stead.'" I've never seen the United States President cry until April of 2008. That's when President George W. Bush invited Monsour's parents into the East Room of the White House to give them their son's Medal of Honor posthumously. The president couldn't even get through the citation without breaking down. Since then, Monsour's High School in Garden Grove, California, not far from here, built a new stadium. They named it Michael A. Monsour Memorial Stadium. The golden trident insignia that the seals wear dominates the 50-yard line. January 2019, just right down here in San Diego, the United States Navy commissioned the USS Michael Monsour, the newest guided missile destroyer in the fleet, Zumwalt class. This is Monsour's mother, Sally, being escorted onto the ship named in honor of her fallen son.

Now why did they do this? Because Michael Monsour sacrificed happiness, sacrificed comfort, sacrificed security, sacrificed his life for something bigger than himself—his friends. And Jesus of Nazareth said, "There's no greater love than to sacrifice yourself to save your friends." So what's God's ultimate solution? Similar to what Monsour did, except while Monsour died for his friends, Jesus died for his enemies. You and me. God suffered himself. In fact, if you think about this ladies and gentlemen, you know what Christianity is? Christianity is the answer to the problem of evil. The whole story is the answer to the problem of evil. If we had never sinned, you wouldn't need a savior. God wouldn't have had to come into this space-time continuum, add humanity to his deity, and allow the creatures that tortured and killed him to be forgiven by their own sin. Basically, we're forgiven because we tortured and killed the Son of God. He allowed that punishment to take our place. And his pain can be our gain. I say can be our gain, why? Because you don't have to accept it if you don't want to.

In fact, a number of years ago I was at the University of Michigan, that's another school up there in Michigan that we were doing a debate—I was doing a debate with a guy by the name of Eddie Tabash, he was a Beverly Hills attorney. And at one point in the debate, he asked me this question. He said, "My mother was a survivor of the Holocaust. She lived a life full of pain and suffering. Toward the end of her life, someone offered her the gospel, but she rejected it, and then she died. Is she in hell right now?" So I said, "Eddie, I don't know where your mother is now. I don't know if she had a deathbed conversion or not, but if she didn't accept Christ before she died, God is too loving to force her into heaven against her will. You see, because the assumption is everybody wants to go to heaven. That is not true. Who's in heaven? Jesus is in heaven. Well, there have been people running from Jesus their entire lives. What's he going to do in the afterlife? 'Hey, where are you going? You're with me now. Get over here.' That wouldn't be loving."

You say, "What's all this business about hell?" Well, I use this illustration at the University of Michigan, and so I'll use it here with you guys. I have a question for the ladies. Ladies, have you ever had a man pursue you whom you did not want to date? Some of you are going, "Yeah, and he's sitting next to me right now. He will not leave me alone." When I ask that question, the ladies always giggle and the men look at their shoes. They're like, "Is she looking at me right now?" Well, suppose this guy keeps pursuing you, he keeps pursuing you, he keeps asking you out, and you kind of get a little tired of it ladies, and at one point you say, "Now look, I like you, but only as a... Friend!"

Ladies, why don't you just stick the knife in and turn it, because every man has heard the dreaded friend rejection. Gentlemen, I have some advice for you. If you ever hear the dreaded friend rejection, move on. She's not interested. In fact, I have some shocking news for you. She doesn't even like you as a friend. Ladies, I'm telling the truth, aren't I? Yeah, yeah, you're just trying to be nice. You're just trying to let him down easy. But no, you don't even like him as a friend, 'cause if you liked him as a friend, you'd be interested, but you're not.

Well, suppose the friend line doesn't deter him either. He keeps asking you out, and he finally says, "Look, I love you so much, I'm going to force you to love me." Ladies, run screaming from the building. Can he force you to love him? No, love by definition must be freely given. So if he truly did love you, what would he do? He would leave you alone. That's what God does for us. He sends us cards, letters, and flowers. He sends us creation. He sends us conscience. He sends us Christ. He sends us the Bible. He sends us Pastor John. He may, if you're in a Muslim country now and you really want to know the truth, you may get a dream or vision from Jesus. This is very common now in Muslim countries. Why? Because he wants people to be saved more than we do. But if God does all that and you keep saying, "No, no, no, I don't want you," God will leave you alone.

Paul even talks about this in Romans chapter 1 where he says, "If you suppress the truth long enough to go your own way, God is going to give you up to your own desire. To the point where you're not only doing evil, you're cheering on other people who are doing evil." Hello, American culture. People are cheering on other people who are doing evil. God is a gentleman. He will withdraw from you. And ultimately, that's what hell is. Hell is separation from God. You say, "Well, what could be so bad about that?" Well, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to look. Regardless of whether you're a Christian or not, everybody gets some of the common grace of God. Everybody experiences love, relationships, hope for a future. You experience all these things, whether or not you're a Christian. This is called common grace. His grace falls on the just and the unjust. His love falls on—you've heard this, right?

