Sermon Text: Psalm 105
Sermon Title: Joseph: A Shadow of Christ
Scripture Reading: Psalm 105
Preface
The following message is a compilation of works from Jonathan Edwards, John Piper, and Jay Adams. I quote these men (and cite their work) almost verbatim. My purpose for constructing a message where there is little personal contribution is due to the depth of the topic. I struggle deeply with this topic and need help. This message is the product of my search for mind renewal and the enlargement of my soul. I cannot say more than what these men have said about this most weighty topic. My purpose here is not to be unique or creative, but to be helped, helpful and true. This question has a simple answer involving deep explanation. The work of these men is paramount to explaining the existence of evil and God’s use of it in His good and perfect plan. I pray that my research and compilation of the works below will prove helpful.
The following sources will be cited by their corresponding number in the text below:
- The Grand Demonstration by Jay Adams
- Spectacular Sins and Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ by John Piper
- Jonathan Edwards on the Decrees of God @ http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/conference-messages/is-god-less-glorious-because-he-ordained-that-evil-be
- Preaching Christ from Genesis by Sidney Greidanus
- Word Biblical Commentary Genesis Volume 2 by Gordon Wenham
Read Genesis 45:4-8
There is a joy to be had, that if you had it, would enable you to face anything in life without crumbling. It is an assurance found through certainty (Tim Keller). God loves you no matter how much bad stuff is happening inside of you (personal sin) and outside of you (circumstantial; suffering). Look what a mess I am or look what a mess life is – God cannot love me.
Two things happen in Dothan:
- Joseph (God’s silence; horrible and miserable life)
- Elisha (army attacking; God immediately responds).
Both Joseph and Jesus were their father’s favorite. Jealousy over their father’s favor moved Joseph and Jesus’ brothers to hatred. Just as Jewish Joseph married a Gentile bride, Jewish Jesus married a Gentile bride (Ephesians 5). Due to sin, both Jesus and Joseph traveled to a foreign land. Both Jesus and Joseph were stripped of their clothes. All were commanded to bow before Joseph (41:43), so at the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth (Philippians 2:10). In both stories, the one sinned against is the one to which you must flee for rescue. God used both the sins of Joseph and Jesus’ brothers to redeem the very sin they were committing.
Does God Ordain Evil?
Yes, God controls all natural and moral evil (Job 1:21-22; Deuteronomy 32:39; Job 2:7, 10; Psalm 105:16; 2 Kings 17:25; Daniel 6:22; Job 42:2).
Notice man’s wickedness and responsibility:
Notice God’s absolute sovereignty and Divine providence in ordaining sin:Also, notice the Psalmist’s comments on the Joseph narrative:
- Psalm 105:1-45 (vv. 1-25 pertaining to Genesis)
- Psalm 105:17 does not say God found Joseph there owing to evil choices, and then tried to make something good come of it.
“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know – this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:22-23). “for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27-28).
“I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes – that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens – that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence – the fall of leaves from a tree is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche” (Charles Spurgeon).
Antinomy – a term used to describe the equally rational, but contradictory result of establishing truths that transcend empirical reason because the truth goes beyond possible experience and is applied to the sphere of that which transcends it.
Light sometimes acts as waves and sometimes as particles. Sometimes light acts as if it has matter and sometimes it does not. We don’t know how that works, but we know it works that way, so we work with it (JI Packer).
Our choices matter, but do not determine the future. God determines every detail of the future and we are responsible for our choices.
Is God the Author of Sin? Is God Evil?
To say that all evil is the result of the fall of Adam is perfectly true, but piteously inadequate. That response merely moves the question back a step: how could there be a fall? To suggest that Satan is the cause of the fall, again, is true, but only pushes the inquiry back an additional step: how could the devil exist in a sovereign, good God’s world?
If God hates evil and punishes those who commit sin, how could God ordain it? Deuteronomy 29:29 is true. However, I do not believe the answer to this question is a secret thing.
God is neither evil nor the author of sin because He decreed sin exist.
Is God the author of sin? “If by the ‘author of sin,’ be meant the sinner, the agent, or the actor of sin, or the doer of a wicked thing, it would be a reproach and blasphemy to suppose God to be the author of sin. In this sense, I utterly deny God to be the author of sin. Willing sin to exist in the world is not the same as sinning” (Jonathan Edwards).
Edwards uses the analogy of the way the sun brings about light and warmth by its essential nature, but brings about dark and cold by dropping below the horizon. “If the sun were the proper cause of cold and darkness,” he says, “it would be the fountain of these things, as it is the fountain of light and heat.” In other words, sin is not the fruit of any positive agency or influence of the most High, but on the contrary, arises from the withholding of his action and energy, and under certain circumstances, necessarily follows on the want of his influence.
Light and heat flow from the sun. Cold and darkness do not flow from the sun, but are the natural consequence of the sun's withdrawal.
Is God evil because He decreed evils existence? God decreed water, dry land, mountains, birds of the air, but God is none of the above. Decreeing sin does not make Him a sinner. He decreed the entire creation, but must be distinguished from it.
Why Does God Ordain Evil?
I believe the answer is found in Romans 9:22-23.
Here, perhaps beyond every other passage of Scripture, you penetrate into the ultimate meaning of the universe. Paul says that God endures with patience the vessels that were fitted for destruction in order to demonstrate and make known His wrath.
The Father’s desire is to be fully known. If people were originally created in a glorified state without ever the existence of sin, evil, and Hell, God would be partially known, glorified, worshipped, praised, and enjoyed. Words like mercy, grace, patience, love, holiness, wrath, justice, etc. would mean absolutely nothing to you. How would you fully worship, know, glorify, and enjoy God without the existence of evil?
