Is God the Author of Evil?

We're blessed also to have with us Dr. Derek Thomas on staff at First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi, also professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary there in Jackson. I was first introduced to the preaching ministry. of Dr. Thomas at a recent Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary Spring Theology Conference, where he delivered a very powerful sermon on the reality of hell and the sad neglect of that reality in many of our pulpits today. So, Dr. Thomas, come. Dr. Ribble will give Dr. Thomas a more thorough introduction tomorrow morning. But Dr. Thomas, come and preach to us. We receive you gladly. Well, thank you very much for your warm welcome. I've been excited, as the Americans say, to meet my brother, Mbewe, of whom I have known and heard for a dozen or more years, maybe more than that, But this is the first time we've actually met and we have some friends in common and I was greatly blessed and Samuel will attest to the fact that I was scribbling away redirecting my thoughts in the light of some of the things that he was saying in that earlier address. I think we've got some preachers present. A preacher's nightmare is to be second, especially as you see your best points being taken away from you. This past summer, I had the distinct privilege of preaching in Calvin's pulpit Well, it's not actually Calvin's pulpit that went the way of the fishes a long time ago, but it's in the same location, a different piece of wood for sure. But there were three preachers beginning at seven, eight, and nine. And you thought this was tough. And I was at the nine o'clock slot when everybody wanted to go home. Not only that, but you've given me an immensely difficult task. I said to a friend yesterday, where are we? Yeah. Charlottesville. I said to him, I'm going to Charlottesville tomorrow. I don't think I've ever been there before. What should I look out for? Liberals, he said. And I said, not at the place I'm going to. I'm going to be speaking on the doctrine of the decree. As the token Presbyterian in this gathering, I don't think I've ever been asked to speak on the doctrine of the decree in a Presbyterian church. proud of you for having the temerity to do so. I want to thank you for, I've spent a couple of days this week re-acquainting myself with the 1689 Baptist Confession. the Second London Confession and I'm going to refer to a section of it in Chapter 3 which refers to the Doctrine of the Decree but also to Chapter 5 which is the Doctrine of Providence and I'll be doing that a little bit tonight and I'll also be doing that again tomorrow when you've given me an equally difficult task of speaking on reprobation or double trouble, double predestination tomorrow morning. But where to start? We could start in Genesis 3. We could talk together tonight about the entrance of sin into the world in the Garden of Eden. Except that that is not the origin of sin. Sin existed before Eve transgressed. Satan had already fallen. There was evil in the universe before Eve fell. So Genesis 3 in and of itself does not answer the question as to the origin of evil or the title that you've given to me. Is God the author of evil? And to answer that question we need in some way to examine the origin of evil and sin. So instead I keep telling myself I'm all Jobed out in that I often find myself speaking on the book of Job. But I do want to take as my starting point and hopefully my ending point something in the book of Job tonight. This is not a sermon. I feel obliged to say that. This is not an introduction, three-point conclusion with illustration sermon. This is more of an address trying to deal with the question that I've been asked, is God the author of evil? I'm not going to deliver it as I might in the classroom to sleepy and disinterested seminary students. Although I do want to occasionally refer, I think, to some important theologians and some important issues of doctrine, at least doctrines that are referred to tangentially, if not directly, within the 1689 Baptist Confession. Before I begin, however, I've been wrestling with this all day in the plane on the way up. It was one of these small lake hoppers that Delta now use, where if you're over six foot as I am, you're sort of like this most of the way. It was impossible to work for sure. get at any of my books or anything. So I was most of the time thinking about an issue. And the issue that I was thinking about on the way up was the issue of boundaries. What do you put in the 1689 Baptist Confession? And what do you leave out? How far should a confession go in declaring Christian truth and thereby demanding allegiance to it? And there are boundaries. We can only insist upon that which Scripture reveals. I believe the Bible is God's inerrant word. From Genesis to Revelation, all 66 books, every jot and tittle. If it's in the Bible, God says it and I should believe it. Period. But we are asking a question tonight that the Bible, in one sense, doesn't fully answer. So I'm tempted to say, is God the author of sin? No. Well, thank you for inviting me. I believe I have a room in a hotel somewhere and I'll see you in the morning. You've no idea how much I'm tempted to do just that. Because if we cross that boundary into speculation, and some of what I'm going to say possibly does, It at least, I'm going to concede that every now and then we're going to be peering over the wall as to what's on the other side. Did you come thinking that