November 8, 2017 Show with Marc Grimaldi on “Evil & Suffering in a Sovereign God’s World in light of the Sutherland Springs, Texas Massacre at First Baptist Church”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this eighth day of November 2017.

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I'm delighted to have back as a returning guest today, Pastor Mark Grimaldi, who is one of two pastors at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island located in Merrick, New York.

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He's also the author of several books, and we are going to be addressing one of them once again.

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We already had addressed this theme with Pastor Mark very recently. His book is titled

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Evil and Suffering in a Sovereign God's World. Well, today we are going to apply the biblical truths found in the pages of that book to the

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Sutherland Springs, Texas massacre at First Baptist Church, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Mark Grimaldi.

02:10

Thank you, Chris. Always a pleasure. Appreciate it. And before we go into the subject of the book,

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I'll tell our listeners something about Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick. Yes, Grace Reformed Baptist Church.

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As it says in the name, we are a Reformed Baptist Church that we hold to the, of course, the solace of the Reformation.

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Our confession of faith is the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, and certainly we would love anyone to come and visit us right here in Merrick and Long Island.

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And that is the church that I was last a member at before relocating to Pennsylvania and joining the

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Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, where I'm a member now. And I understand after I left

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Long Island and left Grace Baptist Church, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, and had my membership transferred, that the church has like spiraled out of control, and you're down to like five members after I left, is that true?

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We're down to two. We're still working our way up to three since then. So you and Pastor Doug are it, and even your spouses are no longer members.

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They're not even here anymore. No, I'm obviously just kidding.

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I think the most frequently repeated phrase at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island is, Chris who?

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But I do miss dearly many of the brethren there, and please send my warm greetings to them.

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You know, this tragedy, as these kinds of tragedies, these horrific nightmarish occurrences are happening more and more in our modern world, than they ever did when

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I was growing up. I mean, I'm talking about the rapidly repeated occurrences of these kinds of events, that if we were to only discuss these kinds of events on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, that would be, you know, we would have no room to discuss anything else.

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If every time an occurrence like this came up, we would just have everything else theologically and otherwise fall to the wayside, because these things happen with such frequency.

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But it is very providential that we had already scheduled you to be on today.

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We did not schedule you because of the tragedy that occurred in Sutherland Springs, Texas, but we had already scheduled you, and it just so happens providentially that you wrote that book,

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Evil and Suffering in a Sovereign God's World, so it makes it more providentially appropriate to have you on today.

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And I know that you have spoken about this the last time that we had you address the subject of this book, but perhaps you'll repeat it for our listeners who didn't hear the last interview.

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Can you tell us what led you to write this book, in light of the fact that there have been other works that contain biblical truths on this very subject that have been available for centuries to the body of Christ?

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Why did you find this particular volume a needed volume, and what was the void that needed to be filled in regard to this subject?

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Well, I figured, Chris, for starters, that all the other writers were just terrible and better.

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Including the God -inspired ones, I'm assuming. No, well, you know, what inspired me to write this book,

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Chris, really was—and I think a lot of Christians at some point or other, especially those who are

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Reformed, go through the kind of thinking that I was going through, and just thinking about the reality of the presence of evil in the world, and even the questions that we get, you know, many times from either friends or loved ones, or especially the unsaved.

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You know, how could a God who is good and loving, you know, allow these things to exist?

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And then from a Reformed setting, how can He ordain these things if He's completely sovereign over all things?

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And if He knew beforehand what would happen, why did He create Adam and Eve in the way that He did, and why didn't

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He stop it? Where does evil come from? Does evil always exist alongside of God, or if it doesn't, then

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God precedes everything? Is He the author of evil? So a lot of those kinds of questions, you know, come up naturally, you know, when we try to reason through things, especially in the

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Reformed faith. And in wrestling through those things from a biblical standpoint, I wanted to try to come out with something, a small volume, which this is.

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This is about 100 pages, and it's also cut pretty short. It's like half the size of some of the bigger books, and just something that people can use as a handy tool and kind of work through the chapters and get at least somewhat of a biblical explanation for, you know, that would answer these kinds of questions.

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So I think we all have these kinds of questions, condensing it, putting it more in a short form, and of course in modern language, those kinds of things were motivating me,

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Chris. Well, it certainly is probably the number one issue that comes up when you are trying to present your faith, especially to unbelievers, or perhaps even to anyone, even a seasoned believer, when they themselves are personally experiencing the loss of a loved one or a tragedy or any kind of trial that seriously complicates their lives and perhaps plunges them into depression or confusion or doubt.

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But I mean, obviously, it's been known for centuries as the theodicy, the defense of God in the midst of evil and suffering, and these are things that can't be reconciled in the minds of everyone, and we have had in history and even very recent history, well,

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I mean, it's recent to you and I perhaps, but there are probably many millennials who don't even know who

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Rabbi Kushner was, but Rabbi Kushner who wrote a classic book titled

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Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, and in that book, Rabbi Kushner's answer or way of resolving the paradox of a good

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God being a God over an earth and over a people who are constantly facing all kinds of evil and suffering, his answer was that God is not all -powerful, that there are things beyond the control of God, which is obviously a very heretical and dangerous teaching that is foreign to the scriptures and obviously even foreign from the

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Hebrew scriptures, and I'm sure that there were multitudes of Orthodox Jews that were in an uproar over Rabbi Kushner's book, but that can't be the issue, and you have on the other end of the spectrum, you have those that are conservative

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Bible -believing Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy who are opposed to the notion that God is in sovereign control over everything, and in fact that he decreed all things that come to pass, so they go to the other extreme to teach that basically for God to preserve a world that was nothing but peace and happiness and joy, he would have to rob men of an autonomous free will, which seems to be the greatest gift in the minds of the non -reformed

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Christian, that for God to not have this type of free will embedded in the minds and hearts of every human being would make us robots in their opinion, and therefore we could not truly love

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God or one another because we would be just acting like pre -programmed automatons, but if you could give us the biblical truth, which obviously avoids those two heretical extremes.

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Yeah, yeah, Chris, as you said, both of those are dangerous views, because in trying to reason about something that's difficult to understand or to comprehend, they would sacrifice the things about the very character and essence of God, and that's a real dangerous place to go, and that has a lot of other ramifications on the other side of the horse, but the truth is that, yeah, that God is completely all -sovereign over all things,

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God ordains all things, there's nothing that happens outside of his will, and at the same time he is completely good.

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He is good, he is gracious, he's loving, he does not rejoice in evil, he does not have an itch to see people harmed or to see evil prevail in any sense, and yet at the same time he's completely sovereign and even uses the evil that exists, uses, ordains to use that evil for great good, so in the sense that even though we would perform the evil acts because of our sin nature,

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God would even ordain that and use the very evil that we perform to accomplish his good and glorious will for his good purposes, so he's completely sovereign over all things, is what the scriptures teach, and yet at the same time he is good and righteous, both are true.

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And I'm going to give our listeners our email address if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter over which you are asking.

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So that's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. What can we learn from the comforters of Job?

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Obviously a classic example in the Bible, a primary example of a man who was known as a righteous man, not a sinless man, but one who was a

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God -fearing individual, and all these things, all these calamities came upon him.

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There were attempts by Satan to break him, to prove

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God wrong, that if he was assaulted in all varying kinds of ways with increasing intensity, even leading to ultimately the death of children and so on, the devil was trying to get him to lose his faith, to abandon it and curse

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God and so on. And we have comforters, friends of Job coming to him, and before they start making mistakes and being more involved in wounding him or rubbing salt in the wound than they were comforting him, they did the right thing initially, didn't they?

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Weren't they very silent initially when they approached him? Yeah, I believe when they first approached him, they came with sackcloth.

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I think there would have been some degree of fasting. They were silent. You're right, Chris, and they just were there with him.

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And it's just a real good, in that beginning part at least, a good example for us. Sometimes the best thing to do is just to be there for people, and of course, as you know, over time they had spoken what was on their heart and they really did some great damage at the same time.

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But originally, yeah, I think that there was some good things there at the very beginning, absolutely. Now, don't you think that that is wise for us to remember, especially those

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Christians that are in love, and very appropriately so, with theology and doctrine and those who have a craving to always learn more and so on?

