THE ORIGIN OF EVIL - BCT - ZAC POONEN

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THE ORIGIN OF EVIL - ZAC POONEN

We want to think today, about one of the greatest mysteries, there's in the world, that people have tried hard to understand, its the mystery of Evil. How did evil begin in a world that was created by a perfectly good God full of wisdom ? Why has God permitted evil to exist and to spread so much ? Why does evil has the upper hand in every part of the world ? Why is there so much sickness, poverty, sorrow? Is'nt God interested in helping us? There is an answer to this question,of why God has allowed evil to exist ? Is it because God cannot control it ? Very ofter we find poeple suffering in so many ways , in different parts of the world. Even our hearts are moved, so what about God who is full of compassion ?

Now, before we proceed further, we need to understand that our human reasoning cannot tell us what God is really like. Just like a dog cannot understand a human being, because the human beings are higher in levels of creation than dogs.In the same way, we cannot understand God. If a dog is to understand a human being , that human being must explain himself to that dog, teach that dog the commands. In the same way, if we use our mind to understand God ,it'll be as foolish as a dog trying to understand the human being.Its not possible. We've got to allow God to reveal himself to us and thats what we read in the bible. God has revealed Himself to us the Bible. And in the Bible we read about God who is interested in personal relationship with every single human being on the face of the earth. He's intensely, deeply interested in every single thing in our life.

God is full of wisdom, He's almighty, He's all powerful. He knows everything.He knows the future and He has the total control of the whole universe, not only the Earth,but whole universe with millions of stars. He's infinitely pure, we cannot understand His purity. He's also infinitely loving, full of love, full of goodness. God's love is totally un-selfish.Very often the love that we see on the earth, is selfish. But not God's love, His love is totally unselfish. Right from the beginning and the time He created man, God wanted to share His joy, His happiness with others, with us. Infact thats why He created living beings.Before He created man, and the human race, as we read in the Bible , God creates millions of angels and there again , His purpose was to share His happiness and His glory with all of them.That was long before He created us the human beings.

But one thing. When God created angels, He created them with a freewill. when God created the stars, the planets , He didnt create them with a freewill. The planets for example , rotate around the sun, with perfect timing, they never slip-up, the've doing that for ages.They never disobeyed the laws that God has made for them. Every star in the universe moves in an orbit, designed by God. The Earth moves on its own axis, in perfect swift second timing, in perfect obedience to God's commands, which were put into ages ago. But when it comes to angels, and the human race (which we'll talk abt later). God created us with a freewill. In other words, God created angels and the human beings with freedom, with a freedom to choose whether we wanted to obey God or not.Unlike the planets and the stars , plants, trees that you see , they grow, they obey the laws of nature, which God has put into it. They don't have freedom of choice. Thats why a star can never become evil, a planet can never become evil, a tree or a plant can never become evil. Why is it that they never become evil? because they dont have the freedom of choice.

Though trees and plants may do us a lot of good, God has created them like that. They cannot do good out of voluntary choice. A planet cannot do any good on its own. A star cannot , a tree cannot. It grows according to certain laws of nature, built into it, and it has no choice.Thats how we can say that these beings, the stars,the planets and the trees , they can need not do good, nor evil.They are like, if you had a robot, a computerized robot, in your home, you could program it to pick it up your slippers and do many things like bring you the newspaper, perhaps, even to make a cup of coffee. Many many things you can program a robot to do. But robot would not have any feelings. It would never disobey you, if you had programed it right. It  could do every single thing, that you ever wanted it to do. God could have made men like that, where he never do anything wrong, we do automatically, blindly as it were, dumbly obey God in everything. But God never wanted it. Race of people like that, and they never could be His children. Robots cannot become our children, even-though they obey. Any father could say "I would rather have a naughty disobedient son of my own, than  an obedient robot." It is like that with our God. You know why human fathers feel that way? You know why robots and machines bring no joy to childless couple? Because we are made in the likeness of God, we got something of God's nature in us. Married couples long to have children, they are never happy with machines, obedient machines, they want children. There we see the heart of  God. God is also interested in children. When we think of children, they turn out to be disobedient, they bring a lot of sorrow to our hearts. Then we understand why God created angels and human beings with freewill. Not like the way God created planets and stars. Thats the first thing that we need to understand.

The first essential for a person to be a moral being is freewill. If we dont have freewill, we cannot become moral beings.

The second essential is, conscious , something that tells us, within us, what is right and what is wrong. Now you see birds, animals. They also have freewill, theyre better than the stars,the planets, the trees and plants, in the sense they can choose. A dog can choose to obey you or not to obey you. But theyre still not moral beings. They have no sense of morality. A dog or a bird, a lion, are not moral because they doesnt have the conscious , though they have freewill.

So, there are two things that we need,thats what we see in ourselves. We have a freewill and we have a conscious. Thats why these birds and animals can never become sinful or holy. Because they dont have a conscious, they cannot become children of God. A dog cannot be a child of God, because it doesnt have the conscious. You can train a dog over a period of time and teach it certain things that it should do and certain things that it should not do. Its not because of the inbuilt conscious , but because of the training. Just like training a computer and teaching a computer, programming it to do certain things in a certain way, the way we train the dogs too.

But when it comes to the human race, we have the conscious and before the human race was created , as I said God made the angels. They were millions of them,and he created them with freewill. Among the angels, was there one who was the leader. His name was Lucifer. Bible says in the book of Ezekiel chapter 28, verses 12-15 , that he was created perfect in wisdom,beauty and given a high position. Gradually he began to have thoughts in his mind , ambitions, that were not good. How did that happen? Because he had the freewill and thats were evil began on this universe. Not only Lucifer's thoughts were evil, but they were proud thoughts, rebellious thoughts, thoughts of discontentment, with a lot that God had appointed for him. Up until then, the universe was perfectly pure. But no evil had lifted up its head in the heart of the person that God had created.Thats how evil came into the world. Initially , the evil that was in the heart of Lucifer, the head of the angels,did not manifest itself externally in anyway. Evil always begins in the heart. Even a murder is planned by a man in his heart.From the heart it goes out into action and thats how it was in the Lucifer too.

As soon as this thing came up in his heart, God could see it. God can see a persons heart. And God chased out Lucifer from His presence. From that we learn something GOD HATES EVIL. But when he created a moral being, he had to give the moral being a freewill.There my friends is the origin of evil.

Now we want to continue considering this, because of the solution God has made, through Jesus Christ and we want to think about that in greater detail in our coming programmes.But lets remember this today, evil is not outside of God's control,its something He knew coming and He permitted it, accepted it, and He has provided us a solution for it. That solution is in Jesus Christ.