I would give you the definitive answer to the most difficult theological question that's ever been asked? This is the most troubling question in the whole of Christendom. Actually, in the hold of world religions, pagan as well as Christian. The origin of evil. How can God be good and there be evil in the world? How can God be sovereign? Sovereign, absolute. He used the word absolute. A contentious word in theology. God is absolutely sovereign and yet our confession says he is not the author of sin. Twice in our confession, the writers of that confession, actually they're mimicking word for word what the Westminster Divines wrote in the Westminster Confession. So, forgive me if self or subconsciously when I say our confession I'm actually thinking of the Westminster Confession but I'm trying to put my Baptist hat on now for a second and forgive me if I slip because I just might in the heat of the moment I just might but on this issue the 1689 Baptist Confession and the 1645 Westminster Confession are absolutely identical. He is not the author of sin. Nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather affirmed. So where do we go? Well, to scripture. And to Job. And to chapter 2. And to what my mother calls a domestic. When husbands and wives are having a little tiff, my mother calls it a domestic. And Job and Mrs. Job are not seeing eye to eye in Job chapter 2. Now, let's be serious for a minute. Job has lost all ten of his children. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose one child, let alone ten, in one go. And he has lost his life savings and 401k, which then were camels and donkeys and so on. And in chapter 2, he has lost his health. And they say, don't they, if you have your health, you have everything. Actually, that's not true. That's a silly and un-Christian statement to make. And I know Christians make it all the time, but it's not true. So, let's pray before we read God's Word. Let's pray. Father, every word that we're about to read is Your Word. written through the instrumentality of human beings, but divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit. What the Bible says, you say. And we pray now for minds and hearts and spirits that are subject to your word. We are going to ask some questions of this word, Lord. You have made us rational, inquisitive, exploring beings. Forgive us in advance for asking questions to which perhaps there are no answers to be given to us. And we pray now for the blessing of your spirit. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Job chapter 2. Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. I want you to note in passing, just lodge it there somewhere, that Satan is coming at the commandment of God. He's coming to keep an appointment. Our brother Mbewe said, God is absolutely sovereign. And this verse is saying, yes, he is sovereign over Satan. Satan cannot lift a finger outside of God's decree and that doesn't make God the author of sin but it does it does say God is sovereign over sin and evil and Satan and the Lord verse 2 and the Lord said to Satan where have you come from Then Satan answered the Lord and said, from roaming about on the earth and walking around on it, Satan has no home. Have you noticed that? That's what hell is like. It's never being able to say, I'm home. And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job? You realize that's the most scary thing, I think, that you'll find in the Bible. This is God now saying to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job? Perhaps Satan hadn't considered him until this moment. Satan isn't omniscient. You understand? God doesn't have one of those moments when it suddenly dawns on him. But Satan does. He's not omniscient. He's not omnipresent. He's not all-knowing. He's not everywhere present. He's not omnipotent. He's not all-powerful. Have you considered my servant Job, for there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil." This of course sets up the dilemma in the book of Job, that Job's suffering is not the direct result of his personal sin. This is not punishment. This is not retribution on God's part. And he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to ruin him without cause. So, Satan entices God against Job to ruin him without cause. There are depths there. You understand? If you're not asking the question, you're asleep. Without cause, meaning random, God does things randomly? Yes, from our perspective. Yes, from Satan's perspective. From God's perspective? No. He's speaking to Satan. He's speaking to us because there are things that happen to us that appear to us to be without cause, to be without point, to be utterly random and haphazard. Oh, don't tell me that you've never had that thought, that God plays with you like a cat. Hands up, those who have cats. Baptists don't have cats. You ever seen a cat play with a half-dead mouse? You've never seen that? When they just sort of will it to move and then... It's a game. And they'll hold their paw and lick the other one. Without cause. Satan incites God against Job seemingly, no, we've added the word seemingly, without cause. Is that where you are tonight? Secretly? Maybe not so secretly. Maybe not so deep down. Maybe up close and personal. You think God is dealing with you without cause. And you're saying, this is not fair. And Satan answered the Lord, verse 4, and said, skin for skin, yes, all that a man has, he will give for his life. However, put forth thy hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, And he will curse thee to thy face. So the Lord said to Satan, Behold, he is in your power. Only spare his life. Let's use the word for now, permission. Calvin did not like the word permission when it came to God's decree. or God's providence or God's predestination but that's for now imply the word permission God permits Satan but there are boundaries who's in charge here God is in charge he sets the boundaries He sets the sphere in which Satan may operate. Does that make him the author of sin? I'm not used to Presbyterians answering back. Verse 7. I'll get used to it in a second. Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a potsherd to scrape himself while he was sitting among the ashes. Then Mrs. Job, his wife, said to him, Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die. Augustine called Mrs. Job, um, Diabolus Matrix. Now, you don't have to know any Latin to know that's not a compliment. That's, you know, this is not the issue. Let's give Mrs. Job the benefit of the doubt here, just for the sake of it. Maybe she's saying, I don't want to see you suffer, so get it over with quickly. Curse God and you'll die. Maybe that's what she was saying. Well, as my mother says, this is a domestic, so what does Job say to her? Verse 10, he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Foolish, of course, in Hebrew is the fool that says in his heart, Psalm 14, there is no God. In other words, this is a godless statement she's making. This is an unfaith statement that she is making. It's coming from the worldview of atheism. of antagonism to God is basically what Job is saying. Shall we, and here's the text, shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept, well my translation says adversity, which is true, but some of your translations say evil. If you have the King James, for example, I think if I remember rightly, it says evil. Shall we accept good from God and not accept evil? There are three truths that we need to contend with. One is that God is sovereign. Two, that God is good. And three, evil exists. God is sovereign, God is good, and evil exists. How can evil exist if God is sovereign and if God is good? Well, the answer to that may lie in denying one or all of those statements. You may deny that God is sovereign, for example. Now, there are all kinds of ways in which that may be done. Armenians, for example. And I mean 17th century Armenians. I mean, to be kind, semi-Pelagians. Semi-Pelagians or Armenians don't believe that God is powerless. They don't believe that God isn't in charge of anything. Armenians are perfectly happy saying God sends the rain. God sends the wind to blow. The sparrow that falls in Jerusalem, that's by God's sovereign, determining hand. 17th century Armenians were more Calvinistic than some of the counterparts that call themselves Arminian today, who are full-blown Pelagians and borderline... Well, let's not go there. Classical Arminians, against whom the 1689 Confession is largely being written. There were two enemies in the focal site of the 1689 Confession. One, of course, was medieval Trentian Catholicism, especially the Jesuits. And the other were Arminians. And Arminians believed that nothing can violate the freedom of the human will. Everything that lies outside of personal choice, God is in charge of. Well, that sounds great. It's incredibly difficult to actually ascertain where that boundary might be. What exactly lies outside the realm of personal choice? Because everything that happens at some point that even that sparrow may fall to the ground because it's been hit by a plane that was the choice, the personal choice of some pilot to take off at a certain point in time. I mean, at what point do you say this is personal choice and that is not? But that's one way of solving the dilemma of the existence of evil and the goodness of God. Evil is man's fault. It is Satan's fault. And God isn't there. Let's push the boat out much further. Because it's in the same family. modern 21st century open theists. That the future is open. If you are absolutely... I was going to use the word determined. Well, let's use it. If you are determined to maintain human freedom, the absolute liberty of the human will, libertarianism, then the future cannot be certain. Not even to God. I mean, if there is such a thing as free, undetermined choice. Have you noticed, by the way, how many times Armenians will say, I don't like the way you use logic or syllogisms because it backs me into a corner. And I always say I love logic and syllogisms for that very reason. But let's get back to open theists. Open theists want to maintain libertarianism as far as the will is concerned. Which means the future at least some part of it, and determining which part is and which part isn't is as difficult for open theists as it is for Arminians. How can you be certain about anything? If open theism is true, there can be no certainty of the second coming. There can be no certainty of heaven. and certainly not for being there forever, because why would you want to insist on absolute liberty of human choice in this world and not insist on absolute liberty of human choice in the world to come? So that even if you do choose to be in heaven, you could still un-choose to be there. Open theism is the road to ruin. You can deny that there's a problem by denying sovereignty. Let's put it in a more popular form. Rabbi Kushner. Why bad things happen to good people. You've all been there, sadly I'm sure, as I have been, at a funeral. Someone