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| The Passion: God Willed
It Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” is a graphic depiction of what is arguably the worst atrocity in human history. Some might call that an exaggeration. For many, the horrible events of September 11, 2001 made for a greater atrocity. For others, the ghastly holocaust was a greater atrocity, and should be considered the worst ever. It’s true enough that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center constituted an unspeakable evil, made worse by the fact that they were religiously motivated. And words fail to express the horror of six million Jews, two-thirds of the total number living in Europe at the time, slaughtered in the Nazis’ anti-Semitism pogrom. They are God’s chosen people. What could be worse? My reason for saying that the crucifixion of Christ was worse is a theological one. It’s bad enough for an innocent man to suffer, but that has happened routinely in all cultures. But Jesus Christ was not only the Son of Man but also the Son of God. To my way of thinking there can be nothing more appalling that cruelty on the part of creation against the creator. Why did it happen? That’s a question we are going to explore today and for the next three weeks leading up to Easter Sunday. I have four answers which we will take one week at a time. God willed it, Jesus allowed it, we caused it, and the world needed it. Today we’ll look at the first of these four. God willed it. How could God the Father have allowed the God the Son to suffer the brutality, abuse, mockery, and torture that Jesus experienced in the last twelve hours before his death? The question is really the same as asking, Why do bad things happen to good people? And that is a question that all men have agonized over since the days of Job. In answer to the question, I want to make one thing very clear... GOD WANTS GOOD THINGS TO HAPPEN, and for this reason good things do happen. We can import any number of examples from the Bible to prove this point. In the very beginning God created a marvelously designed universe, with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as the crowning jewel of his masterpiece. Over and over again, the Bible says, as the sun, moon and stars were created, as light was separated from darkness, as plants were made to grow and animals made to roam the surface of the earth, “And God saw what he had created, and it was good.” At the end of the six days of creation, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31) Eden was heaven on earth. Freedom was given to the man and woman. They lived in comfort, peace, and complete serenity. They loved each other, and loved the Lord their God. Life was good. This is the way God wanted it. Later, in the days of Abraham, God visited him when he was an old man, feeling as if his life had not amounted to much. The Lord made incredibly bold promises to him, assuring him that he would be blessed in terms of descendants as no one else ever had been or ever would be blessed. And he went on to promise that Abraham’s impact, in terms of those descendants, would be legendary. He was saying, “Abraham, the world, which is a good place, will be a much better place because of you.” Once, the prophet Jeremiah dictated a letter from God to his fellow countrymen who lacked hope. God wanted them to feel triumphant hope and so had Jeremiah promise,
The book of Psalms gives us assurance that God has good intentions,
Jesus explained on one occasion the purpose for his coming by saying this,
God is not capricious. He is not given to fits of insanity, as the mythical gods of the Greeks and Romans were. God is not seditious, nor evil. He is perfect in all his ways. He is holy. He is good, and he wants good things to happen. And for that reason, good things indeed happen, but... BAD THINGS HAPPEN TOO. For every biblical example I give proving the goodness of God, anyone could produce a dozen examples from the daily news of just the opposite. This week we have been seeing on the news information about the trial of the man accused of killing Stephanie Crowe. In an instant, all of those great ideals of God’s design seem to come crashing down as we consider the unspeakable crime that was committed upon her. If a twelve-year-old girl is not safe sleeping in her own bed in her own home, what is this world coming to? Nearly 200 people were killed, and thousands injured, during the morning commute in Madrid on March 11 as terrorist bombs exploded in multiple, synchronized attacks. Thefts, suicides, devastation from natural disasters, the spread of disease – these have become the way of life. Such a list need not be restricted to contemporary life. The same Bible in which we find the expression of the ideal will of a benevolent God also tells us about the opposite side of the equation. Adam and Eve ruined their perfect environment by breaking the one and only rule they had to live by. Later, one of their sons killed his brother. The earth’s population became so wayward in the days of Noah that the Lord decided to wipe it out, except for Noah and his family. In my Bible reading this week I came to the story of Gideon, an unlikely hero for Israel, to whom God spoke and said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” Gideon replied, “If the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?” He was speaking about defeats and disappointments and troubles from every side that had come upon them. And, again, when mentioning bad things that happen in the Bible, we come back around to the worst of them all – the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Here we have a dilemma. God wants good things to happen, and they do, but bad things happen too. This dilemma seems to have only two solutions. Either God is willing to stop evil but is not able to, or he is able to stop evil but not willing. At first these seem to be two equally noxious poisons, but they are not. To say that God is willing to stop evil but not able is to limit God, but that is the conclusion that some feel drawn to. Some people believe that God, while he is obviously greater than man, is not in fact infinite, and that his power, knowledge, and presence will go only so far. This is a popular idea today in liberal theological circles as some suggest that maybe God does not know the future after all. He may have a better sense than us that terrorism or tornadoes are on the horizon, but he doesn’t know precisely when such things will happen. If he did, he would do something about it. As for me, I cannot agree with that point of view because it is so disappointing in comparison to the other idea, not to mention that it is not biblical at all. It’s not an equal poison to say that God is able to stop evil but chooses not to. In fact, it is a far better solution to the problem, and I would like to show you why by pointing to a chapter in the Bible book of Isaiah that we will be drawing verses from during this four-week series. Isaiah 53 was written by a Hebrew prophet eight centuries before the birth of Christ. The insights given to this author are simply uncanny. Even in his own time he was legendary for his ability to precisely describe events that were just around the corner as if they had been written up in yesterday’s newspaper. For example, he predicted a coming captivity, named the national force that would take the people as captives, then told the exact name of the king who would later free those very people, a king who at that time had not even been born! Things happened just as Isaiah said they would. This same man had the foresight to see that one day a deliverer would come to the Jews, and that he would be rejected by them. When you read Isaiah 53, then turn in the Gospels to the details of the crucifixion of Christ, it is obvious that it was this event that the prophet was writing about. It is in this chapter that we find the four reasons for the passion of Christ that I mentioned earlier. Once again, the first of the four is that God willed it.
What a strongly dramatic word! It would be stunning enough if we read, “It was the LORD’s will to allow him to be crushed,” but instead, “It was the LORD’s will to crush him...” We would not say that God was willing to stop Jesus from suffering, but not able. We must say just the opposite. He was able to stop Jesus from suffering but not willing. Why? Because the death of Jesus accomplished something so wonderful that it was worth it. We celebrate on Easter Sunday that Christ rose from the dead, but of course he couldn’t have risen from the dead if he had not died. We say enthusiastically that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, but of course that means that he died on the cross! This enables us to find the answer to that horrible dilemma, Why do bad things happen to good people? And this is the answer, GOD ALLOWS EVIL IN ORDER TO ACCOMPLISH A GREATER GOOD. John Piper brings out this point in the little book he published just this year entitled “The Passion of Jesus Christ.” The book lists fifty reasons why Christ suffered and died. Included among them are, “to absorb the wrath of God,” “to take away our condemnation,” “to free us from the slavery of sin,” etc. His final reason is this: “to show that the worst evil is meant by God for good.” Piper is clear about placing the ultimate responsibility upon the shoulders of the sovereign God,
He continues,
Another preacher distilled the mysterious way that God brings good from evil down into just a single phrase,
I think the application of this is plain. Bad things happen in your life and mine, and when they do God allows them, and he does so in order to accomplish a greater good than otherwise could be accomplished. Do we always see this greater good? Of course not. But sometimes we do, and always when we do it is because we are looking for it with eyes of faith. May we have eyes of faith. |