23: Is It True That God Will Not Allow Sin In His Presence?, Part 1

Welcome back to the Ready for Eternity podcast. I'm Eddie Lawrence.

Conventional Christian wisdom says that God will not allow sin in His presence.

People repeat this so often that it's accepted by Bible students as fact. Is it true that God will not allow sin in His presence?

That's the question that we're going to answer on this and the next episode. I found the following quote on a website and it's representative of this idea that God will not allow sin in His presence.

Because God hates sin and God is righteous, just, and holy, His nature disallows

Himself from coexisting with sin in His presence. For this reason, God must keep

Himself separated from sin. Is this true? Does the Bible really say that God will not allow

Himself to be in the presence of sin? In this episode, I want to look at a few Bible verses that people claim teach this idea, and in the next episode,

I want to look at some Bible verses that show that this idea is demonstrably false.

But where does this notion come from? It comes from what I call trickle -down theology.

We hear the idea that God will not allow sin in His presence from the pulpit, from Bible class teachers,

TV, radio, and the internet. This myth trickles down to us as if it were fact, and we perpetuate it endlessly.

On the surface, this teaching sounds reasonable. After all, it is true that God hates sin, and He repeatedly instructed

His people in both the Old and New Testaments to turn away from sin. In addition, there are a few

Bible passages which, on the surface, appear to support the idea that God will not allow sin in His presence.

These are Genesis 324, Psalms 5 -4, and Habakkuk 113.

Let's look at these one at a time and see what they're really teaching. Genesis 324 is about God expelling

Adam and Eve from the Garden. He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden, He placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the

Tree of Life. Genesis 324. Some people may look at this passage and say, see there?

God couldn't allow these sinners to remain in His presence, so He expelled them. Well, let's look a little closer.

What reason does the Bible give for their expulsion? Verse 24, which we just heard read, explains that it was to prevent them from having access to the

Tree of Life, and verses 22 and 23 make this abundantly clear. Then the

Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.

Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the Tree of Life and eat and live forever.

Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.

Genesis 3 22 and 23. This passage is not about God preserving

His holiness by banishing sinners from His immediate presence. It was about denying

Adam and Eve access to the Tree of Life. It would have been an absolute disaster for humans to live forever in a perpetual state of sin.

Barring access to the Tree of Life meant that humans would grow old and die. Eternal life was still a possibility, but humans could no longer obtain immortality by eating from the

Tree of Life. This verse is not about God banishing sin from His presence.

It's about the penalty of Adam and Eve's sin. What about Psalm 5 4? If there was a verse in the

Bible teaching that God will not allow sinful beings in His presence, it would surely be this verse.

For you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. Psalms 5 4.

When David wrote this Psalm, was he teaching that God will not allow sin in His presence?

No, this isn't what David was saying at all. In context,

David was seeking relief from his enemies. In Psalm 5 3,

David wrote of presenting his case to God and then expectantly waiting for God's answer.

He was confident that God would respond favorably to him because he is not a

God who delights in wickedness. Albert Barnes in his commentary said this about Psalms 5 4.

The psalmist here refers to a well -known and well understood characteristic of the divine being, that he was holy and pure, and that he could not have any pleasure in furthering the designs of wicked men.

This is said with reference to his enemies, who were thus wicked, and the idea is that God would not, and could not, consistently with his nature, further their designs.

Neither shall evil dwell with thee. The same idea is here expressed in another form.

If God should show favor to the wicked, it would seem as if he admitted them to his habitation, as we do our friends and those in whom we delight.

But as God would not do this, the psalmist feels that it was proper for him to call upon him to deliver him from wicked people.

The key question is, what does David mean by the word dwell?

The Hebrew word is ger, transliterated into the English letters g -u -r.

It's often translated as the English word sojourn, or live. In this psalm, does dwell refer to being in close physical proximity?

The word certainly can mean physical proximity. Listen to Exodus 3 22, and when you hear the word lives, in the passage, that's the

Hebrew word ger. But each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives, ger, in her house for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing.

You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the

Egyptians. Exodus 3 22. Most words have a range of meanings.

This is true in English and Hebrew. We use the word dwell in multiple senses.

We dwell in a home, we dwell in sadness, we dwell upon a thought, etc.

The context we use a word in helps us to know which particular meaning the speaker or the writer meant to convey.

The implication in this psalm isn't that God doesn't partner with evil.

He doesn't confederate with the wicked. Therefore David has the confidence to pray to God to deliver him from his enemies because David knew that God doesn't side with evil.

Psalm 15 gives us the flip side of Psalm 5 4 by describing the kind of people that God will partner with.

Listen for the word sojourn. That is the Hebrew word ger. Oh Lord, who shall sojourn, ger, in your tent?

Who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart, who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend.

Psalms 15 1 through 3. David wasn't saying God refuses to be in close proximity to wicked beings.

He was communicating that God will not side with the wicked. Let's look at the final verse.

Some people read this and then come to the conclusion that God not only cannot be in the presence of sin, he can't even look at it.

Some read the first portion of Habakkuk 113 and jumped to this conclusion.

They reason that if God cannot even look upon wrongdoing, then certainly he wouldn't allow it in his presence.

You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong. Habakkuk 113.

Before drawing such a conclusion, one should really read the rest of the verse.

You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?

Habakkuk 113. The prophet states that God's eyes are too holy to look at evil, but in the very next breath says that God does it anyway.

It would seem that the prophet was perplexed, like most of us, by the inequities of life.

Why is it often the case that the righteous suffer and the wicked flourish? The prophet is complaining to God about perceived injustices.

The prophet actually is implying that God's cure for the situation he finds himself in is worse than the disease.

The context of the passage concerns God using a very evil nation,

Babylon, to punish wicked Israel, who Habakkuk considers to be righteous in comparison.

Listen to this quote from the New Bible commentary about this passage. The theological problem facing

Habakkuk is how a holy God, one who is pure in all things and completely separate from sin, can tolerate wrong and treachery as practiced by the

Babylonian instruments of his punishment. While the sinful in Israel are wicked, in comparison, they are eclipsed by the even greater perversity of Babylon.

Beside Babylon, sinful Israel can be called righteous, here a relative rather than an absolute term.

They are so far removed from the standards expected of God that the prophet can only express wonder that he can even look at them.

The prophet is by no means saying that God doesn't allow sin in his presence.

He's trying to sort out his emotions and make sense of the circumstances.

People who use these three passages to say that God will not allow sin in his presence are guilty of proof texting.

Proof texting is applying a verse in a way that the author never intended. To lift a verse out of its context and try to make it mean something it was never intended to mean is mishandling the words of God.

Sometimes people proof text deliberately and other times we do it unintentionally.

None of the passages we've considered, nor any other passage in the

Bible, supports the idea that God is unwilling or unable to be in the of sinners.

In the next episode we'll see that the Bible teaches exactly the opposite.

Thanks for listening to the podcast. We hope this episode has deepened your understanding of Scripture.

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