Does God Have a Purpose for Evil?

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This program is dedicated to helping you better understand the Word of God and the doctrines of grace. The Bible tells us, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who is no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to study along. Here's your host with today's lesson, Pastor Keith Foskey.

The Question of Whether God Has a Purpose for Evil

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Does God have a purpose for evil? That's the subject of today's lesson and we're going to be looking at Acts chapter 4.

So if you want to open your Bible with me and look at Acts chapter 4, I want to read a passage to you that I think is very important and often overlooked. This is coming to us in Acts chapter 4 and we begin actually up in verse 23.

We'll read verse 23. It says, When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, Sovereign Lord, you who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David your servant said by the Holy Spirit, why did the Gentiles rage in the people's plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed. Verse 27. For truly in this city were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

That is verse 28. The subject of this particular passage is the crucifixion of Jesus. Now, very few people would say that the crucifixion of Jesus was an accident because that would be difficult to prove as we know the crucifixion of Jesus according to the Bible is something that God had planned from the foundation of the world.

God had a rescue mission in place to rescue men from sin. All of the Old Testament looks forward to the coming of Jesus. All of the Old Testament sacrifices prefigure the coming of Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross.

And 700 years before Jesus went to the cross, we know that God gave a prophecy through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 53 about exactly what would happen to Jesus on the cross and his propitiatory sacrifice.

So we know God planned the cross and that's what this text says. It says that the Jews and Herod and Pontius Pilate, they came together to do something evil but God had a purpose for that evil. God had a purpose for the cross and if there's ever been an evil event in history, if there's ever been an evil act in the history of man, it was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

He's truly the most innocent and the only truly completely innocent person in all of history. Jesus never sinned in thought, in word, or in deed, and yet he was murdered by the hands of lawless men. But it says God predestined that.

It said God determined that that would happen. And people say, I assume so because he is God. He determines that Jesus is going to go to the cross. But yes, what we have to also say though, and I think this is an important thing to realize, is that God is not just in control of some things.

God is in control of everything. God determines all things. Now you say, well this doesn't prove that because all this says is that Jesus' cross was predestined. This doesn't say everything is predestined.

I understand that that's something that you might believe, but consider this. The Bible teaches us that God is sovereign over everything and that ultimately whatever happens is according to his divine decree.

And you say, well that means that when something really bad happens, like a child who was killed or something awful, that means that God was sovereign over that. And the answer is yes. It's a difficult thing to consider, but it is true.

This does not make God the cause of evil, but certainly God could have stopped it had he so chosen. We look at history and we see how many times God intervenes and we see acts where it was purely miraculous whereby someone was saved out of some situation and we say there it's clear God was working.

And you say, but what about the times where the bad things do happen? Is God not working there? Does God not have a purpose for that as well? Does he not have a purpose for everything that happens? And see that's the point and that's the key to today.

The key to today and what I'm trying to get across to you is God had a purpose in the cross that Jesus bore. God had a purpose in Jesus going to the cross and that's true and that's something I don't think any of us would deny.

But what we also can extrapolate from that, what we can infer from that, is that God has a purpose for the crosses we bear as well. God has a purpose for whatever suffering we go through as well. One of the most difficult things I think that some people do believe, and I think this is a difficult thing, some people I think they believe that the bad things that happen are just out of control.

That there's no purpose in it. I will tell you this, I don't believe in purposeless evil. Now I do believe that there are things that I would say are senseless. If I see like just this past week there were some young men who were murdered in Polk County.

It was a tremendously horrible event. I watched the news conference and the sheriff came and told about what had happened to those poor young men and my heart went out to them. My heart went out to the father who was called on the phone during the event.

And some people would say, well that's just purposeless evil. And I would say this, I would say it's senseless from our perspective. From the perspective of humanity, I can say that the person who perpetrated that crime is a criminal.

He did it with hatred in his heart and it was a senseless act of violence. But what I can't say is that it has no purpose. Because I believe everything has a purpose. The Bible says God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

It doesn't say that he causes some things to work together for good, it says he causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. And the only way God can say that he causes all things to work together for good is if he is actually sovereign over all things.

If God were not in control of everything, he could not make the promise that all things will work together for our good. But he makes that promise and therefore we can know that whatever may come, and that's what it goes on to say in Romans 8, it says whether life or death or angels or powers or things present or things to come or height or depth or anything else in all creation, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing can separate us from God. Why? Because he's purposed it to be so. If God is not sovereign enough to be in control of the things that happen in this world, then why do I trust him that he's going to cause all things to work together for my good?

And why do I trust him that ultimately nothing is going to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus? Why do I trust those promises? I trust those promises because God is sovereign. So I come back to Acts 4.

In Acts 4, we read these words and we should never forget them. It says that Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles and the people of Israel, the Jews, they came together to do something evil and it was evil.

It was the most evil act in all of history. They crucified the Lord of glory, but it was not outside of the sovereign, powerful will of God because it says all they did was do what God's plan had predestined to take place.

Now I realize if you're going through a difficult time, this might not be the most comforting thing for you to hear, but I want you to consider this. Would it be better if you heard someone say, all of life has evil and all of that evil is without purpose and God is just wringing his hands hoping it turns out all right?

Or is it better to hear the truth of scripture, which says, yes, there is evil in this world, but it is not without purpose and God who is sovereign is assuring us that he is going to cause all of it to work together in the end for his glory and our good.

That's what comforts me when I look at a world filled with evil to know that God is still sovereign. He's still on his throne and nothing is outside of his control. I hope that's a comfort to you and I hope today has been an encouragement to you.

Closing Encouragement and Show Sign-Off

Thank you again for watching our daily show and I appreciate you being a part of this episode. Again, my name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.

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