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Sometimes we are the ones that are most guilty for trying to be a seminary professor in the midst of every occasion that providentially comes within our witness or within our life, when we are trying to reach out to someone with the love of Christ or as an ambassador for Christ, or simply as a brother or sister in Christ or as a friend.

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We may have a tendency to unload a truckload of theology on someone when that may be something very appropriate in time or over time, but can we be too quick with that kind of thing when we are attempting to comfort those who are experiencing great loss and great tragedy and suffering?

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Yeah, and yeah, I think especially, you know, we were Calvinists, right, and believe in Reformed theology and the doctrines of election and predestination, you know, we need to be very careful because, you know, the

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Word of God is comforting, but it has to be used wisely and carefully, and there are times, like you said, if somebody's mourning or grieving, there's a place there to give them the comforts and just a reminder of God's encouragement toward them and that He's with them, as opposed to just, you know, well,

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God is ordain this and, you know, you should be happy and, you know, things like that. We need to really be sensitive to where people are and compassionate.

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Part of this we see not just in the church, but even on the internet. Every time these great events have happened, these horrible and tragic events have happened, like what happened in Texas, immediately all the political, you know, atmosphere just gets riled up and it's about gun control and about what to do and everybody's trying to jump on it and use it to an advantage.

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And people going back and forth and debating things and it gets all heated. I mean, while it's, there's no sense of compassion for the people who lost loved ones, you know, and things like that, so I think there's got to be wisdom on how we approach things.

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The silent issue, like you said before with with Job's friends, just to be there for people and to be able to understand how, you know, to understand how they feel and to be compassionate and gracious, spend some time in the psalms with them, maybe those kinds of things.

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We don't want to just throw theological truths at people that, while they might be true, just are not the best word in season for someone who's been traumatized.

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For example, one of the guys at the Texas church there, from what I read, had lost eight family members, his wife, some of his,

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I think his children, his wife and his parents, all in one shot in that church. You know, what do you say to a guy like that?

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Do you just walk up there and say, you know, so talk about the sovereignty of God in a way that's kind of like, get over it? Or is there a place for really just listening and compassion and trying to really spend time with him and to love him, you know?

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I can vividly remember, it's like etched in my mind, and I'm not going to identify the person by name, even though this person is actually now in eternity with Christ, this person has passed away, but this individual, who

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I love dearly, dear brother, but very lacking in tact when he found out that my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and I was at a prayer meeting, obviously asking for not only the

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Lord to make it clear that my mother was saved, which the Lord certainly answered that prayer, had the privilege of having

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Peter Jeffery, of all people, who is now also spending eternity with Christ, Peter Jeffery spent at least a half hour at my mother's deathbed, and this is during one of his rare visits to the

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United States, so it was very providential for me to have that privilege, and Peter Jeffery arose from her room, because he was alone with her at my request,

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I wanted him to be alone with her, and he came out of that room and said with his thick Welsh accent,

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I don't know what you're worried about, she's going to heaven, she's born again, she's a Christian, but this individual approached me after prayer meeting, after hearing me praying for a healing for my mother, and he said, just remember

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Chris, it's a sin for you to want your mother to live, if it's God's will for her to die, and I said to him, how do

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I know it's his will for her to die, unless she's already passed away, I mean that's kind of an unusual thing to say, because you have no idea if it's

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God's will for a person to die, unless that person does die, obviously after that has happened, you know for certain that that was

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God's will, because he has decreed a day and an hour for all of us to depart from this earth, but that kind of a thing where somebody has such a desire to immediately thrust some kind of a theological, what's the word, placard at you, and in that case it was just misinformed, and unusual, and a bad placard, we have to really put a leash on our tongues sometimes, and just be there to hug people, and cry with them, and pray with them, don't we,

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I mean we don't need to all be seminary professors during people's trials. No, in fact generally speaking during times like that, people aren't looking for a lot of, you know, a lot of words, they're more looking to be able to have somebody there with them, like you said

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Chris, and whatever is spoken, it's got to be very careful, and wise, and not, you don't want to just like you said, just throw out theological platitudes, that certainly was inappropriate, and it was theologically wrong too, for him to say that it's a sin for you to be praying that way, it's just absurd.

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David was pleading for the life of his son when he was born, and even though he knew in advance that God had said he would take the life of his son, because David had still hoped that just maybe

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God would be merciful, and David wasn't sinning in doing that, he was doing the right thing, and then when God took the baby, he put back his clothes on, and went and ate, you know, and he accepted the will of God, but it was, you know, there's nothing wrong with that, so that was, yeah,

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I don't, that's kind of wacky, I'm doing that. And even we have a classic scene from the scriptures that even many people who are not

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Christian have some familiarity with, and perhaps you could exegete this shortest passage in the

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Bible, I believe, Jesus wept. I know that there are people that have varying ideas as to why

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Jesus wept, that are separate from just the fact that he was mourning the death of somebody he loved, and I don't know what your opinions are, why do you think

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Jesus wept? Was that just one of a number of reasons he wept, or was it, as far as we know, just because his dear friend?

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Yeah, yeah, I believe, Chris, that that text is profound. I believe that, first of all, we know that Jesus, right, theologically, and not only theologically, him being, you know, the

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Son of God, and knowing he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, he knew all that in advance, in fact, he prolonged his stay where he was before that, so that Lazarus would die, so that his glory would be seen in raising

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Lazarus, and yet, I believe that he wept because he saw the under -suffering of the people, and he felt compassion.

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I think he wept because he felt their pain, you know, and even knowing he was going to raise up Lazarus, he had a perfect human heart, and he had compassion, and he wept, you know,

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I mean, I know there's all kinds of theological explanations people try to say, and he did this for this reason, and he was weeping because he was grieved over their unbelief, and all that, that's just,

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I don't see any of that in the text. He just, he was just a compassionate Savior, who though, even though he was the

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Lord of Glory, and would raise up Lazarus shortly after that, he was in touch with the emotions of those people, and he felt it, and he wept with them.

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That would be the normal way to understand that from what is written, to presume he was weeping over a lack of faith is just that, it's presumption, isn't it?

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I mean, there's nothing in the text that would make us, or lead us to the conclusion that that is why he was weeping, other than the normal reason why people weep when someone dies.

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It's because of compassion over not only the fact that a loved one has died, but also the fact that there are people around that loved one, family members, and friends, who are in mourning, and they're weeping.

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Yeah, yeah, there's no question in that setting, and even in the setting where Jesus weeps, where else, in fact, over Jerusalem, you know, recognizing that the destruction that's going to come upon her, because of her wickedness, and how often he reached out, and you know, sometimes we can over -calibrize things, and try to write, you know, try to excuse what we see in the text from the reality of the fact that our

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Lord was profoundly human, fully human, in the most sanctified sense, and had a heart, and a compassion, even for those who were coming under his judgment, even though he was sovereign, even though he knew all things, there was a real, you know, there was a real sense of grief over what was going to happen, and I think we need to be able to embrace all of what the

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Scriptures say, and not just take our logic, and connect every dot, and say, well, since this is the case, you know, it couldn't have been this, and just write off the whole, you know, the whole emotional and compassionate side of Christ as a

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God -man, because we need to learn from that. Sadly, we write that off, because maybe part of us doesn't want to absorb that, we see it as weak, or whatever it is, or not trusting in God's sovereignty, but both of those things can be parallel, and run together in the same direction, and they are in Christ.

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And we're going to be going to our first break right now, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to forward you an email with a question from our listener in Slovenia, Joe, because it's rather lengthy, and I'd like you to have it in front of you, so you have time to look it over during the station break, but in fact,

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I will read it now, and I will also forward it to you, so you have it in front of you, and as I said, it's rather lengthy, so this way you won't miss anything that he has to say.

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Joe in Slovenia says, Dear Brother Chris, thank you for being so sensitive and caring to offer your show as a forum for the healing process needed by so many, and seemingly ever more frequently.

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Asking theological questions in relation to topics like this is always dangerous from the standpoint of risking being perceived as insensitive and uncaring.