in the community perhaps, and you've gone out of respect to a funeral and you've stood by a grave or it's been held in a church somewhere and the minister will say, this has nothing to do with God. God's hands were tied. God was looking the other way. This is human malice and greed, but it has absolutely nothing to do with God. Don't blame God because God wasn't there. I understand the intent, I understand the desire to bring some kind of comfort, I understand the desire to try to maintain belief in Christian theism in the midst of horrendous human pain and suffering, but that is at the cost of the very doctrine of God itself. Our brother Mbewe, I think, mentioned Acts 2 and again in Acts 4, Peter after Pentecost. Who killed Jesus? It was you with wicked hands who took him and slew him. But it was all by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. Peter upholds, in an absolute sense, human responsibility. They are responsible for their actions. They are morally culpable for their actions. What they did was a crime against humanity and against God. but not a single aspect of it lay outside of God's determinate counsel and foreknowledge. Or, in the language of this conference, His decree, His plan. Well, you can deny You can deny God's goodness. You know, Socrates asks in Plato's Euthyphro. Socrates asks, Do the gods approve of the good because it is good? or whether goodness is good because the gods approve it. Look, it's late. And way too late for those kind of philosophical questions. But let me put it simpler. What Plato is doing, of course, was the stuff of the Greeks in the mind, in the words of Socrates. Is there a kind of goodness that sort of exists over and above God, and God accedes to its goodness because it is good in itself? No. No. Well, they may have done in Greek philosophy for sure, but from a biblical standpoint, absolutely not. Because there is nothing that is over and above or outside or external to God Himself. You may deny that evil exists. Oh, don't look at me as if no one says that. Tom Cruise says that! Along with Mary Baker Eddy and Christian science. Bonkers as it is to the average person in the street. You may deny the existence of evil. But from a biblical standpoint, all three of these are true. God is sovereign. Absolutely. Not in the sense of some in the medieval period who talked about a doctrine of absolute power, meaning that God could declare evil to be good if He wanted to. Not in that sense. You know, there's a scary moment in Calvin. It comes actually quite early on in the Institute when Calvin does something that's quite un-Calvin-like. And he says, there is a righteousness in God that exceeds the righteousness that is revealed in the law. That's a scary moment in Calvin. That you can obey the law and still be guilty. Not in that sense. God is absolutely sovereign. Sovereign in creation. Sovereign in providence. Sovereign in redemption. Sovereign in judgment. For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things. Romans 11, 36. Now what is there outside of that? Of him, through him and to him. What's left? Nothing. God is sovereign. Not a hair, and this is of immense comfort to more than one in here. Not a hair Now, you folk with a full crop of hair, you may not think this is big. To some of us, it is big. To find yet another hair in... Well, I don't use combs anymore. They're a waste of time. But to find another hair falling out is a big deal. But none of it happens outside of God's sovereignty. When's evil? Where did evil come from? It's the sort of question school kids will sometimes ask. It's the sort of dismissive question that college students will ask. Usually the road that leads to abandoning Christianity. I used to be a Christian. I used to be religious. I used to go to church until such and such a thing happened. We're asking it in the ultimate sense, of course. Where did evil come from? And there are all kinds of answers. some are more intellectually satisfying than others. For a long time in the early church, at least up until the time of Augustine, sin was seen in a kind of philosophical way as the absence of good. Sin was seen as a kind of privation, something that was missing. It wasn't a full-blown philosophical attempt to answer the question. There have been attempts that we can subsume under the category of permission. God permits it. He allows it. He's not responsible, but he permits it. He allows the circumstance in which sin may occur. He is sovereign over the formula, the circumstance in which he creates man and before that the angels with free will. The power of choice. You may take the apple or you may not. You may eat, you may not. God creates those circumstances. He permits those circumstances from which sin emerges. But He is not responsible for it. It has a lot going for it. Except, the more you try to explain it, the more it sounds as though You've set a boundary as to God's sovereignty. God is sovereign up until an edge and then over the edge something happens and God is not in charge. The real moral issue is, if God is sovereign, why doesn't he prevent it? He may have created the circumstances in which sin occurs But that doesn't solve the moral issue. The moral issue is, if God is sovereign, why doesn't he prevent it from happening? Now, that isn't just a philosophical conundrum in third-year seminary ethics class, which it is. Why did God not prevent that divorce? Why did God not prevent that car from coming that hit my 15-year-old son? And a thousand other