The God of Prosperity and Evil

In the book of Isaiah we read a rather startling declaration by God.

Five. Bring the sunny day. I also bring the storm bring the arid desert.

I also bring the flood and of course now the question is will is it evil of God to be behind and in charge of and sovereignly and providentially controlling natural disasters fundraising schooling through that evidence question today on Renewing Your Mind. Religions notice before we get to his message. Though we received a phone call recently that underlines why it's so important to address deep questions like this.

This is Abraham from Los Angeles really helped me dealing with some of the more difficult questions and help me to better understand the mystery of God and God's plan and purpose in his 20s and better understand some difficult topics like why is there suffering in the world and how does that fit in with that all-powerful, all loving God and what about people who've never had the opportunity to even hear about Jesus like remote tribes and very distant behind difficult to reach parts of the world's I will they be just a mile of the church and the recent series was a very helpful series when numerous things like young children getting cancer and and having the right attitude towards death and helping our loved ones who are experiencing something so difficult questions like that it's really been isolating your ministry has addressed those head-on and really provided some wonderful lectures some wonderful speaking, on those matters which help to deepen my feet help bring me closer to God, help me to better understand God and what he's working in my life. In other people's lives and all throughout the world you very much Thomas thank you Abraham. We appreciate you calling Dr. Sproles message today will help us make sense of another important question is God the author of the call today were going to turn our attention to a hard saying from the writings of the prophet Isaiah, and this saying is hard in both senses, in the sense of trying to understand its meaning and second of all, in the sense of the apparent severity of it. This hard saying is found in the 45th chapter of the book of Isaiah beginning at verse four where we read this narrative for Jacob my servant's sake and Israel. My elect. I have even called you by your name.

I have named you though you have not known me.

I am the Lord, and there is no other.

There is no God besides me. I will gird you, though you have not known me that they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity. I the Lord do all these things have you been following this reading in your scripture. Perhaps you are reading a translation that contains the words that have been so difficult for many believers as they struggled with it and those words are found in a different translation of verse seven.

The other translation reads I form the light and create darkness, I make peace, and I create evil. It's that translation of the text that has been so problematic because the earlier translation explicitly says of God in this chapter of Isaiah I meaning God create evil.

I don't know how many times in the course of my ministry. I've had people, particularly students, college students and seminary students come to me with this text and say what does this mean I thought that we were not supposed to believe that God is the author of sin or that God creates evil. I remember when I was a student in graduate school in Europe studying the question of the origin of evil and having my professor at the Free University of Amsterdam make mention of what he called the biblical prioritize the biblical a priori spell that word a priori or off a priori may not be familiar to you. It's a technical term that is found frequently in the discipline and the language of philosophy, but isn't too often used in ordinary speech, but something that is top priority is innate.

Fundamental or foundational. The word comes from the Latin, which basically means before experience its antonym or its opposite is our posterior hoary which means after experience.

But when we talk about our priority's were talking about basic ideas.

We remember that the Declaration of Independence spoke about inalienable rights that we learn about from nature, and so on. Which sort of fell back upon the thinking of the British philosophers and even before that the rationalists such as René Descartes, who was seeking for what he called clear and distinct ideas in a sense, Descartes search was for a priori truths truth that is self evident and we hold these truths to be self evident that would be an off priority truth basic and controlling to everything that you think well when I was in this course in Europe and the professor spoke about the biblical priority. He said that single biblical a priori that is to govern all of our thinking foundational to all religious understanding. Is this God is not the author of evil. Now, if that's so foundational. How do you deal with the passage in Scripture that is translated by the words. I am the Lord, there is none other. I create evil, it certainly seems at least on the surface that Isaiah has little time for Prof. Burke hours biblical a priori because he seems to deny it clearly and emphatically by saying that God creates evil. While there two ways that we need to approach this text as we seek to understand what is being said. First of all let me qualify the so-called biblical a priori when the biblical a priori is declared to say that God is not the author of sin or the author of evil. What that means is that God himself never does that which is evil. But how do we relate that to the idea of God's creating evil well if it's evil for God to create evil, then obviously God could not create evil because God does not do anything evil yet we live in a world that God has created and there is clearly evil in that world. So we know this at least that God has created beings which beings have the capacity for evil. Obviously Satan was able to do evil or the wouldn't have done it, and Adam and Eve were capable of sin or they wouldn't have sinned. So it's manifestly obvious that God in his work of creation has created beings who were capable of falling into sin, and of performing sinful actions. But that's still not the same thing as saying that God himself created evil, because the biblical record indicates that God created Satan as an angel and in his creation.