26:57

Please don't misunderstand me, but do we in large part struggle with the injustice and outright evil of these types of tragedies, at least partially, because we lose sight of the ultimate injustice and quintessential expression of evil in the crucifixion of Christ, especially when we remember he willingly gave himself to be brutally murdered by us in our place.

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Do we inappropriately fixate on the injustice and evil of these types of horrific atrocities because we have lost sight of and confidence in the eternal and absolute justice and righteousness that awaits us all in Christ's return?

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Accepting those pardoned in Christ, no one gets away with anything.

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Thank you for your worldwide pastoral ministry on this and similar topics.

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Well, thank you Joe in Slovenia, and we're going to have Mark Rimoldi answer that when we return from our station break.

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If you'd like to join Joe in Slovenia with a question of your own, if you want to get in line, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, God willing, we're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Thirdly, you can... Well, for some reason, our ad froze midway right in the middle of the commercial, so I'm not really sure why that happened.

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Hopefully that won't continue happening, but we are back with our discussion with Pastor Mark Romaldi of Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island, which is located in Merrick, New York, and we are discussing the theme of a book that he has written.

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He has written a number of books, but this particular theme is something that is obviously very providential in the midst of what has just recently occurred in Sutherland Springs, Texas, the massacre that occurred there at the

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First Baptist Church where nearly 30 men, women, and children were murdered by a sadistic, evil individual, and the book that we are discussing is

33:34

Evil and Suffering in a Sovereign God's World. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

33:43

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

33:51

USA, and only remain anonymous if it is over a personal and private matter that you are asking the question.

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34:14

and click support at the top of the page. But most importantly, keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in your prayers.

34:21

We hope that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio blesses you for many years to come. And that too occurred according to the decree of God for reasons that we may never know, even in heaven we may never know that, and probably in heaven

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I'm quite certain actually that we won't care. And I don't think that I will probably care by the end of the day, although it's frustrating right now.

34:50

We have Joe in Slovenia, he asked you a very lengthy question, and I'll read it to you again, and you had it in front of you

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I'm assuming as well, but he said, Dear Brother Chris, thank you for being so sensitive and caring to offer your show as a form of the healing process needed by so many and seemingly ever more frequently.

35:09

Asking theological questions in relation to topics like this is always dangerous from the standpoint of risking being perceived as insensitive and uncaring.

35:19

Please don't misunderstand me, but do we in large part struggle with the injustice and outright evil of these types of tragedies, at least partially, because we lose sight of the ultimate injustice and quintessential expression of evil in the crucifixion of Christ, especially when we remember he willingly gave himself to be brutally murdered by us in our place?

35:44

Do we inappropriately fixate on the injustice and evil of these types of horrific atrocities because we have lost sight of and confidence in the eternal and absolute justice and righteousness that awaits us all in Christ's return?

36:03

Accepting those pardoned in Christ, no one gets away with anything. Maybe I'm just revealing my own stupidity, but I'm actually having a hard time understanding the thrust of Joe's question, other than the fact that it's obvious that people do view asking theological questions at certain points as being insensitive and uncaring, which is something that we already were addressing, perhaps in part at least, in what we were saying at the outset of the broadcast.

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But is he, and perhaps he could send a clarifying email, but is he saying that are we paying too much attention to horrible atrocities, knowing that was a far greater atrocity that Christ was crucified?

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I don't know if that's what he means, but obviously we're not supposed to lack compassion, and we're not supposed to ignore things like this just because of the fact that the greatest act of injustice that ever took place in history was the murder of Christ.

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But at the same time, I don't know, what do you get from this question? Yeah, I'm not 100 percent sure either,

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Chris, but what I would say is that I think part of what he's saying here is that maybe, and he's obviously talking about the we is speaking about Christians based upon where he goes in the whole context of this, but I'm assuming that he means maybe when we begin to be so fixated on the evil of what has taken place to the point that almost we would question

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God in any sense because of what has happened. Do we forget what happened at the cross and the utter evil of what took place there on our behalf and so on, and we also forget that there's going to be, ultimately, justice will be served for those things that happened, such as what happened in Texas anyway.

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God will deal with those things, and we forget those things. I'm not 100 percent sure, but what I would say is this anyway, and hopefully this would in some way answer some of our brother's question.

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I do have, in the book, I have a section toward the later part of it where I address the issue of the cross, and the chapter is called

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Bringing It All Into Perspective, and I try to show there, because I think that's important. You have to come back to the cross when you deal with the issue of God's sovereignty and the reality of evil in the world, because it's at the cross.

38:23

In one vein, we see the greatest sense of evil taking place, the greatest event of evil, in that a man who is completely righteous and just, the

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God -man, is being crucified, is being mocked, being crucified, and ultimately put to death for no sins of his own, so there's a great evil there in one sense that takes place, and yet at the same time,

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God accomplishes the greatest good through that evil. He uses it, and he's just in what he does,

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Lord, because Jesus is standing right on our behalf. He's dealing with our sins, so God uses even the evil of man, of those who have put him to death, even the evil of the devil who had a time there, in some way, as the

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Lord says, during that time, the opposition of evil would come against him, that God used even all of that with those evil intentions on the parts of creatures that he used for the greatest good, for the greatest righteous cause, and in the end, it would all bring glory to God, right?

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So I think part of what he's saying is along those lines, but also with what happened in Texas or any of these kinds of present events, one of the things that I note in the book when dealing with the issue of some of what we would classify as the most heinous forms of evil in the world, right, such as what happened there, let's say a child who was raped repeatedly by someone and murdered and things like that that would get us really just horrified by the extent of evil.

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One of the points I make with that is that it is important to be reminded that there is a judgment for these things, that nobody is getting away with anything, and I think that's part of the point with what our brother's making, is we have to be reminded of the fact that what we see in time and space is not the end all, right?

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And for those who commit these kinds of atrocities, unless they repent, right, and come to Christ, which certainly in the case of the guy who did this at the church, couldn't have, right, he murdered himself, or he was shot and killed himself, that there's going to be a recompense that it's not the end from based on what we see on this side of the grave, that there is a judgment and God will deal righteously to the fullest extent with those who commit such heinous acts of evil.

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So again, I'm not sure 100 % if that's where he was going, but I think there's some of those elements in there.

40:44

Yeah, and I don't know whether it was his intention or not, but I could apply his question to an in -house argument that we who are

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Reformed have with our Arminian and non -Calvinist brethren. In fact, even

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Arminian brethren are not all in lockstep harmony over this, because there are those who would be not

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Reformed who seem to have an understanding of God's sovereignty over all earthly events, or all events in heaven and on earth.

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They would not view God, not all of them that is, as some kind of just a cosmic spectator who is just sitting there on his throne watching things happen.

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But there are those, I can still vividly remember

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Joel Osteen's father, John Osteen, who was a very different kind of a preacher than his son

41:50

Joel, both heretical. But the approach that John Osteen had was he was more openly critical theologically of people who he disagreed with, whereas Joel Osteen doesn't seem to want to criticize anybody for their theology.

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But John, his dad, I can remember him bashing Calvinism during a sermon, and he said, can you believe that there are people who believe that if your little itty -bitty baby wanders out into the street and your little itty -bitty baby gets hit by a car and killed, that God had something to do with that.

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God had nothing to do with that. That was the devil that did that. And I can remember sitting there thinking, so the devil was more powerful than God at that moment?

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Or was God sleeping? Or what do you mean he had nothing to do with it? It's just that when

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Christians—I can understand when a non -believer or perhaps a new believer might react that way, but a person who's a trained pastor who, you know, from what

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I remember, he and of course a lot of people like him, even if they have horrible theology, they know what the

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Bible says. They don't necessarily exegete it correctly, but some of them have great memory skills about biblical texts and so on, and yet this man is trying to remove

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God from the equation of something like a baby being killed, or I'm sure he would have said something very similar if he was alive, in regard to the massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

43:33

Now, removing God completely from this situation, people are compelled at times to somehow find comfort in that, but is that really a source of comfort to think that God had nothing at all to do with what occurred?