That’s Not Fair!
In his sinful self-importance, man thinks and acts as if he were the only creature in the cosmos. He is so impressed with himself that he speaks as if the universe were created for him. However, the Bible makes it abundantly clear the universe was made for God (Colossians 1:16). Anticipating the “That’s Not Fair!” attitude, Paul answers with Romans 9:20. Paul’s response in Romans 9 is much in the same vein as God’s two chapter long rebuke of Job (Job 38-39). After all, what is fairness? And from where does your sense of fairness come? Apart from an objective, divinely-revealed standard, your definition of fairness is subjective. God is the determiner of what is right and wrong, and therefore, what is or is not fair. The charge that God is unfair, like the decision in the Garden of Eden to follow Satan’s counsel in preference to God’s command, reveals a spirit of rebellious autonomy in the one who makes it. It issues from the arrogant assumption that man can sit in judgment on God. “I lay my hand upon my mouth. I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 40:4b; Job 42:6). Is God responsible for man’s sin? Who would God be responsible to? Should God have created all men for no other purpose than to consign them to an eternity in hell, there can be no protest. God is God. God can do with that which is His own as He wishes (Romans 9:21). The charge of “unfairness” could be sustained only if you deserved something from God that he fails to give.
“If God can shut the mouth of a ravenous lion (Daniel 6), then He can shut the mouth of a malaria-carrying mosquito” (John Piper).
Is God Less Glorious For Ordaining Evil?
Scripture is abundantly clear: God hates evil. However, God wills that evil comes to pass that good may come out of it. And how does the existence of evil serve this good end? Here is Edwards' stunning answer:
It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God's glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionally effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all. . . .
Thus it is necessary, that God's awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God's glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all.
If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God's holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God's grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness so ever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired. . .
So evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world; because the creature's happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and the sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionally imperfect.
So the answer to the question in the title of this message, "Is God less glorious because he ordained that evil be?" is no, just the opposite. God is more glorious for having conceived and created and governed a world like this with all its evil.
Hope in the Gospel
Evil committed suicide in doing its worst evil: The Crucifixion of Christ.
Because of this light momentary affliction, we will fully know, enjoy, glorify, and worship God forever.
Why Preach a Message Like This?
Rootless emotionalism that treats Christianity like a therapeutic option will be swept away in the face of persecution and pain. Wimpy worldviews make wimpy Christians. Paul’s remedy for wimpy Christians is weighty doctrine. What is missing is the Bible. I mean the whole Bible, with its blood and guts and sins and horrors – and all of it under the massive hand of God - The hand whose fingers flick stars into being; The hand that gives life and takes it; The hand that rules everything. Everything. What we need is to know that great things about God.
Stop apologizing for God. Stop trying to justify God. Stop trying to rationalize God. God does not fit in your box. God being owed your worship is not predicated by you understanding Him. God answers to God, not you. You must take what you have been told and trust He is wise, good, and all-powerful. When God says He wills sin, yet hates it and holds man accountable for it – trust Him. When God says evil is necessary for our greatest good – trust Him. When God says it is His right to make vessels fit for destruction and He is absolved of guilt – trust Him.
“I am aware that these things seem emotionally distant and unrelated to the personal pains of many. In our quiet daily miseries of marriage or parenting or loneliness or sickness or depression, we may feel that all this talk about the grandeur of God is like trying to heal a bruised heart with a tire iron. I know that God is tender, and that personal fellowship with Him is sweet, and that touching the heart happens through the brokenness of the still, small voice. I know this, and love it. Jesus Christ is a precious friend to me. But I also know something else. If, while I am having a tender conversation with my wife, a man breaks in and kills her and all my children and leaves me wounded on the living room floor, I will need a way of seeing the world that involves more than the tenderness of God. If pestilence takes out tens of thousands of my fellow citizens and half my church, my mental and spiritual survival will depend on more than the precious gifts of God’s intimacy” (John Piper; Spectacular Sins p. 14).
I think what Dr. Piper is saying is that our souls need to be enlarged, challenged, and steadied by the greatness and awesomeness of our Creator, King, and Savior. There is something much bigger going on than what is before our eyes – and it is not about you. God is massive and far surpasses our understanding and wisdom. I need a God who is outside the bounds of my understanding and who I can cling to in the midst of pain and confusion.
What if Joseph wouldn’t have gone through his misery? Thousands of people would have died, Israel would have starved, Jesus wouldn’t have been born, and you would be under God’s wrath.
If you believe everything is fixed despite our choices, you’ll be passive. If you believe our choices determine the future, you’ll be paralyzed (Tim Keller).
Ray Bradbury “The Sound of Thunder” – Illegal time machine; man named Travis will take people into the past for money; a man comes to go back into the past; Travis says, “You must not get off the path” – Kill one mouse; for one of ten mice a fox dies; for one of ten foxes a lion starves; eventually a caveman goes to look for food and there is none because you stepped on it; before having any children, the caveman dies. From his loins would have sprung ten sons and from theirs, 100 sons. A billion people are killed. If you step on a mouse, you step on the pyramids and George Washington.
Why are we here this morning?
I told my story with specific names remaining anonymous.
“As a pastor, I do not think it is my job to entertain you during the last days. It is not my calling to help you have chipper feelings while the whole creation groans. My job is to put the kind of ballast in the belly of your boat so that when these waves crash against your life, you will not capsize but make it to the harbor of heaven – battered and wounded, but full of faith and joy” (John Piper, The Pleasures of God p. 28).
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