issues, each of which may ring a bell in your own soul. And there lodges in our soul a doubt. Not as to God's sovereignty. Hey, we're a Reformed Baptist here. Sovereignty is one of our calling cards. We're not Arminians here. It's a doubt as to the goodness of God. Or the willingness of God to go the nth mile for you. Does God really love me? Because if He really loved me, He wouldn't have allowed that to happen. He'd have interposed His sovereignty. There's a view that's very popular today. You know sometimes if you give something a name you think you understand it? Because you use it in sentences. It used to be the word determinism. Folk don't like the word determinism anymore because it's a scary word and it sounds sort of nasty and mean and unloving and unkind even though I think John Edwards was probably as close to being deterministic as you can get. I have one person who agrees with me. I love this audience. The word today is compatibilism. I'm not convinced, and this is not the place to do it, but I'm not convinced that the word compatibilism takes you any further than the word determinism does, except that it's a neat word, because you have to learn how to spell it to begin with. And it's spelt with an I and not an A, because my students get it wrong all the time. Compatibilism. And then you think, yes, what is the answer to God's sovereignty and the existence of evil? Well, it's compatibilistic. Really? What does that mean? That's not the road that the 1689 Confession took. Because the 1689 Confession took a different road. And I'm going to quote it to you now. In chapter 5 and section 2, although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly so that there is not anything that falls any by chance or without His providence, yet by the same providence He orders them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently. Now that's your confession now. It's actually almost identical to the wording of the Westminster Confession. It's making a distinction in causality. There are levels of causality. Now, it's nothing new. Augustine spoke about it. Aquinas spoke about it. Anselm, that's the 18. Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm. All three of those covering a span of almost 700 years. in medieval, early and middle medieval theology. All of those spoke about first and second causes. Calvin, in the Institutes and in his 1553 treatise on predestination, speaks about first and second causes. In the sense of first cause, God is the author of everything. He is sovereign over everything. But there are levels of causality. There are second causes. Now, we know about this in a totally different way. My wife is, among other things, is a weather channel nut. If there's bad weather, and we've had rain for, I think, 18 days in succession in Mississippi, the weather channel is going to be on. She loves everything about it. You know, the reporter who's out there getting soaking wet, you know, and he's trying to hold on because the wind is blowing with all of the effects. and he'll tell you the scientific reason why this wind is blowing in this direction and why he is able with increasing accuracy to predict what the weather and what the temperature is going to be five days from now. That's about as far as science has got with any reasonable degree of accuracy. I remember a dear minister, a friend of mine, who was retired and a little eccentric, praying one time in Belfast. I was a minister in Belfast for 17 years. And in the climate, those of you who've been to Britain will know we don't have the balmy climates that you're used to here in Virginia. If you took the children out for a Sunday school outing, there had to be two plans. One, if the sun shone, and more likely, plan B, if it was raining, which required a haul of some kind to bring them into. So if you took them to the seaside, there had to be a haul as plan B, just in case it rained. And the forecast for the next day when the Sunday school trip was taking place was for rain. And the minister got up to pray, it was prayer meeting night, and he got up to pray and in just sheer exasperation said, who do these weathermen think that they are? You are sovereign. And I wanted to say, Reverend McDowell, you need to make a distinction here between first and second courses. But does that... The confession makes that distinction between first and second causes. God is author of the first cause, but he's not the author of the second cause. There are levels of causality. He creates the circumstances in which other causes may take place. Sinful ones, evil ones. Well, it satisfied to some degree the Calvinistic theologians of the 17th century, both Presbyterian and Congregational and Baptist. But does it solve the question? Is God the author of evil? No. Because every fabric in our being wants to say no. Because God is good. God is just. God is holy. Now tomorrow morning, and I'm on first tomorrow, we're going to talk about inference through prolapsarianism tomorrow. So have a hearty breakfast, because this is for strong men and women and boys and girls. So those of you who know where I'm going with that, that's coming tomorrow morning. I do think that supralipsarianism has a problem, a greater problem to answer than infralipsarianism. But neither point of view, can fully resolve this issue. It's interesting from a pastoral point of view how the book of Job answers that question. Because Job isn't asking the philosophical question of Socrates in Plato's Euthyphro. He's asking the very