43:48

There's no comfort at all, Chris. It's far worse if that were the case. If you think about it, that the itty -bitty baby who walks out in the street and gets hit by the car, and the devil had kind of gotten away with that, first of all, there's in some way a relinquishing of power on the part of God, or yin -yang kind of thing, where there's an equality there with God and the devil, but what happens with that is basically it makes the whole what happened to that baby purposeless.

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There's no purpose in it. It's just that the devil got away with it. What we look at in the doctrines of Calvinism, and more importantly, the doctrines of Scripture, is to say that even in that death of that baby, in some way, we might not have all the answers.

44:31

We're not God. We don't understand everything, but in some way, at the end of the day, God is going to be glorified in that, and some great good will come out of that, and oftentimes it's through the most horrific events that God accomplished some of the greatest good.

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For example, the cross, right? You look at the cross from the standpoint of an observer who doesn't understand what's going on there, which many of his disciples would not have before, right before he had risen from the dead.

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It looks like, okay, well, the devil won. The devil got away with it, but when we realize on the other side of that cross that not an ounce of God's glory is tarnished, that at the end of the day, there's not some springs of history that have gotten out of God's hands that are on the side somewhere.

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We look at the doctrines of Scripture, and we see that every single spring of history is going to spill into the ocean of bringing glory to God.

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Everything. There's not a drop that's going to be left out somewhere, whether it's an itty -bitty baby, which is far more significant than a drop, or whatever it is, dying in some way, or what happened to the church in Texas.

45:34

All of these things, God is going to use all those things for great good, to bring great glory to his name, and in a very righteous and just way, even those who are meant to be evil, though they'll be judged, he will turn it around and use it for some greater good.

45:50

So we don't see that all in time and space. We don't know exactly how that's happening, but we look at Scripture, and we can observe it in the past.

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We see what happened with Joseph when he was sold into slavery. We see what happened with Christ at the cross. We see what happened with the life of David and all the tragedies that he faced, and how

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God turned things around. So it's hard to look when you're living through it in the present and be able to say, okay, this is why, and this is why, and this is why, and we're really not supposed to do that anyway.

46:19

But we are able to look at what the Scriptures teach and say, in the big plan of God's scheme of redemption, the little bitty baby who dies, what happened at the church in Texas, even the child,

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God forbid, who gets raped, we hear about those stories. All of those things, in the end, there will be a just dealing with those who have committed wrong, and at the same time, in some way, all those things will ultimately bring praise to God and glory to God, and we will rejoice in that, in what he's done.

46:49

Do you think that the opposition to God's sovereignty over all things comes from, perhaps, a very right instinct to defend the character of God, to defend the love and mercy and kindness and goodness of God, but the people that are opposing

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God's sovereignty over all things are just reacting in an unbiblical way?

47:18

They are militating against truths that are in Scripture in order to reach the end they are attempting to reach in defense of God, and you have, really, people coming to all kinds of heretical understandings.

47:37

They always wind up really making God more impotent, unconsciously, of course, but they make him, really, a lot more impotent.

47:44

Of course, he is not impotent in any way, but they reduce his omnipotence, and they reduce his omnipresence.

47:55

They reduce all of the attributes that reflect his power and authority and control and sovereignty to some degree, don't they?

48:05

Yeah, like you said, Chris, it's not a malicious thing. I would say, by and large, I would think that most, if not all, certainly who are sincere

48:13

Christians, Arminians, in their mind, they're trying to defend what they believe to be the integrity of God because they can't jive the justice of God and the goodness of God with his sovereignty.

48:28

In light of those kinds of events, they can't see it, so they're trying to make a defense of God in some sense, but the problem with that is, as you said, what they're doing is diminishing

48:36

God in the process. They're cutting him back, and really, that leads to a lot of problems.

48:42

It even ultimately leads to very man -centered theology. You know, God is kind of here for us. We have to kind of let him in, and we have to allow him to do certain things, and the

48:53

Lord is just weeping over the world in the sense that he just wishes he could do something, but he can't. When you let that play out, it really is a disgrace and just a horrific marring of the glory and power of God, as you said.

49:10

Yeah, God is compassionate. He's loving beyond what we can comprehend, but we don't want to throw away his omnipotence and his sovereignty to try to rectify things in a way that we think would make sense.

49:21

So yeah, I think they mean well, but the damage is still done, but again, it's not an issue of salvation and so on, but they mean well, but it's still very damaging to the character of God and creates a man -centered focus in ministry and so on.

49:34

You know, it's all about, you know, we're the center of the world as opposed to, look, we're like the, you know, the dust on the scales, as it says in Isaiah.

49:42

You know, we're like that all the nations are a drop in the bucket, and we're like grasshoppers, and God looks down upon the circle of the earth.

49:48

We don't want to lose that reality of what God is entitled to as God, and I think that sadly that kind of gets thrown under the bus, even with good intentions.

49:59

Yeah, and I think that there are people who are not theologically reformed or Calvinist or believers in the doctrines of sovereign grace, however you want to label it, who think that we are either lessening or eliminating the responsibility of man and perhaps softening the severity of evil itself by saying, well, if God had somehow decreed that that were to happen, that must mean that the people who perpetrated these horrific events and evil events are somehow less guilty, and the act itself is somehow less evil.

50:34

But isn't it interesting that in that classic passage that we Calvinists are famous for quoting,

50:40

Romans 9, it is interesting that the Apostle Paul, who is breathing out the very words of God that were breathed through him, that these are

50:55

God -breathed words that he has written in the

51:00

Epistle to the Church of Rome, he knew instinctively through the guidance of the

51:06

Holy Spirit that people would, in their natural state, militate and bristle and respond to God's sovereignty in the very way that he wrote, that people would say in objection to God's sovereignty, then how can

51:25

God find fault? Because who can resist his will? And it's interesting that the

51:31

Apostle Paul doesn't go on a lengthy, detailed explanation theologically to answer that question that he himself asked rhetorically because he knew that those who opposed him would ask it.

51:45

He just says, who are you, old man, to talk back to God? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, at the end,

51:50

I mean, what it comes down to, Chris, and again, without being unsympathetic to those who struggle with these kinds of things, because I know early on, you know, in my walk with the

51:58

Lord, I struggled with these kinds of things. They were very difficult to embrace and understand until, just by God's grace, you know,

52:04

I was brought to be able to find the good in all these things. So I don't want to be, you know, unsympathetic, but the reality is, you know, we have to come to the point where we say, look,

52:14

God has a right to be God. He's the creator. This is all his. We know that he's good.

52:20

We know that he's righteous. We know that he's just. We know that he is good. And at the same time, you know, he is sovereign and he has a right to do what he wants with his creation.

52:30

And we're the ones who are in sin, you know, and we want our sin. We have a sin nature. We're the ones who fell in the beginning.

52:38

God created all things were good. He looked at everything. It was good. And we have that right from the outset. Man fell into sin.

52:43

We've inherited his sin nature and we sin because we like sinning and want to sin. And when God uses us, even in our sin to accomplish his goodwill, the clay can't complain to the potter and say, hey, why did you make me this way?

52:55

We have no reason to say anything. First of all, he's God. Second of all, we're defiled clay, you know, so he could do with one pot of that clay what he wants to and make it a vessel of that brings him glory, you know, and praise by showing mercy to it.

53:08

And he can take another one that brings him glory and praise by showing his wrath and his justice on it. And we can't complain.

53:14

He has the right to be God. By the way, I think I forgot to tell Joe in Slovenia, Joe, you've won a free copy of the book by Pastor Mark Romaldi that we are discussing evil and suffering in a sovereign

53:30

God's world. We thank you for providing an address in Georgia where your daughter lives, where that could be mailed much more affordably.

53:38

So we thank you very much for contributing an excellent question to the program today.

53:44

We're going to our station break right now. And I'm going to forward another question to Mark Romaldi now.

53:53

This is from Daniel in San Jose, California. And I don't have time to read it now because we have to go to a break, but I will read it when we return.

