Objection 2: If God is All-Powerful He Cannot Be All Good...

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As the handouts are being passed, I would invite you to take out your Bible and turn to Psalm 145.
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Our opening tonight, we read Psalm 119, so we can quickly turn over just a few pages to Psalm 145.
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And that will be the passage that we will be using tonight in our continuing study of the subject of apologetics.
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Remember that apologetics is giving a defense for the faith, specifically to give a defense for the hope that is within us.
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And a few weeks ago, a few sessions ago, we discussed the subject of objections and objectors.
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We said that there's certain objections that we're going to face, and those objections come from various types of objectors.
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And the three categories of objections that we have noted, first, an objection regarding the existence and the nature of God.
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Second, an objection regarding the nature and reliability of Scripture.
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And third, an objection about the interpretation and application of Scripture.
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And last week, we started with the first category on the existence and nature of God.
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And we said that last week's question or objection was, what do we say when someone says, I just do not believe that God exists.
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And like I said, if you weren't here last week, and you want to go and spend the time, I would encourage you to go back and listen to that lesson, because we did deal with how do you respond to someone who says, I don't believe that God exists.
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Now, I do want to say this.
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We did not address all of the relevant responses, and we didn't intend to.
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Because as I said last week, I'm not intending to give you a script to read, but rather principles to use in your arguments.
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We are providing you with thoughts that you can include in your conversation.
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And we said that the argument of the existence of God rests primarily on the subject of origins.
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When someone denies God, they deny a Creator.
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And when they deny a Creator, they have to replace that Creator with some other cause, because they exist.
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And because we exist, we are here, we are the cause of something else.
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And what was the cause of us, was it the cause of something else.
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And there is a regression all the way back to something that was the first cause of all things.
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And oftentimes we run into a naturalistic argument, which tries to make a natural argument for some kind of pre-existing thing.
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But as we noted last week, such an argument is really an exercise in futility when it is scrutinized.
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So tonight we're going to look at the second part of the first category.
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We said the first category is the existence and nature of God.
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We've looked at what if somebody denies the existence of God.
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Tonight we're going to look, well what if someone objects, remember we're talking about objections, what if someone objects to the nature of God.
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And this is different.
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Because oftentimes when you listen, if you listen closely to someone who is not believing in God and you ask them why, oftentimes they really aren't dealing with existence as much as they are dealing with nature.
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I'll give you an example.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson is very famous.
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He's sort of the Carl Sagan of our generation.
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He is a scientist who has gained notoriety for himself because he is displayed on television shows and programs and he's seen as an authority on the subject of science.
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And Neil deGrasse Tyson was being interviewed recently by a television personality.
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He was on a television show, I forget who the person was, but he was asked the question, what do you think about God? Do you believe in the existence of God? And he sort of kind of sat back.
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I could tell that he didn't necessarily like that question.
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I'm sure he gets it all the time.
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And he said, well, when it comes to the issue of the existence of God, I look at the world and I see a world where thousands die in tsunamis and I see a world where whole cities are destroyed by volcanoes and whole villages are wiped out by flooding and hurricanes.
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And he said, and I have a hard time believing in a good God who would allow for such bad things.
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Now, I want to, if anybody hears this online or anything, that's not a direct quote, but that is essentially what he said.
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He said, I have a hard time believing in a good God who allows all of these bad things.
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So you'll notice that Mr.
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Tyson's, or Dr.
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Tyson, I'm sure he has a doctor, Dr.
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Tyson's argument isn't really about the existence of God as much as it is about the nature of God.
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He's not saying I don't think God exists simply because there's no evidence or the science points away from it or there's no reason to believe in the existence of God.
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He's saying if God does exist, it doesn't make sense to me.
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Because if God did exist, I don't think he'd allow all these things to happen.
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And that's different.
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It's wholly different from a scientific argument.
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Because now we're getting to the issue of philosophy.
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We're no longer dealing with that which is measurable, repeatable, and that's what science is, things that can be measured and repeated through the scientific process.
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Now we're talking about whether or not it's right that these things happen.
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Whether or not God can be good and allow these things to happen.
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Right? That is not a scientific argument.
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That is a, well first I would say it's a theological argument, but on a more broad scale, it's a philosophical argument.
