Why do bad things happen to good people?

Notes from a sermon by Noel Darragh on Sunday 9 March 2013

"Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Romans 8 verses 18 – 25

2 Peter 3 verse 13 “nevertheless we, according to his promise look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.”

I often mention the fact that a country man I used to visit quite often when I was in the work of the church didn’t come to church because didn’t like to be told he needed to be saved.  His wife got saved and eventually he did come and got gloriously saved.  I enjoyed him and his quaint sayings, the way he put things across.  Talking about a neighbour who was not well and had gone into hospital he said “the news is not good.”  I asked the question ”I suppose he is well up in years.”  “Yes he is, you know the way it is if you stay about here long enough you will get something.”  Don Carson put if another way “if you live long enough you will suffer.”

We live in a situation full of problems and difficulties of all kinds.  I want us to take a little look at the subject and get any light on this matter.  Every pastor and every Christian knows there are many problems in life we cannot avoid.  Many people have looked at this problem.  One man who wrote on this subject was a Jewish Rabbi in an effort to square the circle about God being omnipotent.  God is not all powerful or else he sets his omnipotence aside to allow bad things to happen.  We cannot go down that road because it is totally against scripture.  God is all powerful.  We must never rob him of that factor and attribute.  Some people say should not look at this question because God should not have to personally explain what he is doing in our lives.  He doesn’t owe us any explanation.  God can change any of us, punish any of us if he wants to.  One thing we need to be careful is you and I try to dictate that we know what God is doing.  “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” (Romans 8 verse 34)  You and I must be careful we don’t condemn someone else or even ourselves by saying ‘it is God who is punishing me’.  A cold shiver goes down my spine when I hear people saying ‘What did I do to deserve this?”  What kind of picture do they have of God?  Is he some tyrant just longing to throw some brick on me?  Is that your picture of God?  Others believe he is a God of love, care and compassion and whatever I go through he is with me in it and will bring out the best out of it even though I cannot see that at the time.”  Others want to philosophise this question – how do you define good people and define bad things?  We all face difficulties and problems in life but look at it seriously.  Proverbs 25 verse 20 refers to light words to a heavy heart is like leaving off a garment in cold weather.