54:03

And Pastor Mark will have that question right in front of him. And if anybody else would like to join

54:09

Daniel in San Jose, California with a question, go to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

54:15

Send it to, I should say, your question to chrisarnson at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

54:23

And please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA. And only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

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Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Pastor Mark Romaldi. In other words, they'd like to change the battery industry for good by providing an extensive inventory of top -of -the -line batteries that are uniformly new, dependable, and affordable.

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But before we return to our discussion with Pastor Mark Rimoldi of Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, on the theme,

01:06:05

Evil and Suffering in a Sovereign God's World in Light of the Sutherland Springs, Texas Massacre at First Baptist Church.

01:06:12

Before we return to that, we have some important announcements to make in regard to special events that are coming up, being orchestrated by some of our sponsors.

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First of all, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual

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Quaker Town, Pennsylvania. And they are having an excellent conference this year,

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November 17th through the 18th, featuring speakers including Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

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That's on the theme for Still Our Ancient Foe, a reference to Satan from that classic

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Reformation hymn by Martin Luther, A Mighty Fortress. And that's going to be held at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

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I intend to be there manning the Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio Exhibitor's Booth. So I hope that if you attend, you will greet me at that exhibitor's booth.

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And if you do attend, please look me up at the Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio Exhibitor's Booth. If you want to register, go to AllianceNet .org,

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And then coming up in January from the 17th through the 20th, the

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The 17th is exclusively a Spanish speaking edition of the conference. From the 18th through the 20th is the

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English version of the conference featuring speakers such as Stephen Lawson, Votie Balcom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B.

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Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Methenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, and Justin Peters.

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01:12:10

We are now back to our discussion with Pastor Mark Romaldi, one of two pastors at Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island located in Merrick, New York.

01:12:23

And we are addressing one of Pastor Mark Romaldi's books, Evil and Suffering in a

01:12:30

Sovereign God's World, and we are discussing this subject in light of the Sutherland Springs, Texas massacre at First Baptist Church.

01:12:38

And if you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Before we go to Daniel in San Jose, California, why don't you tell our listeners about some of the other books that you've written,

01:12:51

Pastor Mark? Yeah, I have two other books that are written. One is called Gossip the

01:12:57

Church Killer. It just deals with the danger of gossip in the church. Many times people see it as insignificant, or it's hardly something that's really considered as a big sin issue in the church.

01:13:08

We tend to think of adultery and things like that. But it really is destructive, and so I address that, and how to deal with gossip, and what it's about, and so on.

01:13:16

And then another book I have, which may seem a little different, quite different from the other two, is called OCD, Finding Hope on the

01:13:23

Edge of Insanity. For those who, I'm sure your listeners would not know this offhand, but we've done interviews about this in the past.

01:13:30

I have obsessive -compulsive disorder, and so I wrote a book about dealing with that from a biblical standpoint, and just some of the challenges, and just the ways in which the

01:13:38

Lord has certainly grown me and taught me through wrestling through some of the challenges that come with that particular illness.

01:13:46

And by the way, Pastor Mark, we're not going to conduct this entire two -hour interview over again, just so it's more perfect for your satisfaction.

01:13:57

And if anybody wants to hear those interviews that we've done with Mark Grimaldi in the past, go to irontreppanzirenradio .com

01:14:04

and type in Grimaldi, G -R -I -M -A -L -D -I in the search engine of the archive, which is in the top right -hand corner of the website, and you'll be able to see all of the interviews that we have conducted with Pastor Mark Grimaldi.

01:14:20

Well, we now have the question from Daniel in San Jose, California. He says, Could you please ask

01:14:26

Brother Mark Grimaldi to give the biblical examples of God's sovereignty and mercy that would be applicable to those who are suffering from the

01:14:35

Texas massacre? Also, could he explain how to lovingly approach people who are hostile to a

01:14:42

God who is sovereign, even in the midst of this situation? Yeah, both of those questions, by the way, are very good questions.

01:14:51

The first one, and I'll address them both individually, the first one is more of, I guess, more to be addressed from a theological standpoint, and the second one would be more of a practical way of working with people who are suffering, especially in a situation like what happened in Texas.

01:15:06

So, the first part of the question where he asks about giving biblical examples of God's sovereignty and mercy that would be applicable to those who are suffering from the

01:15:14

Texas massacre, I don't know that you're going to find an example in scripture where there's a large group at one point of Christians who are, you know, killed in one sense.

01:15:27

Certainly all throughout church history you'll find that, right, from all throughout, and I'm sure it's happened during those times.

01:15:33

But what I would say is, by way of example, what I would use is two examples. One that we've used already is in the example of Job.

01:15:41

We see there certainly the sovereignty of God in what happened with Job. Job is not aware of what's going on behind the scenes, but it gives us a sense of appreciation, at least for the fact that God is sovereign and what's going on in that setting is, of course,

01:15:57

Satan is trying to compete with God in some sense, and God is saying, well, look, have you seen my servant

01:16:03

Job, who is righteous, who is an honorable man, and so on, and Satan says, well, you know, that's because he has, you know, you've blessed him in every way.

01:16:12

You know, let's start dealing with some of those blessings. Let's take them away and see what happens. Then he'll curse you to your face, and etc.,

01:16:19

and so following that, obviously, Job loses his entire inheritance, goes from extremely wealthy and successful as a godly man to he got everything in a godly way, was a good man, and loses that.

01:16:31

But even more importantly than that is that he loses all of his children, and I think in some way that might be something that may be more able to be related to what happened in the

01:16:40

Texas situation with people losing family members, and so on. Job lost all of his children, and certainly the suffering and grief over that would have been very, very deep for him, and just the way the

01:16:52

Lord orchestrates that when you look at the poetic language of Job, and you get to the point where the

01:16:58

Lord actually steps in and addresses Job, when he begins to, as time goes on, things begin to wear on him a bit more, because not only has he lost his children, but his health later on is affected when

01:17:10

Satan comes back and challenges God again, and he begins to curse the day that he's born, and so on, and question to some extent the justice of God, and the end of the book of Job, I would say from a theological standpoint, would be something very good to look at in considering what's going on in Texas and in other situations, horrific situations like that, just to remind that God never answers

01:17:34

Job's question as to, or any of the questions as to why the things happen to Job.

01:17:40

You don't ever get that answer in the whole book, but what you do get is a reminder of who God is, a reminder of his wisdom, a reminder of his sovereignty.

01:17:48

He takes Job back, where were you right when I laid the corners of the earth, when I set the water and the seas up to such and such a height, when

01:17:56

I created the animals, when I do this and that, and he just gives you a good sense of, well,

01:18:01

God probably knows what he's doing. And so, again, I would not throw that at someone in that situation who is going through the suffering, but from a theological standpoint,

01:18:11

I think there's some relevance there in understanding God's sovereignty in the situation, how he deals with Job, and then if you want to see even more of the aspect of God's sovereignty and mercy, you can go to the

01:18:22

New Testament as well, and look at when James, the apostle James, early on in his ministry, in the book of Acts, he's killed with a sword.

01:18:33

Herod takes him captive, arrests him, has him killed with a sword. Peter is taken the next day, and God goes to the extent of using angels to free

01:18:42

Peter from the prison. Well, why didn't he do that for James, right? God did that for Peter. He couldn't have done it for James. Well, he could have, but God used the death of James to spread the church out.

01:18:52

It caused the church to spread out further, to go beyond Jerusalem into Samaria, right, and further and further out.

01:18:58

So even in the death of James, great things took place through that means, and we see God's sovereignty, his mercy even there, and of course, you know,

01:19:06

James is with the Lord. So those are two examples that I might use where certainly there were people grieving. People were very close to James.

01:19:13

I'm sure family, friends, certainly the apostles, loved ones, Job, what he went through. I think there's a lot to draw from that.

01:19:19

Second part of the question, where he asks about how to now lovingly approach someone who was hostile to a

01:19:26

God who was sovereign in the midst of this situation. I think you've got to be very delicate in that very difficult situation.

01:19:33

Very good question, and I'm trying to imagine approaching the young man there again, or that the man who had lost eight of his loved ones,

01:19:40

I think, or was six to eight of his loved ones in the massacre in Texas, and boy, that would be real, real tough, and I would say it would have to be much prayer.