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So tonight if you notice on your sheet, the title of the lesson is that if God is all good, he's not all powerful.
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And if he is all powerful, he is not all good.
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Because that is the objection.
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Even though that's not exactly what Dr.
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Tyson said, neither is that always what the person who is facing you will say, that is the heart of the argument.
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I call it the Lex Luthor argument.
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Why do I call it the Lex Luthor argument? Well if you saw the movie, Batman vs.
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Superman, which I know is probably not on your top ten list of greatest films ever.
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But if you did see the movie, in the movie Lex Luthor is talking to Superman, and he's talking about the fact that when he was a child, he was beaten by his father.
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And that his father abused him.
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And he said, and I wanted God to save me.
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But he never saved me.
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And that's when I realized, that God is not good, or he's not powerful.
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Because if he's all good, and he's all powerful, he would have saved me.
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See? That's why I call it the Lex Luthor argument.
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Because even in a movie, it was expressed the way it's often expressed to us.
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Because this is how sometimes it may come to you.
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I was raped as a child.
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If God is good, he wouldn't have allowed me to be raped.
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I had a person sit right over there, and say that to me.
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Now you see how the argument can get very real, very quickly.
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And it's not a scientific argument.
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It's an argument from the heart.
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I just don't believe God exists, because if he did, this wouldn't have happened.
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Or that wouldn't have happened.
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And I point to this to simply say, that it is amazing how quickly an argument changes from scientific to moral.
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It's amazing how quickly a conversation goes from the objective to the subjective.
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Because if you want to talk about the objective ways that we know whether or not God exists, arguments from the design of the world, and how the earth itself is fine-tuned for life, and all those things, and some of the things that we did discuss last week, those are objective things.
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But when you start talking about something like childhood cancer, well that becomes more emotional, and in a sense very subjective.
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And once the idea that science can't disprove the existence of God, because it can't, science doesn't have the power to disprove the existence of God.
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And once people get to that, the next argument is almost always one of morality, or emotion.
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They begin to argue that if God exists at all, he can't be the way you think he is.
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Because you think he's all good, and you think he's all powerful, and he can't be both.
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Now, our text for the evening is from Psalm 145, and it's verses 8 and 9.
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And I picked this particular passage because it says something about the nature of God.
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In fact, it says the opposite of the question.
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The objection is, if God is all good, he's not all powerful, and if God is all powerful, he's not all good.
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And yet, Psalm 145, verse 8 says this, The Lord is gracious and merciful.
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Now notice, stop right there.
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This is Old Testament.
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One of the things I hear people say all the time, well, the Old Testament God was vindictive and harsh and jealous and angry, and the New Testament God is loving and compassionate and merciful.
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But the Old Covenant describes God in the same adjectives as the New Covenant, and with the same qualities.
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It says, the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
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Steadfast love.
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Love that doesn't fail.
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Verse 9 goes a step further.
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It says, the Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.
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The unbeliever who uses the objection of tonight says this, God cannot be all powerful and all good.
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He cannot be all powerful and all good.
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They say those two things cannot be true together.
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And there are some technical phrases for these.
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You've heard the phrase, omnipotent.
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Usually we say it a little differently, we call it omnipotent.
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That's all powerful, right? Are you familiar with the three omnis? We talk about God, he's omnipotent.
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Omnipresent, meaning he's everywhere.
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And he's omniscient, meaning he knows everything.
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Right, we're familiar with those three.
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Well this all powerful is omnipotent.
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There is a fourth omni.
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Often gets left out.
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We know omnipotent, we know omnipresent, and we know, oh boy.
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Omniscient, thank you.
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There's a fourth.
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Omni-benevolent.
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Omni-benevolent means to be all good.
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Or could be all loving.
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We learned on Sunday that God is love.
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That was our text in 1 John 4.8.
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And if you didn't hear the message, it does bear some weight to tonight.
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So I recommend going back and listening to it, because we talked about the fact that God is love, and what does that mean.
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But if we simply take benevolent to mean good, and that's how it can be used, and most of you are familiar with benevolent societies, groups that get together and raise money for other groups, or things like that.
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You'd say that's a group that does good work.
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So that's where we get the term benevolence.
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It's the opposite of malevolent.
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Malevolent means to do evil.