Let’s think of scripture – in Genesis we will get to the end of Genesis chapter 1 and we read that everything God created including man was not only good but very good.  When we get to Genesis 6 the picture is so sadly different and it is maybe worth reminding us what that says “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (verse 5)  What an amazing amount of truth in those 10 generations.  From everything being very good to everything being very bad.  Now of course you and I know that standing between Genesis 1 and 6 is Genesis chapter 3.  The record of what we know to be the fall when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, they broke God’s command to them and ate the forbidden fruit and broke fellowship with God and fell into a state of sin.  A state of rebellion against God.  We describe that as the fall.  We need to keep that in our minds.  That man, that all of mankind is a fallen creature.  This is how we find ourselves.  Whether we think we are self-righteous it doesn’t matter.  We are fallen creatures and man is not only a fallen creature he is a falling creature.  He is not evolving into something better but he is falling into increased rebellion against God.  If you ever listen to any religious debates in the media you will find it interesting that those who take a stand as evangelicals for biblical truth are talking down and those who promote secular ethos always get the field.  I cannot go into depth some others do but my mind asks simple questions.  If this whole thing about God and not to be saved why is it the more secular we become as a society the more problems we have?  I want to also ask how many evangelical Christians are out there murdering and killing and abusing as compared with the rest of the population who have no time for God or the Bible.  We are fallen and we are now living in society that has fallen in the last 50, 100 years.  We have in fact fallen a lot since the turn of the millennium.  Man is a fallen creature and can only be raised up by the sovereign grace of God in redemption.  There is no other way.  It is the consequences of the fall.  It is not easy to grasp that.  It becomes a natural tendency to rebel against God but it is more than naturally tendency, it is the ability because the fall brought the knowledge of good and evil.  With that knowledge we then have the ability to rebel against God.  That is what Paul said in Romans “because the carnal mind is enmity against God.” (chapter 8 verse 7)  The Bible dictionary says “man is now a perverted creature, no longer living for God’s glory and finding all his enjoyment in God.”  The Presbyterian catechism says “man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”  That idea of pervasion is highly significant.  Look at sin and ask yourself what is it as it works itself out?  What is pride?  I’m sure there was not one of us who didn’t stand up in front of a mirror and said to ourselves ‘look at me people will notice me today.’  That is pride.  Self-respect was given by God but is now perverted.  If you had no self-respect you wouldn’t have stood in front of that mirror nor washed yourself.  God gave you self-respect.  The fall of man into sin means that the devil can pervert that self-respect into pride.  Road rage – what is it?  I was angry with that person.  What is temper?  It is God given.  The ability to feel indignant, to feel that which is wrong.  Perverted by Satan.  Jesus clearing out the temple using the whip was not angry.  That word is never used of him.  When we talk of anger it is someone who has lost their temper and control.  Jesus was indignant about the wrong and we have got the ability given by God to feel indignant, to know wrong that we cannot control.  Sex is a God given gift that has been perverted into lust which is rocking society.  Abusing children all goes with it.  Every time I turn the news on I hear this information.  Why because man has fallen and is falling, because Satan is pulling him down since he yielded to Satan’s control in Eden’s garden.  Another major issue arising from the fall is the sentence of the curse.  You know what a sentence is – it is handed out by the judge that either decrees toil, sorrow, suffering or death.  “For the creature was made subject o vanity, not willingly but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” (verses 20 and 21)  Creation in corruption because of the fall of man.  God said to Adam “you will rule over creation” at the end of Genesis chapter 1.  When the fall came man lost that authority.  In actual fact he handed it to Satan in Eden’s garden.  What do we find – man is out of harmony with God.  He is hiding when God comes to the Garden.  Out of harmony with fellow man – Cain murders Abel.  Man is out of harmony with creation.  Instead of governing creation now works the ground in toil and tears.  When you think of those words “God said to Adam be fruitful subdue it, have dominion over every living thing” think of where man is now with regards to the whole of creation.  By the end of Genesis chapter 3 man is out of the Garden.  That is where you and I are.  We need to remind ourselves.  We were made to live in the Garden where there were no problems, no difficulties, every relationship would be perfect.  Now we are out of the Garden.  There will never be a perfect relationship again because there are no perfect human beings any more even when we are redeemed.  The effects of the fall can still so easily make me selfish.  I have not been a perfect husband.  I have never been a perfect minister.  We are not perfect, we are out of the Garden.  There are thorns and briars to harm us.  Even the rose with all its beauty has a thorn.  Because we are out where the curse is, where the enemy is, where creation is in rebellion.  That is where we have to live.  The magnitude of the disaster brought about by the fallen man.

It is not easy to get our heads around that.  We live in a broken world, that is seriously broken.  How did this awful thing happen?  Before Eden’s garden Lucifer the devil set himself up against God.  “I will exalt my throne against God.”  God cast him out of his presence.  He appeared again in Eden.  He was bringing the battle that existed between God and him, bringing it into the human race.  In the first chapters of Job we find the devil is saying to God “you cannot do such a work in a human life, you cannot be so real to a human person, you cannot get a human person to so trust you that they will trust you no matter what happens in that circumstance.”  That is what the devil is saying to God not just Job.  This is when it started, a challenge to God.  Do you believe that God can do that in a human person’s life?  A person like you and I with all our weakness wanting to be free of sickness and pain, wanting our families to be all OK, that he can be so real, bring us to a place where we can trust him even when things go wrong.  God says to the devil “yes I can.”  All conflict is played out in Job’s life.  Chapter 13 verse 15 is the climax of this whole thing “though he slay me yet will I trust him.”  God is so real to me that no matter what happens to me I trust him.  Is God real to us like that?  We learn that as we read through Job and in Romans in the New Testament when it says “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”  The battle of the ages ever rages.  It will not ease until Jesus comes again.  We have natural disasters – earthquakes tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, floods – what is happening?  The natural creation is in rebellion.  Sometimes it has to be down to people as a lot could have been avoided if they had acted correctly.  It all has to be kept in balance.  These things can be put down to the rebellion of creation since the fall.  Famine is man’s fault.  Everyone knows that there is enough food produced in this world every year to feel all of its people.  That is a known fact among government agencies involved in these things.  Wars, whether between a husband and wife, in a church community, in a country, in the world are all man’s doing.  Thousands lose their lives – that is man’s doing not God’s.  Why is man doing these things?  Because of the fall in Eden’s Garden.  He is a fallen creature.  Think about sicknesses.  Some sickness that we have to endure are as a result of living n sinful world.  Broken people, imperfect people.  Physical qualities we have mean that our immune system fails.  We catch germs because of what happened in Eden’s Garden.  We are not in the Garden any more.  We are out there and things and things are going to go wrong.  We are affected by sin.  Some sicknesses we bring on ourselves and abuse our bodies.  Sometimes we under eat, sometimes we over eat, abuse our bodies with alcohol and drugs whether they are legal or prescription.  Sometimes we have too little exercise and sometimes we overwork wanting to make money.  Because we are fallen creatures we don’t handle life properly.  Then of course, even within the Christian church we harbour attitudes, envy, jealousy, bitterness, an unforgiving spirit.  These can cause many psychological, physical and emotional problems.  Some bad things come to us because of others.  What about child abuse?  It is the result of sin.  The magnitude of the disaster caused by the fall.