01:19:49

I would say you'd want to approach with a real gentle spirit of grace just coming alongside of him.

01:19:56

I would say that to remind him that you're praying for him. I would say to, you know, to as you hear him speak and express some of his thoughts, maybe to know, let that lead you as to how to respond to him from Scripture, just using things to speak about the goodness of God.

01:20:13

I wouldn't focus so much on the sovereignty of God, at least from the standpoint that God ordained these things.

01:20:18

I mean, he would know that and there's a place for that, but certainly early on you don't want to start just throwing those doctrines out at him.

01:20:26

More just emphasizing, again, the goodness of God, the love of God, that, you know, that even in these things that God can be a comfort for him to encourage him to pray, pray with him, serve him, be there for him, you know, do a lot of things that would encourage and help him in whatever ways you could service -wise.

01:20:44

Again, not an easy situation. We've had somebody in our church a few years ago who lost a child completely unexpectedly, and it's just one of the most difficult things to know how to minister to someone is that kind of a trauma, but again, the main thing is loving them, serving them, and just graciously encouraging them to find their comfort in the

01:21:07

Lord. There's a way that only God can comfort someone in those situations, and we need to try to lead people in that direction without just throwing theological platitudes at them.

01:21:18

So that's the short form. Did you need me to repeat that, Chris? Well, actually, going back to the person that you mentioned who had many members of his family killed in Sutherland Springs, Texas, wasn't he a member of the congregation, this man?

01:21:34

I believe he was. So he wouldn't be, like, militating against the gospel in regard to...

01:21:42

as the question had it built in to the question was that somebody was hostile to...

01:21:49

Yeah, yeah, I would assume... I'm just throwing out the... and hopefully this is not the case, but I'm throwing out the possibility that somebody in that position...

01:21:57

but you're right, yeah, I didn't think about the word hostile, but somebody in that position might begin to, at least early on, begin to say, you know, how could

01:22:04

God do this, and, you know, why would God allow this, and so on. But yeah, no, he's not hostile to God.

01:22:10

Somebody was hostile to God. Again, if they've lost a loved one, if something traumatic just happened to them,

01:22:16

I would still approach it in a very delicate way. I wouldn't just say, hey, you know what, you're just, you know, an ungodly heathen anyway, you know, and you don't know the

01:22:24

Lord, and, you know, there's a place to just encourage people to know that God is good, to use it as a means of for them to seek the

01:22:32

Lord, present it in the Gospel, in the cross of Christ, and what happened to Christ, and just that, you know, that there are ways in which, in Scripture, where people can identify, even with the

01:22:43

Gospel itself, with the pain that these people are going through, and to work with them, you know, and to lead them, hopefully, to the

01:22:48

Gospel, if they're hostile, in that sense. Amen. And of course, a wonderful, precious passage that we can refer to when we are seeking to comfort those who are grieving.

01:23:06

And of course, I think one of the beauties of this passage is that it's long enough that would make it more difficult to throw out at somebody as a placard.

01:23:17

I think the way that we read, even the tone of our voices, in which we read something from the

01:23:23

Scripture has a lot to do, whether it's merely viewed as an insensitive or quick fix to hurl at somebody, or to just really, from the depths of your heart, read to them.

01:23:35

But 1 Thessalonians 4, beginning at 13, and for any of our listeners who may be providentially listening to this after going through, or during going through a trial, or in the midst of a tragedy, in the midst of any kind of suffering, especially when it comes to losing loved ones in death, and especially, and in particular, those who have lost

01:24:02

Christian loved ones in death, but we do not want you to be uninformed, that's starting at 13, verse 13 of 1

01:24:11

Thessalonians 4, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.

01:24:23

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.

01:24:30

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the

01:24:36

Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

01:24:51

Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the

01:24:56

Lord in the air. And so we shall always be with the Lord, therefore comfort one another with these words."

01:25:04

Very, very precious passage of scripture that has so much hope built into it for us, and having lost a number of people in death in my lifetime, it is always a precious source of comfort to return to over and over and over again.

01:25:22

Yeah, Chris, and in fact that's an excellent text to look at, especially, and that's one of the wonderful blessings about dealing with someone who has lost a loved one who was a

01:25:31

Christian, you know, that really makes it a lot easier in that sense to be able to remind them. There's a conclusion section in one of the later chapters of my book where I deal with the issue of suffering and even those kinds of, that kind of trauma experience, and I just say suffering is an obvious reality that permeates our all -sovereign

01:25:51

God's creation. It has its roots in the fall of mankind, and yet even in its grossest forms it will ultimately serve the purpose of glorifying

01:25:58

God and the full accomplishment of his plan of redemption. We must remember this big picture reality when overwhelmed with the temple griefs and sorrows that infiltrate our lives on this side of the grave.

01:26:07

There is a to -be -continued sign attached to every one of our sorrows. We have this certain hope given to us in the scriptures, and that hope will indeed reach its substantial realization.

01:26:16

It must. God cannot lie, and he has a track record to prove it. So especially when you're dealing with a situation with a loved one who was saved, too, it's not the end of the story, you know.

01:26:25

It's, again, we don't want to, you know, to remove people's grief or to tell them, hey, it's improper to cry or weep.

01:26:33

That's more than appropriate, but just to remind them, you know, as well at the same time, look, this isn't the end, you know.

01:26:38

There's going to be a reunion of the people of God. Amen. We have an anonymous listener who asked the question, don't we who are

01:26:51

Christians need to be extremely careful that we do not blurt out something as foolish as to say to someone with certainty that a loved one who died is in hell merely because, as far as we know, that person never embraced

01:27:12

Christ. Just because we don't know about whether or not they embraced

01:27:18

Christ, or if we have known the person even for years as an unbeliever, does not mean that they did not come to Christ apart from our knowledge.

01:27:27

Isn't this true, and doesn't that give us reason for great pause not to blurt out something so insensitive which may in reality not even be true?

01:27:38

Yeah, I think, I agree. I think that, you know, we need to be careful when we're speaking to someone who lost a loved one to just assume that their loved one is in hell.

01:27:47

You know, one of the scriptures, you know, while it's a rare occurrence to some extent for there to be a deathbed conversion, let's say, there is the thief on the cross, you know, and as I think it was

01:28:01

Arthur Pinker, someone who said, or Spurgeon, you know, we have the one thief on the cross who repented, you know, to remind us that there's hope for anyone, even at the very last moments.

01:28:11

And we have the other one to remind us as well, though, that by and large, you know, that that doesn't happen.

01:28:18

You know, a lot of times there's someone who just died, you know, in the same hardness. So I would, I don't see a reason to ever tell someone who has lost a loved one that their loved one is in hell.

01:28:27

You know, I don't necessarily see a reason to do that. I'd rather steer them in another direction and say, look, you know, you know, the

01:28:33

Lord knows God is good. God will always do what's right and what's just. You know, we don't know what happened at those, you know, the last moments, but let's focus on where you are.

01:28:42

Where do you stand? Let's make sure you're in the right path. I would more gear it toward that. I don't see a good scriptural support to just say to someone, hey, yeah, you know,

01:28:51

I think your loved one's in hell. You know, I don't think that's our place to say that. We can say that there's hope.

01:28:57

A lot of times what I like to do, too, is we'll sometimes we'll have, we'll have situations where a parent or a loved one was lost and the person who lost that loved one was a

01:29:07

Christian, says, you know, I don't know where they went, but I did, you know, I was able to give them the gospel, you know, at the end there a couple times and they heard it.

01:29:14

You know, sometimes I just encourage them and say, well, look, praise God for the opportunities you had in his providence, you know, to give the gospel, you know, you gave them the word, you gave them the lifeline, you know, and you never know, you know, there are people,

01:29:25

I'm sure there are going to be people in the end who, as again, another person once said, who will be shocked to see there, and maybe there'll be other people who are shocked not to see there, but I'm sure the people will just say, wow, you know, praise the

01:29:37

Lord, we didn't, you know, that the Lord glorified his name and saved you at the last moment there, or whatever it was, so I don't see a place to, unless it's

01:29:44

Judas Iscariot, you know, or somebody evident in the scriptures, I don't see a place to point to people's relatives and say, oh yeah, you know, that's the case, you know.