He was a good angel and that Adam and Eve were created good, and then they later became evil.

There was a mutation in their character, but still God stands above and beyond and over and behind all of this activity. Now the first thing we have to say about this text is that when it speaks of God's creating evil. It's not talking in the first instance about moral evil. The Old Testament word for evil has at least seven different nuances.

Usually when we use the word evil were talking about moral evil, sin, while the Scripture speaks of badness or evil in other categories as well. It speaks of natural catastrophes, floods and hurricanes and earthquakes as, for example, indicating physical evil like disease or natural disasters. These are not something done by villainous people. This is by impersonal nature when nature erupts in an earthquake. Nobody starts screaming that mother nature has done something sinful, but yet we use that word bad or evil. With respect to a physical calamity again a famine is a physical calamity but it's not a manifestation of some particular persons moral corruption so that anything that is bad to the Hebrew can be called evil.

Now, what kind of evil is in view here in Isaiah is relatively easy to discern. A while back we had a little brief, short course on the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, and at that time that we examine the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. I mentioned a few of the literary devices that are found commonly in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, the chief of which is the poetic device called parallelism. Some of you will remember that I spoke about this form called parallelism where certain statements are made in a parallel way and there different kinds of parallelisms.

There are what are called synonymous parallelisms where the same idea is communicated into different ways.

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you, saying the same thing and just two different manners that synonymous parallelism, but there's also what is called antithetical parallelism where contrasts are stated in a poetic way, where something positive is stated and then it's negative follows it. Now that's what we have here in Isaiah 45 if you will notice in our text we read in verse seven I form the light, and create darkness. There is the clear contrast between God's work of creativity in terms of making both the light and the darkness, light and darkness stand in contrast to each other not actually what we have here in this text is a form of synonymous parallelism yet it is a synonymous parallelism. We have two verses that are basically saying the same thing. But the thing that they are say is a matter of contrast so you can also identify this is antithetical parallelism in the first stanza.

I create light and darkness says that God does both the makes the light and he makes the darkness. Even though these two are contrasts say that in the next stanza, a similar statement is made by God, which would make it synonymous parallelism, but it's also a statement of contrast and notice what the contrast is I make peace, and I create evil or other translations. I create prosperity and I create evil value. Notice here that in the translation I have.

It reads I make peace, and I create calamity of the modern translator is trying to get at the force of the original Hebrew here that I make peace, and I may calamity you see that the evil that is on the second side of the structure.

I give prosperity. I create evil.

The type of evil that is in view here is not moral evil, but it is that evil that is in direct contrast to peace or prosperity so that what Isaiah is simply saying here is the spokesman for God is that God brings blessing and he brings curse he brings good times and he brings bad times. He brings peace. He also brings conflict. He brings the wheel. He also brings well.

He brings prosperity or he brings calamity so it's not that the taxes saying that God does moral evil or creates moral evil. It is saying, however, that God is the author of all of these conditions ultimately what this passage is communicating beloved is the sovereignty of God over the entire creation. Note the refrain.

I am the Lord, there is none other. I am responsible for the whole of the creation for the whole of human history. It is my divine sovereign Providence that stands over all human events by bringing the abundant harvest. I also will bring the famine I bring the sunny day. I also bring the storm I bring the arid desert. I also bring the flood and of course now the question is will is it evil of God to be behind and in charge of and sovereignly and providentially controlling natural disasters is an interesting that even in our insurance policies. There are clauses for those things that are called acts of God, at least the insurance underwriters have some sense of sound theology at that point because the idea here that the Hebrew is saying is that all of life.