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Benevolent means to do good.
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So we have two categories.
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Omnipotent.
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Omni-benevolent.
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And this text tells us that God is both.
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Psalm 145, verses 8 and 9, say that God is both.
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And I want to show you how.
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Because it says, beginning in verse 8, it says, the Lord is gracious.
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Just stop right there.
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Who is the Lord? Okay, yeah, it's not a trick question.
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It's God, right? But why does it say God is gracious? Does the Bible use the word God? Yeah, well, in fact, first, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, right? So the word God, Elohim, is used throughout the scripture, right? So we know the word Elohim, which means God, is used in the Bible.
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Theos in the Greek.
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Elohim in the Hebrew.
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But in Hebrew, there are other terms that are used for God, which relate to attributes.
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One of the words is Yahweh.
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Yahweh is the word of God, which we would call the proper name.
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It's the I Am.
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Right? But there's another word that we use for God.
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And what is that word? It's that word that talks about Him being Lord.
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Now you might say, well, isn't Yahweh translated as Lord? But yes, but there is another word that's translated as Lord.
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What is it? Huh? Kurios is the Greek.
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And I was going to mention the Greek would say kurios, and that is the Greek translation of Lord.
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And that sometimes would translate Yahweh.
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But also there is another word, Adonai.
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Adonai.
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We've heard that song, right? There are songs with the phrase Adonai.
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If you've ever seen your Bible, capital L-O-R-D, that's Yahweh.
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That's the translation of the Hebrew Yahweh.
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And the reason why the English does that is it capitalizes L-O-R-D so you'll know that's the proper name for Lord or the Lord.
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But if you see it L-O-R-D and the three letters after are not capitalized, that is Adonai.
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And Adonai is the quality of Lordship.
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So when this text calls Him Lord, it says the Lord is gracious and merciful.
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What's it saying? It's saying in fact that He is the Lord.
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And you might say, well, that's kind of redundant.
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When it says He's Lord, it means He's the Lord.
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But what does it mean when you call someone Lord? You're speaking of His power, right? And what does it mean when you speak of God as Lord? You're speaking of He who is all-powerful.
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So even though this passage doesn't say God is all-powerful, it identifies Him with the word which references His power.
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The Lord is what? What does it say? Gracious.
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Merciful.
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What else? Slow to anger.
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So we went for just the sake of my handwriting, we'll say patient.
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What else? Compassionate.
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That's abounding in steadfast love, right? So we can say compassionate.
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What else? Forgiving, right? Merciful.
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Forgiving.
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What else? What else is in the passage? Good! Doesn't it say good? Does your text say good, Jack? Does everybody say good? What does yours say? Gracious.
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Okay.
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In verse 9, it doesn't say the Lord is good to all? Yes.
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Okay, yes.
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Because that's key to this.
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Because the word good, we're going to talk about it in a minute, but this word binds all this together.
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So this text tells us that in fact, God is all-powerful and He is all good.
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Now we could spend hours going through the Bible to prove this, or we could just look at the verse that we just read and say here it is.
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It says He's Lord, which means He's powerful, and in this sense all-powerful because it's referencing God.
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And He is good, and it says He's good to who? To all.
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Now, I'm not using this to say here's the defense to the unbeliever.
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I'm simply starting with this to say that the Bible makes no bones about the fact that God is both good and powerful, and He's all of both.
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And we take the presuppositional approach.
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We've talked about that over the last few weeks.
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And because we take the presuppositional approach, I could just end here.
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We'd end early, and I'll maybe go to Dairy Queen or something.
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But we could just say, well, the Bible says He's all good and all powerful, so, you know, neener, neener.
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We're done, you know.
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And we'd say, uh-huh.
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The person would say, uh-uh.
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And we'd say, uh-huh, uh-uh.
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And then we'd just go back and forth for half an hour.
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But we understand there's more to it than that.
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But I did want to go over this passage with you to begin with because I believe that there are Christians, people who call themselves Christians, who really don't believe God is all powerful and all good.
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You say, what do you mean? Well, they may say those words, but they can't really justify it to themselves because they don't understand it.
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Your first blank, I'm going to give you your first blank on the sheet there.
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To defend what we believe, we need to be sure we understand what we believe.