01:29:51

Right, I doubt we could find somebody who found out through the

01:29:57

Mormon genealogical library that they were a direct descendant of Judas, so I think that we'd be fairly safe bringing

01:30:04

Judas up, and in fact, I was in a service one time when

01:30:11

I was very puzzled by the minister during a question and answer session. Somebody said, is

01:30:16

Judas in heaven or hell? And the minister said, well, we shouldn't speculate about that, and I said, excuse me,

01:30:23

Jesus said it would be better for him if he was never born. Obviously, he's in hell. I mean, how could you come to any other conclusion?

01:30:31

Ah, yeah, that's speculation. Well, that's not speculation, because Jesus made it clear.

01:30:38

Obviously, if he was in heaven, nothing that he did or occurred in his life on earth would make it better for him never to have been born, because if he was in heaven, it was all worth it, you know.

01:30:52

And also, the apostles in Acts, when they're looking to replace him, the wording they used there is that Judas went to his own place.

01:31:00

It's very clear, you know, that he's in hell, you know, that he's been under God's judgment and condemned and so on.

01:31:07

There's no denying that. Well, we have to go to our final break, and if anybody would like to join us, we're running out of time, so I would highly advise that you write in your question as soon as possible and email it to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:31:25

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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01:39:03

And we are back with our discussion with Mark Romaldi, pastor of Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York.

01:39:11

We are discussing his book, Evil and Suffering in a Sovereign God's World, and we are addressing this subject in light of the

01:39:19

Sutherland Springs, Texas massacre at First Baptist Church, and it has been said to be the largest massacre by a firearm or by a gunman in the history of Texas.

01:39:38

So that is something quite unusual to have occurred just recently, and obviously we would urge all of you to pray for the families of those murdered at the

01:39:53

First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and also pray for the family of the murderer who is now dead himself.

01:40:03

Obviously, we should not think ill of people that we don't even know in regard to this who are members of that evil individual's family.

01:40:17

We don't know the circumstances in that family, and we should not immediately jump to the conclusion that they are evil as well.

01:40:24

Shouldn't we be very careful about that when we experience or witness or hear about things like this?

01:40:31

We shouldn't immediately jump to a conclusion that because this person, this very obviously selfish and vile and evil person and murderous person, committed these atrocities that we should not draw the conclusion that his family is just as evil as he is.

01:40:52

Yeah, I mean, that guy is his own person. He's an adult. We don't know his history.

01:40:58

We don't want to start accusing the family, and what did they do in raising him and all that stuff. People are accountable for their own sins, and sometimes you have situations where you could be raised even in a godly home, right?

01:41:12

A godly home, and when somebody gets older, they can commit all kinds of atrocities. We see that those kinds of things happen, so we definitely want to be slow to do anything against the family.

01:41:23

The best that we could do is pray for them, as you said. Yeah, what you just said reminds me of a slogan that God has no grandchildren.

01:41:32

We can't immediately expect that the children of Christians, no matter how godly they are, are automatically going to be

01:41:40

Christians. And one of the passages,

01:41:46

I know that some people in my audience may be rolling their eyes and saying, you know, here he goes again, quoting this passage again, but I can't help but bring it up during times like this when there are those who are vehemently in opposition to the doctrines of sovereign grace, aka reform theology, aka

01:42:08

Calvinism, who think that we are guilty of wickedness by saying that God has any involvement in horrific tragedies like this, or horrific events.

01:42:24

And I'm actually surprised that more reformed people don't use this text apologetically in this regard.

01:42:33

In fact, I've never heard anybody but me do it, so I don't know, maybe you have heard people use this text in regard to God's sovereignty in the midst of even horrible, wicked atrocities.

01:42:47

But in 2 Samuel chapter 12, when Nathan confronts

01:42:54

David, and God is speaking through Nathan, the prophet, when he is making

01:43:03

David aware of the brutality of his own sin, and not only committing adultery with Bathsheba, but arranging for her husband,

01:43:14

Uriah the Hittite, to be murdered on the battlefield, just to cover up his own adultery because Bathsheba was pregnant.

01:43:22

And God, speaking through Nathan, says to David, behold,

01:43:30

I will raise up evil against you from your own household.

01:43:35

I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.

01:43:46

Indeed, you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all

01:43:53

Israel and under the sun. Now, that is pretty astonishing to the average person, perhaps especially a person who has no understanding or belief in God's sovereign control over all occurrences in heaven and on earth.

01:44:13

To read such a thing is pretty astonishing, and this is a truth that we must believe because it's

01:44:19

God -breathed, and yet we can never lay the guilt of sin at God's feet.

01:44:25

Isn't this somewhat paradoxical? Yeah, yeah, and I think when you follow that through, as you said, what happens with David, obviously, with Absalom and with Amnon, and with Amnon winds up raping his half -sister, and Absalom kills

01:44:42

Amnon, and then later on, when Absalom rebels, even after his father forgives him, and he winds up taking his father's concubines,

01:44:50

David's concubines, and sleeping with them on the roof, so all those things fulfill that, and I think what you have there in that sense is certainly

01:44:56

God proclaiming exactly what he's planning to do through David's seed, and at the same time, what they did, they did of their own will and volition as well, they desired to do those things as well, so God even ordained and utilized,

01:45:14

He didn't restrain and He utilized the evil even of His own son's hearts to, you know, to lead them to do some real heinous things in David's home, and it was a judgment against David because of what he had done with Bathsheba, with Uriah, so definitely, there's definitely, it's profound to see even

01:45:35

God's sovereignty definitely in that, and how He ordains to use that, those kinds of things, and to bring judgments through the means of, you know,

01:45:45

David's lineage, and you know, part of it, I think, Chris, too, is, and again, it's hard to understand everything, obviously, that we're talking about with this, but part of it is, you know, is recognizing that if God didn't restrain evil, you know, and any of us, we would all eat each other alive and murder each other and rape one another and kill children, you know, everything that's evil in the world, we would do, right?

01:46:15

We wouldn't even be able to exist as a race if He lifted His strength. Yeah, we would be long done. So there's a restraining factor on the part of God, a common grace restraining factor that's there, and I think in part of with, in that situation with David, what we see is

01:46:30

God is loosening the restraints, and you know, He's going to use that and raise up, you know, these men who were already born in sin, right, to His children and so on, and create great, you know, great havoc in David's family because of his sin.

01:46:46

So we even get a sense of that, but as you said, it's not that God is, supports sin or that Absalom was not guilty of what

01:46:54

He had done, right? He was very guilty, certainly, in Amnon and all the things that happened in David's family. They were still guilty.

01:46:59

It was their sin. They desired to do it, but you do see that ordaining aspect of God, you know, raising them up in that way, right?

01:47:07

Look at Pharaoh, right? God could have just wiped Pharaoh out right from the beginning, and He says, you know, He says the most to Moses, you know,

01:47:14

He's going to reject you. He's not going to listen to you. He's not going to let the people go. I'm telling you in advance because I'm going to harden them because I'm going to use

01:47:21

Him to glorify my name. I'm going to bring all my plagues against Him and against all the gods of Egypt so that by the time you guys get out, the world is going to know about the true, a little bit about the true and living

01:47:31

God. And so He hardens Pharaoh and uses him in that way. So you do see that aspect of God, as it says in Romans 9, you know, making a vessel for destruction, fit for destruction, that He's going to bring judgment upon and glorify

01:47:44

His wrath and His righteousness, and others are vessels of mercy. So I think that would, in some way, would connect to what happens there with David.

01:47:52

Yeah, and it's interesting. I can still remember having a heated discussion with an

01:47:58

Arminian pastor friend, and we were talking about God's hardening of Pharaoh's heart, and he thought that he had a gotcha moment by saying to me, yeah, but the

01:48:11

Bible also says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. How do you like that? And I said, yeah, but where does it say that Pharaoh softened his own heart?

01:48:20

And it was at a loss for words because obviously hardening your own heart is quite an easy accomplishment, actually, because of the fact that the total depravity is a very true and real thing, but it's the softening of the heart that is a miraculous thing.