You probably want to say to me – ‘can God not stop all these bad things?’  Yes he could stop them all but there are a number of reasons he doesn’t.  We are thankful he didn’t create robots but made us in his image.  We have the ability to make choices and suffer the consequences with ourselves and the next generation.  If we would like God to prevent all bad things, if we are a parent how would you go about preventing your child being in a situation that could happen to them, something you wouldn’t want to happen to them?  How would you go about doing that?  If I want God to stop all bad things happening how would he do it?  Jesus’ prayer in John 17 when he was about to be separated from his disciples asked for them not to be taken out of the world but keep them until it was time to take them home to heaven.

We have looked at the magnitude of the disaster by the fall.  Let’s look at the magnitude of the redemption by God.  In Genesis 3 we have the first promise of Jesus.  Notice an interesting thing here – verse 20.  Adam called his wife’s name Eve because she was the mother of all living things.  That just took place after the fall.  He did not call her the mother of death but the mother of life.  Maybe he grasped something of the promise of the redeemer in verse 15.  In verse 21 God provides a covering for Adam and Eve pointing us forward to the redemptive work of Christ for us.  Verses 22 and 23 shows us that Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden.  God was preventing Adam and Eve eating from the tree of life.  He knows it is the worst thing that could happen to them is to live for ever in a fallen world.  Redemption is promised.  You know what that tells me?  That I can have a Garden in my heart.  I can have Jesus as my Saviour and my friend, know peace in the midst of the storm.  I can have comfort in the midst of pain and suffering.  When everything about my life is shifting and one day God will put an end to it all.  In Revelation we are told God will wipe away all tears.  He will remove every cause of tears.  That day is coming and I read also in Revelation that those who are with the Lord rest from their labours.  You will now have to struggle with creation in toil and tears.  That will end but right now

I have found a friend in Jesus

He is everything to me

In sorrow he is my comfort, in trouble he is my stay

He tells me every care on him to roll.

Do you know him like that?  He all my grief has taken and all my sorrows bore.  The magnitude of the plan of redemption.  When all else is wrong I can say “it is well with my soul.”  When all around me is shaking and unsure and unsecure I can have the assurance I am hidden in the hollow of his blessed hand.  How can I have a Saviour like that?  I can only have a Saviour like that because of what happened to Jesus.  The baddest thing every happened to the goodest person there ever was at Calvary.  I am not talking about the greatest miscarriage of justice or how he was nailed to the cross.  Just think of all that has happened in the world – it is rebellion against God.  List it all and it was poured out on Jesus at Calvary.  He took our sins just like the scapegoat in Leviticus.  When the sins of the people were laid on that goat he was taken out into the wilderness and slain.  Just like John said “behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  Don’t think of the bad in terms of the unrighteous but also the self-righteous.  They gather in every Sunday, perhaps sit at the communion table, or come in at Easter and Christmas for the special services.  They have pride in their heart and cannot bow their knee and say ‘I am a sinner, I need Jesus.”  All that self-righteousness was poured on Jesus on the cross.  God had to turn away from him and Christ cried out “My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?”  He was made sin for us that we might be made righteous.

The magnitude of the redemption – Romans 8 verse 22 “we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.”  All creation is waiting to be delivered from the fall.  The effects of the fall.  All of creation is waiting for it.  The day of release is coming when all the effects of the fall will be transformed through the redemptive work of Christ and we will have a perfect situation to live in.