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As I was writing this lesson, I asked myself the question, how many Christians would know why God is all good and all powerful other than simply, well, the Bible says so? And I'm not saying the Bible says so isn't a good answer.
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The Bible says so is the answer.
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But in your heart, do you believe that God is both powerful and good, and all of both? Do you believe God is both all good and all powerful all the time? You know the Bible says that it's true.
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I've shown you that the Bible says that it's true.
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And you believe the Bible, so you believe it.
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But do you understand it? Can you rectify that question in your mind? Because I'm telling you, before you try to defend this to somebody else, you better understand it in your mind because there's people who don't.
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And you know why I know there's people who don't? Today, there were people who were shot.
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Several Christians went on the news, God didn't have anything to do with this.
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He had nothing to do with this.
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He had no control over this.
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Well, then he's not all powerful.
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You've given them the argument.
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Right? If you say God could not have done anything, what are you saying? He's not all powerful.
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Ah, now I got your attention because I'm getting some dirty looks.
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Okay, now we can go.
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That's fine.
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Now, serious though, this is an important thing.
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Because as soon as we say God couldn't do anything, He wanted to, but He couldn't.
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Then what we've given up is half the question.
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Because the question is, He's either all powerful or all good, but He can't be both.
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And see, Christians believe that by the way they answer the question.
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In your sheet, I'll give you your next blank.
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Now that I see some intentional looking, I will move.
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The actual argument boils down to an issue of justice.
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Justice is the blank.
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The argument boils down to the issue of justice.
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You see, the unbeliever who uses this argument, God can't be all good and all powerful, the unbeliever who makes this argument, believes in the dichotomy of good and bad.
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Moreover, he believes that there are things that are just and things that are unjust.
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So today, if he would have saw on the news, drug dealer shot during a robbery, film at 11, he would have said, well that was just.
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Group of terrorists blow themselves up while planning to bomb a sporting event.
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That was just.
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And so we rectify that by saying that was okay.
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That was just.
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But then we hear, young person stricken with cancer, dies horrible death.
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And the inside of us screams, that's unjust.
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Car accident, family filled in the car, hit by a tractor trailer because a semi guy was on his cell phone, dead.
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We say it's unjust.
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Why wasn't the guy on the cell phone? He's fine.
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That's how our mind works, right? I'm just painting the picture of everything we've thought.
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You see, the unbeliever lives in a world which is plagued by what he can only describe as one injustice after another.
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As a result, he begins to believe there can be no real justice.
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There can be no cosmic order.
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The world must be a random system of chances which are bouncing off of one another, one after the other.
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And in his mind, there can be no God in the world where women are beaten and hurt by their husbands, children are molested, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes destroy cities, and the list goes on and on.
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They just can't be a God when that happens.
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So when they say this, when they say God can't be good and powerful, what they're actually saying is God can't be just and be powerful.
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God is unjust.
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That's the argument.
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And that's why I say it all boils down to that.
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It's an issue of justice.
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Now again, before we even address the unbeliever's argument, how do you rectify that in your mind? And I honestly think most Christians never think about this stuff until we're faced with an unbeliever who's saying it to us and then oftentimes we fold like a wet blanket because we haven't thought through these things ourselves.
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Many Christians don't think about these things and when they do, they don't think deeply about them and then when they're forced to think about them, they speak poorly about them.
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I want to ask the question, does God have the power to stop all bad in the world? Now think about how you answer.
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Because if you say no, then we've gone back to the first problem.
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He's not all powerful.
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But if you say yes and then you say but he doesn't, you have to have an explanation for that, right? And I want to say this, there are many Christians who say he doesn't have the power.
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I couldn't live in that world.
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I couldn't live in that faith where I was trusting in a God who didn't have the power to do what he wanted.
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You know who I often quote to unbelievers or to even people who call themselves Christians who say well God didn't have the power to do that? You know who I quote? It's a biblical passage.
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I quote a pagan king.
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You guys remember Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel? In Daniel chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar is standing on his porch and he looks out over his kingdom and he begins to brag about what he has accomplished.
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He begins to brag about all that he has done.
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In that moment, God strikes him with madness and he ends up living in the field as a cow eating the grass of the field and his hair was as long as eagle's feathers and his fingernails were like claws.