But I want you to imagine a place where there is no love, where there are no relationships, where there is no future, where there is no hope. There's just stone, cold, narcissistic self-absorption. That is Washington. That is hell. You're separated from the ultimate source of goodness by your own choice. God is not gonna force you into His presence without your consent. As C.S. Lewis famously said, he said, "In the end, there's only two kinds of people. Those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'Thy will be done.'" You know what God's going to do ultimately to evil? He's going to quarantine it. He's going to put it in a place called hell. He's not going to take away the free choice. He's just going to quarantine the people that want to continue to do evil. So those who don't want to do evil and want to be with Jesus can be without interference. Yes, ultimately, heaven is going to be—or the afterlife is going to be smoking and non-smoking. And you want to be in non-smoking. Okay? But if you want smoking, God will let you go there.

Alright, so what's the summary? Well, first of all, does evil disprove God? What's the answer? No, it shows God actually does exist because there'd be no such thing as evil unless there was good, and there'd be no such thing as good unless God existed. What's the purpose of evil? We went through a lot of purposes. We just went through ten of them a few minutes ago: some of it is to build character, some of it is to draw people to him, some of it is to punish sin, some of it is to allow redemption. And there are many reasons we don't know about because of the ripple effect.

What about purposeless evil? We don't know if there's purposeless evil because we don't know the end from the beginning. The ripple effect allows unexplained evil to at least have a possibility of having a purpose. And it seems like since God is God, it does have a purpose even though we don't see it. What's God's solution to evil? He takes evil upon Himself, so we don't have to take it upon ourselves. We don't have to be punished. He's punished in our place. And then by accepting what He's done and trusting in Him, we're not only forgiven for the evil that we've done, we're given His righteousness. Think about that. You're not just forgiven, you're given His righteousness. So when God sees you, He sees Jesus. If that's not the most fantastic thing in the world, I don't know what is.

So let's summarize this again by what we said earlier this morning from Dr. Peter Kreeft. The point of our lives is not comfort, security, or even happiness, but training. Not fulfillment, but preparation. This world is a lousy home, but it's a fine gymnasium. We're here to be trained to become more like Jesus, who actually suffered more than any of us ever have. Here's one question I might have for you: Do we deserve to suffer less than Jesus? No. If anybody was a victim, it's Him. And if Jesus grew through suffering, can we? Of course.

When I was in the Navy—by the way, Navy stands for never again volunteer yourself—I was in the Navy for eight years, and we had to earn Golden Wings, which were fairly hard to earn. But there's nothing more difficult in the Navy to earn than a Golden Trident. That's what the SEALs wear. Very few people that start SEAL training finish it. Maybe 5% do—one out of 20. Look, those that do make it through SEAL training wear that golden trident with pride. It is their identity. When Michael Monsour was buried in Rosecrans Cemetery just down here in San Diego, just about every Navy SEAL on the West Coast showed up for his funeral. And when they passed his casket, they took off their tridents and pressed them into his casket. They took their identity and put their identity in the one that died for them, the one that sacrificed for them.

That's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to put our identity in the one that sacrificed for us. But you know what our culture says? Oh, no, put your identity in your political party, or put your identity in your ethnic group, or put your identity in your sexual orientation, or your sexual preference, or your vocation, or your bank account, or any one of a hundred different things. But you realize none of those things are ultimate. I mean, if you put your identity, say, in your sexual preference, what happens when you're no longer sexually preferred, or you can no longer sexually perform? Do you no longer have an identity? If you put your identity in another person, what happens if that other person, God forbid, dies or leaves you? Do you no longer have an identity? If you put your identity in your job, what happens when you lose your job or you retire? Do you no longer have an identity?

No, these are not your primary identities. Your identity is in your Savior. Do you realize that every other worldview asks you to achieve your identity? Christianity is the only worldview where you don't achieve your identity; you receive your identity. If you have to achieve—if you have to achieve your identity, all the pressure's on you. And there's always somebody that can do it better. But if you simply receive your identity, it's eternal, it's a gift. You're already granted the key to the kingdom. You're an heir to the throne. And no matter what difficulty you go through here in life, that key to the kingdom is secure. You've been adopted into God's family. Nothing else can compare to that.

And one day, just like he was, you're gonna be resurrected. And you're gonna live in this kingdom unless you don't want to, and then you'll be shut out. You were invited to the wedding, and you decided you didn't wanna go, so you're gonna be locked out. That's on you, not on him. And so, ladies and gentlemen, this verse is true: God is abounding in love and faithfulness. So much so that he took your punishment on himself. And he's willing to give you his righteousness as well. Despite what you go through here in this life.