personal question. Why is this happening to me? Did you notice, and my dear brother Mbewe referred to Romans 11, so let me, and he referred to the first, turn to Romans 11 verse 34. And my brother referred to the first part of verse 34, I mean he referred to verse 34 for who has known the mind of the Lord or who became his counselor and rightly he said that's a quotation from the Old Testament look at verse 35 who has first given to him that it might be paid back to him again that is a quotation from the book of Job. It actually comes in Job 41 and verse 11. It comes right at the end of Job. You remember, and I've got to limit what I'm saying here because of the time. You remember in chapter 38 of Job, God begins to speak. The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind. He's been silent for 37 chapters. The friends have said their peace. Evil is God's just retribution for sin, always, without exception. They only have one song, they sing it to death. Elihu has contributed perhaps a little more. And opinions vary as to how much Elihu contributes to the narrative. And then in chapter 38, God speaks. You notice he speaks out of a whirlwind. Isn't that interesting? You'd think that God would come to a man who's dying, who's lost ten children, who's lost everything. And he'd whisper in his ear with a still, small voice, But he comes in a whirlwind. Who is this that darkens counsel with words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man. He's asking for a fight, you see. Job was asking for a fight. So, God says, well, put him up. This is an intellectual fight. This is an epistemological fight, you understand. 3B, I will ask you and you instruct me. And everything within you says, no, that's not fair. That's not right. Job has been asking the questions. God is the one who needs to be answering. Why is there sin in the world and why is sin affecting, why is evil affecting a man who is righteous? And how is God not himself culpable? His morality? And God turns the tables. I will ask you and you will instruct me. And you're saying, there's something fishy here. This isn't fair. This isn't right. And what's the first question? Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? And everything within you says that that's not fair. Nobody knows the answer to that question. And what's that question got to do with anything? And then in chapter 40 and verse 15, after 50, 60 questions, none of which Job has been able to answer, Behold now Behemoth, and scan your eyes down to verse 1 of chapter 41, Leviathan. Do you see it? Behemoth and Leviathan. Now, it doesn't matter to me what you think Behemoth and Leviathan are, elephant, rhinoceros, crocodile. It doesn't matter. in the 16th and 17th century Behemoth, of course, was an elephant. Well, let's go with that for a second, for our 1689 Baptist forebears who thought Behemoth was an elephant. Did you ever look at an elephant? It looks like something a committee made. That ridiculous What's the word for a nose? No. I can't remember. And that tiny little tail? Why did God make an elephant? Why did God make an elephant, Samuel? Quote me the catechism. For his own Glory, good boy, for his own glory. Did you ever wonder why God made an elephant? I wonder why God makes alligators. I wouldn't lose a moment's sleep if there were no alligators left in the world. I'm sorry for all the green friends out there saving the planet. You may save the planet, but if there are no alligators, it's fine by me. Why did God make alligators? Or crocodiles? I don't know. I do not know. Why does God permit, through certain causes, over which He is totally sovereign as first cause, evil in the world, answer, I don't know. For his own glory. Pastorally, you see, we can have a lecture here and we can talk about this issue because it's been the issue of philosophy for a thousand, two thousand, three thousand years. But far more importantly, What do you do with evil and sin that comes into your life that isn't the result of something that you do? We can handle evil that is the consequence of our actions. It's when evil comes to us that is not the consequence of our actions. When a woman is raped, why did God permit that to happen? Why was that part of God's decree? You know, when Calvin preached on the book of Job in 1554, he preached 159 sermons and in the very first one he said, it is a great thing to be subject to the majesty of God. It is nice to know why God does things, but He is under no obligation to explain that to you. The only important thing is that He understands. and my puny little mind may never grasp it. Oh, I may use highfalutin words and terms of theology and philosophy to try and explain what God has revealed, but you know there comes a point at which there's a boundary. There's a line in the sand over which we dare not go, because to go there is to begin to speculate outside of that which God has revealed about Himself. And that's a minefield that will inevitably explode in your face. Sometimes all we can do is bow in wonder and awe and worship. God is sovereign, God is good, and evil exists. And He sent His Son into the worst place of evil imaginable to meet the full, unmitigated force of it, because He loved us. Father, we thank you, though we can barely begin to say that we understand. We want at all times to be subject to that which your Word reveals, and we want to be content with being there and nowhere else. Now grant us your rich blessing, we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.