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He was like an animal.
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And then as instantly as the madness went into his mind God gave him back his faculty of thinking and he realized at that moment God can do as he pleases.
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In fact, that's what he says.
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Daniel 4.34 says this.
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At the end of days, I Nebuchadnezzar This is a pagan king being quoted in scripture by Daniel who is writing this.
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At the end of the days, I Nebuchadnezzar lifted my eyes to heaven and my reason returned to me and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever for His dominion is an everlasting dominion and His kingdom endures from generation to generation.
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All of the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing and He does according to His will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay His hand or say to Him What have you done? Nobody can look at God and say God, why did you do it this way? Or why did you allow it to be done this way? Because God is God.
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That's what Nebuchadnezzar is saying.
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He's saying, you know what? I thought I had it all together.
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I thought this was all the result of my power and prowess.
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But in an instant it was removed from me.
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And I realized that I live at the mercy of God every minute of the day.
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And God does as He pleases.
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But if that is true and I'm going to go back and say because that is true, I don't want to say if as if it's not.
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Because that is true by the standard of most people and by most I mean unbelieving people that would mean God is not all good.
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Because if God has the power to thwart the evil of the world and the heartache of the world and He chooses not to then how can we say He is good? Because surely, and I have this conversation with believers sometimes I'll say, if you had the power to stop someone from hurting, would you? Yes.
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Are you better than God? Nobody will say yes, well, maybe sometimes.
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But that's really the question.
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That's the way the unbeliever is making this work in their mind.
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If I were God, there'd be no more hurricanes.
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If I were God, there'd be no more cancer.
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If I were God, there'd be no more floods.
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If I were God, it'd be cupcakes and rainbows.
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Forever.
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So we are more benevolent than God, right? I know that's a loaded question but that's really at the heart of the question.
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You believe you are better at being good than God is.
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The next blank is huge and this is very important because now we're getting to the issue of how to answer the question.
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The issue that almost every conversation has forgotten is this.
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We do not live in God's good world.
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Write it down.
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We do not live in God's good world.
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We live in a sin-cursed world.
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Now I'm going to say something and afterwards Jack and I might have a conversation because I know how much he loves the mountains.
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And I love them too.
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I go up there and we talk about how beautiful last year we got to spend some time together in Maggie Valley and it was great.
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And we go and we look at the mountains and we say, look how beautiful the mountains.
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Look how beautiful the falling leaves of the trees and look how beautiful the carved stone from the waterfalls.
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But this is not God's good world.
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This is a world that bears the marks of tragedy.
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Because all that stuff and it is beautiful and I'm not saying we're wrong to say it's beautiful because even in the destruction we see the beauty.
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Can you imagine what it was like before the flood? Can you imagine the beauty of a world that wasn't subjected to destruction? We don't live in that world anymore.
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We live in a world that's constantly destroying itself.
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We live in a world that's constantly renewing itself because it's dying all around us.
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And there's beauty in it.
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And that's why we get confused.
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Because God can put beauty even into the destruction.
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But we live not in God's good world.
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We live in a sin-cursed world.
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We need to think about that when we're answering this question.
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Because if we go back to Genesis 3, what was the result of sin? The world itself changed.
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Not just man.
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Everything changed.
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The Bible says before the fall of man, you could work and not get tired.
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I don't remember the last time I wasn't a little tired.
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I don't remember the last time in my life I wasn't a little exhausted.
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Yeah, it says before the fall, the thorns weren't even there to tear the flesh when you were collecting the food.
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The world changed with sin.
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Drastically changed.
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And you know the Bible says the world is crying out for redemption? And Romans chapter 8 says this, We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.
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And not only creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
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We're looking forward to the time when we're going to be redeemed.
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The earth is too.
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Now the earth doesn't have a spirit like we do.
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We're not pantheists who believe in some kind of spiritual earth.
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What I mean is the earth was subjected to disaster.
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And one day it's going to be renewed.
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The Bible says in Revelation 21, Behold, I saw a new heaven and a new earth.
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For the old heaven and the old earth had passed away.
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So we don't live in a good world anymore.
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I am willing to admit that.
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When somebody says God is not all powerful and all good at the same time, I'll say, now wait a minute.