01:48:38

Yeah, I think it comes back to, again, the reality is every last one of us in this world being born in Adam, right, would run in the worst -case scenario direction if God didn't restrain the evil in us, and I think that hardening process, which is a cooperative sense, right, is

01:48:55

God removing the restraint and giving you over to more of what we would do naturally, and I think that's part of, like, what you see with Pharaoh saying he hardened his own heart, and also

01:49:05

God hardened his heart. Well, how did God do that? I believe it's by removing that restraint, but you're right. You're right. There's absolutely no way, there's nothing mentioned there, no possibility of going in the other direction.

01:49:15

We're going in the one direction, only in the wrong direction, and God may give us over to more and more of that direction, but the only way we're going back in the right way is if God raises us from the dead.

01:49:28

Amen. And don't you think that sometimes our friends who are not

01:49:33

Reformed, when they accuse us of teaching that God forces people against their will or tempts them to commit evil acts, they sometimes are acting as if, even though they would probably deny this on paper or if you were to ask them right out what they believe the natural state of man is, many of our

01:50:00

Christian brothers and sisters would not be Pelagian. They would not believe that men and women are born morally neutral.

01:50:09

They would believe that an original sin and some level of depravity, and yet they act very often like humans are born totally neutral, whereas that is not true.

01:50:26

For God to use evil people to bring about His sovereign purpose doesn't mean

01:50:31

He has to convince them to do anything evil or tempt them or force them, right? No, not at all.

01:50:37

No, like we said, we're going in that direction already by nature, and if anything—not if anything, it's a fact—God is restraining us from doing what we would be more than capable of doing.

01:50:52

That's why I always say we're like the Yellow Pages. If it's out there, it's in here. When we look at the heinous crimes of what's going on in the world—child molestation, whatever, abortion, and all the things that we can name—we don't want to, while we're grieved by it, while we hate that because we know that it's unrighteous and it's wicked and we're repulsed by it, we ought to thank

01:51:13

God for the grace that He's given us to have that sense toward it, because that's in us. We're all an atom, and that's in our own nature.

01:51:19

So God doesn't have to do anything for us to do those things other than leave us to ourselves.

01:51:26

And the same thing with the situation with, like you said before, with choosing to follow the

01:51:31

Lord or to believe the gospel. Even the best of Arminians would say that, to some extent, that even though man is fallen and is not born in a neutral state and has original sin—you have people who say those kinds of things as well—they'll say that there's still some ability in man to turn the switch on, that one decision.

01:51:57

You hear the gospel, and there's two people in the same pew, and they both hear the same gospel, and Joe believes, and he has that somehow in him, that he still has at least that ability to believe.

01:52:09

God gives him all the means of grace to make that belief, and they try to do everything they can to maintain

01:52:15

God's glory in it, but there's always that what they've considered to be maybe a small thing, but it really is big.

01:52:20

The switch that goes on, in a sense, it's still the man who does it, in some sense.

01:52:27

Yeah, we can't forget what the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 8, uh, for the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please

01:52:58

God. It takes a miracle, a transformational miracle of the

01:53:03

Holy Spirit for a dead sinner to be able to please God, and that's one of the reasons we who are believers in the doctrines of sovereign grace believe that the biblical ordo salutis, or order of salvation, is that we are brought to life first before we can please

01:53:21

God with a faith that justifies us, because we could not summon this up from our own dead, sinful wickedness.

01:53:30

Many times they would, right, Arminians would place regeneration after faith, you know, and it kind of defeats the whole meaning of what regeneration is.

01:53:41

It's like, you know, if you have something that's completely without any power, and then somehow it does something actively and then gets power after that, it's just, it's impossible, you know, somehow it gets life after.

01:53:54

It does, it detracts, again, and with respect, with all the respect, you know, like to our brothers, it does detract from all around, from the, you know, the work of the

01:54:03

Father, the work of Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit, you know, in regenerating. It kind of puts His, in the glory of what

01:54:08

He does, and our dependence upon Him, it places it after we've, you know, we've made that decision, then

01:54:14

He comes in and He honors that decision and gives us life. Well, how did you come out of the grave to begin with to make the decision?

01:54:21

You know, it's the cart before the horse, you know. Well, I'd like you to answer two questions in the last four and a half minutes that we have.

01:54:33

I've been hearing a number of young people, especially millennials who are not believers, say to me in the midst of this tragedy, this horrific satanic event in Sutherland Springs, Texas, why?

01:54:51

Why did this happen? And then the follow -up question is a question of my own, what next?

01:54:56

If you could answer those two questions, why and what next? Okay, the why question, certainly we, what we can say is we don't know, only

01:55:06

God, right, ultimately knows exactly why that happened, right? Certainly people will speculate in all kinds of ways, and I'm sure there'll be things that will be seen as time goes on, and what happens, in the context of the lives of some of those families, some of the things that will take place, you know, we can, there could be reasons there.

01:55:24

There's probably many reasons, you know, that are even attached to why God did that. But ultimately, at the end of the day, what we do know is

01:55:30

He did it for His glory, in some way, even through that tragedy, you know, as horrible as it is, and I can't imagine being, you know, one of the family members there, it's easy for me to say this, you know, here where I'm in a church and, you know, my family's alive and they weren't murdered,

01:55:45

I realize that, so I want to be careful, but the reality is, you know, from, based upon what

01:55:51

God's Word teaches, is in some way God is going to be glorified in that, in some way it's going to advance

01:55:56

His plan of redemption, in some way it's going to push His church forward, in some way it's going to sanctify those who are still alive and who are saved, in some way it may bring people to salvation who are not saved, in some way maybe it'll do something to others in this country who will realize that, you know, that life is short.

01:56:15

There's many things that God does through these events, multitudes of things that He accomplishes, and, but ultimately,

01:56:23

He's sovereign over it, He's accomplishing His will, He's being glorified, and it's in full use for His purposes.

01:56:30

The second question you said, what was the second question? What next? How do we respond to this?

01:56:35

What is the appropriate reaction? Yeah, I mean, I think that the appropriate reaction, in part, is to grieve with the families who, you know, the people who lost loved ones here, to grieve for the family whose son murdered these people, to pray for them, if there's any way that support can be given to that church, you know, those kinds of things.

01:56:58

From our standpoint, what our responsibility would be just to show Christian love, to sympathize with the people, not to, you know, as we said before, not just to badger them with Scripture and, you know, about God's sovereignty, but to really show the arms and hands of God and His compassion toward them, and that even in their suffering, even what they're going through,

01:57:20

God is a compassionate God, you know, and He's not just, well, you know what, this is my will, and it's done, and I don't care.

01:57:28

He resonates with the hearts of His people, you know, even in their sufferings, and certainly there was evil behind it as well.

01:57:34

God is sovereign over that, but there was evil intentions. The enemy is involved. We all, we know that, you know, he's on a leash, but he's involved, and so we want to be, you know, cautious about that, and maybe even to take, you know, from a wisdom standpoint, to take precautions in our own churches and to start thinking about, hey, you know,

01:57:51

I don't want to think that this is necessarily going to happen here in Merrick next week, but you know what, we have a responsibility with our families here and the people in our church to at least have something in place to prepare for something like that, you know, so this is probably many things, you know, in the what next, but I think especially to show love for these people, to pray for them, to give them the care that they need.

01:58:11

Amen. Well, I want our listeners to know that the website for Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York is gracereformedbaptistchurch .com.

01:58:28

gracereformedbaptistchurch .com. Do you have any other contact information? Yeah, the website is perfect, and then also certainly they can call us if they want to speak to us over the phone at 516 -379 -2408.

01:58:43

516 -379 -2408. You can contact our church, but I think the best thing is the website there,

01:58:50

Chris. It's ideal. They can also send an email to us or get information about our church through the website. And I know that you are a part of the

01:58:57

Reformed Baptist Network, and that website is reformedbaptistnetwork .com, reformedbaptistnetwork .com.

01:59:04

Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much, Pastor Mark, for being on the show today, and I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions, and I hope that you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:59:18

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you with your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.