All of nature is under the authority and the government of all mighty God, not to be sure, as we learned when we were studying the doctrine of God's providence.

It is important for us to make the historic distinction that the theologians have made between the primary and secondary causality.

The idea of primary causality means that the ultimate source of all power. The power to do anything in the universe resides with God in a sense I can't even do moral evil apart from the power of God with us at me.

That's a hard say what that means is that I don't have the power to do anything apart from God, who is the foundation of all being in all power. The New Testament says that is in him that we live and move and have our being. That doesn't mean that God makes me sin. I'm the one who wants to sin, but I can't even execute my sin unless God in his sovereignty decides not to stop me because I can't draw a breath apart from his sovereign power. My secondary causality is real causality. I can really take this piece of chalk on holding and decide to drop it on the floor as I just did, but I couldn't open my fingers to drop it. Were it not for the sovereign power of God. That's the lesson that Isaiah is saying here is not trying to teach us that God is bad is trying to teach us that God is sovereign is not trying to give us a lesson on the origin of sin here or on even on the origin of evil. That's another vexing question that we can treat more fully later, but rather, this message is designed to teach us of the unique governing authority of God again for Jacob my servant's sake and Israel. My elect. I have called you by your name what God is saying here is that you wouldn't have a name you wouldn't have a destiny there wouldn't be a nation of Israel if it were not for me. I am the one who chose you. I am the one who forms you. I am the one who named you I am the one who redeems you. I am the one who gives you blessing. I'm the one who gives you judgment.

I am the one who brings prosperity.

I am the one who brings you calamity by in the Lord, and there is no other. This is a biblical truth that even some Christians have a tough time embracing willing to say that God allows this romantic happened but we need to remember that God is not shy about declaring his total control over everything even calamity.

So we have no reason to try and water down or apologize for what God declares about himself. I hope Dr. RC Sproul's explanation of this today was was helpful stay with us because he'll return in just a moment with a final thought on the goodness of God, even in tragic times glad you joined us today for Renewing Your Mind. I believe Webb and we have spent the week looking at some of the hard sayings we find in the Old Testament books of the prophets that we featured for those messages, but that would like to send you the entire series.

There are five messages in all contained on two audio CDs to send a donation of any amount to look at your ministries along with your request, you can give your gift online@renewingyourmind.org or you can call us. One of my colleagues is standing by to take your call at 800-435-4343 you and listening. Darcy's message today, we can understand why the disciples were fearful when Jesus called the sea his power to them was overwhelming. It is right for us to fear God. If you have placed your faith in the finished work of Christ, you can rest in the knowledge that God loves you as a caring father and in the midst of all this happening today is a pandemic political turmoil economic uncertainty that is reassuring. This might be a message you'd like to share with a family member or friend who is struggling. We invite you to request the hard sayings of the prophets, a teaching series by Dr. RC Sproul number again is 800-435-4343. You can also give your gift of any amount online you go to Renewing Your Mind.org in our corn Dale. I want us to look again at this somewhat scary idea that the sovereignty of God indeed stands above and behind every single thing that ever happens. That in itself is hard for us to swallow because there are lots of things that happen to us that are genuinely tragic in their real life circumstances, but when we understand that the sovereignty of God stands above beyond and behind even the tragedies of our life that is not a reason for us to curse the darkness, or to think that this casts a shadow over the goodness of God, but really it is a matter of the greatest hope and greatest comfort for us because we know that when God exercises his government of the universe in his sight. There are no tragedies and it's because God stands sovereign over all human circumstances, that the Scriptures can say all things work together for good for those who love the Lord and who are called according to his purpose. When we are called according to his purpose and are his children. Even the tragedies as tragic as they may be in their earthly manifestation ultimately redound to our good, happy fortune, and to the glory of God, 20, 21 marked 15 years of ministry polygamy in one of the ways were marking this milestone is with the release of a new podcast of features some of RC's most definitive work will introduce you to it tomorrow and we hope you'll join us for Renewing Your Mind