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Are you saying that we don't live in a good world? They'll say, yeah, that's what I'm saying.
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Well, I agree.
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You're right.
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We do not live in a good world.
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We live in a world that is constantly kicking us in the teeth.
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It's looking for ways to give us a hard time.
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And some people say, well, it's God's fault.
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God created the world.
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He's at fault.
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Some even go as far as to charge God with evil.
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They say God knew man was going to sin.
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He had his part in it.
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He knew he was going to sin Jesus.
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He knew there was going to be a fall.
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So they try to lay iniquity at God's feet.
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But that argument does not take into consideration the biblical explanation.
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The Bible explanation is clear.
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It says, number one, and if you want to write this down, it's so important.
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The Bible says God does not cause us to sin.
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In fact, even though the Bible says God ordains all things, it very clearly tells us that he is not the cause of sin.
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In fact, it says in James, and I don't have the verse in front of me, maybe you know it off the top of your head, I believe it's in James chapter 1, where it says, God tempts no man to sin, neither can he himself be tempted.
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The Westminster Confession of Faith goes to great lengths to explain this, because it says, even though God has decreed all things, this does not make him the author of sin.
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God did not coerce Adam to eat the fruit.
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In fact, he warned him that in doing so, he would bring punishment and pain on himself, and he did.
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He had established an objective standard for justice, and Adam transgressed that standard, and today we stand along with Adam guilty before God as sinners.
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And I want to ask you a question.
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Can anyone here really claim for one second that you do not justly fall under the righteous punishment of God, because you are not a sinner? Anybody here want to take that? Anybody here not sin this week? Is anybody here not sinned this day? The Bible says to love your Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
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Have you done that perfectly since you got here? Have you not sinned in the last hour? What are the wages of sin? Death.
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What are we owed by our sin? Nothing but death.
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And if every man died tonight, instantly and immediately, he would simply be receiving what his sin justly deserves.
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And that's a radical idea for the unbeliever, but it should not be for the believer, but I find that it is for the believer.
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I tell believers this, and they want to flip out.
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But the truth is, God is holy and does not tolerate sin, and He does not overlook even one sin, and He would violate His own righteousness if He did.
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That's why Christ is necessary.
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That's why the cross is necessary.
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That's why propitiation is necessary.
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Because if God let you get away with one sin, He would be unjust, because He has said the wages of sin.
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He has said what your sin deserves is death.
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The soul that sins, it shall die.
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That's why Christ can't pay for part of your sin.
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If Christ only pays for some of your sin, you are lost.
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He has to pay for it all, or you're lost.
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Every bit, every drop of sin has to be accounted for, because God's righteous.
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He's just.
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So we understand.
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Here's how I understand it.
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I won't say we, I'll say me.
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Here's how I understand this question, the issue of the all-powerful and all-goodness of God.
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God is all-powerful and all-good.
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The world was created good, and sin entered the world, and now that good world is corrupted by that sin.
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And that which was good is now subjected to bad.
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And even though we see some beauty in the bad, it is still bad.
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And God is under no obligation to keep any man from the bad that is the result of sin.
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He is under no obligation to keep anyone from anything.
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And to put that demand on Him and say, God must do this, is to not understand justice.
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Because the only thing justice demands is our punishment.
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Anything that we get that's not punishment is grace.
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That's why I say, my heart beats in my chest because of the grace of God.
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I live my life, and I get to enjoy my wife and my children.
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I was going to say four, there's five of them now.
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One's just a player to be determined.
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But she's on the way.
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I enjoy that grace of God, and that's what it is.
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Every day I have is a grace not earned.
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Now, I said all that, but we're not done.
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And I know it's starting to rain.
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I want to get you guys out of here quick.
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I'm going to give you the last couple answers real quick, because here's the deal.
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If I'm talking to an unbeliever, and they bring up this objection, all powerful, all good, however they say it, I'm not going to have time to go through all that I just went with you.
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Most likely, it's going to be a lot shorter than the last hour I took explaining to you the complex balance between God's goodness and His omnipotence.
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So what do I say? One, well here, on your sheet.
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To understand the person, we have to understand their presupposition.
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And remember what I said about how we do apologetics? We point out the person's presupposition.
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Pointing out the person's presupposition.
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The person has two presuppositions who ask this question.
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If they say God cannot be all powerful and all good at the same time, they have two overriding presuppositions.
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Number one, their presupposition is this.
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There is such a thing as justice.
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There is such a thing as justice.
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If a man says it's bad for a hurricane to kill hundreds of people, he is assuming that there is a standard of bad and good.
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If he says it's unjust that people die from car accidents or cancer or anything else, he's making a standard.
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He's saying there is such a thing as justice.
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He has determined that life is a good thing and that death is a bad thing.
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He's presuming that.
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Because I've got to tell you, in the atheistic worldview, if we are all stardust, that dog don't hunt.
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The argument of the dignity of man, the value of human life, this is why abortion can be argued the way it is.
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It's because that's not a real human life because it's still in the womb.
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When does it become a real human life? When it comes out of the womb.
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Why does location make a difference in value? Well, because in the womb it can't live on its own.
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Guess what? Outside of the womb it can't live on its own.
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I've got a 19-year-old that still lives with me.
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Sorry.
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You get my point.
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They're dependent forever.
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Nobody is independent.
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But they say, well, the baby inside the womb requires its mother to live.
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I've never seen a two-month-old that didn't require somebody for life.
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Life is valuable.
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It has dignity.
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We know this.
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And they're assuming it.
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When they say God is not good because He's not saving the sick person.
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Say, why does the sick person matter? Well, I believe human life is valuable.
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That's the second thing.
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Justice must have a standard.
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And then I would put hyphen, they believe they're the standard.
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That's the presupposition.
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When a man says something is bad, he's appealing to a standard.
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And if that standard is not the Creator, the standard becomes himself.
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And the great presupposition in this objection is that God cannot be good because He doesn't do what I would do.
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God cannot be good because He doesn't do what I would do because I am the standard of goodness.
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And let me tell you something.
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When you tell somebody that that's what they're saying, that's like a light bulb.
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Because that's what you've said.
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You're saying that God can't be good because He wouldn't do what you would do.
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And that's a moment where you can pause.
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Because that's what they've said.
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He can't be all powerful and all good because if He were all good, He would do what I would do.
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Because I'm good.
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And at that point I say, do you really think you're a good person? Do you really think that you're a good person? And you know where I'm going from here.
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By what standard are you good? God gave us ten commandments.
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Have you kept even one? You're not good.
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Have you ever told a lie? What does that make you? Have you ever stolen anything? What does that make you? Have you ever...
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a thief.
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You've heard it too.
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Stealer.
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Have you ever looked with lust? You've committed adultery in your heart.
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Have you ever hated someone? You've committed murder in your heart.
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You are not good and yet you make yourself the standard over God.
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To say that He can't be good because He wouldn't do what you think should be done.
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This is a powerful answer to a powerful question.
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Because they're asking a very serious question.
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They're asking about the moral culpability of God.
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And I simply lay it back at their feet and say this.
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You're saying God can't be good because He's not like you.
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And you're not good.
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At this point, and this is the last thing.
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At this point, this is how I would hopefully, if they allow me to continue.
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Do you know what the Bible says about why there is so much bad in this world? And why God is not stopping every single instance of it? Do you know why the Bible says that's true? Because I agree with you.
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I agree there's a lot of bad in the world.
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I agree with you that God could stop it.
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And I agree with you that God doesn't stop it.
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Do you know why? Do you know what the Bible says? The Bible says that the suffering of this world has been brought about by sin.
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And not sins, like your individual little peccadillos.
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No, sin itself has cursed this world.
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But sin itself, which entered through Adam, has been passed down to us all.
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And it has spread through us all.
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And it is ultimately what kills us.
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Sin is a curse.
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And sin has cursed this world.
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But it is not the last word.
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Because God has destroyed the power of sin and death in His Son, Jesus Christ.
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Can I tell you about Jesus? If you really worry about how bad this world is, let me tell you something.
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It's going to be a lot worse in hell.
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But God has made a way that no one has to experience that if they trust in Christ.
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Can I tell you about Jesus? Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for tonight.
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I pray that hopefully this was helpful, Lord.
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And I pray that you'll use this to grow us in our understanding of how to make a defense for our faith.
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In Jesus' name we pray.
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Amen.