Lesson 14
Ecclesiastes
The Things That Don't
Work!
Review:
3:14-21 Next segment is Keeping
Everything in Perspective
3:14-15 What God does!
I know that everything God does will remain forever;
there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it,
for God has so worked
that men should fear Him.
**
This fear is not an attitude of terror. It is instead a
commitment of the total being to trust and believe the living God.
**
This "fear" should evoke worship of God and humble
submission to His Word.
OBSERVATIONS:
1. Man's arrogance leads to ad libbing
the plan of God.
2. The quality of God's actions are
that they are permanent and they are complete.
God is thorough.
3. God's actions should cultivate respect - awe for Him not
hate as is the case with many.
OBSERVATIONS:
1. GOD patiently repeats things until the lessons are
learned.
2. Anytime we discover an area of weakness, we must have an
attitude that there's a vpt that must be brought into
line with God's.
3. God is concerned with building complete mature
believers. Eph 4:13-16;
4. Since God keeps pursuing us, the easy way is to learn the
lesson quickly and move on.
Furthermore, I have seen under the sun, (made an observation and come to a
conclusion) that in the place of justice there is
wickedness,
- to the Hebrew mishpat was the gov't as a whole and how it dealt with its people not just
to the court or legal system as we would tend to look at justice with our
separation of powers.
- righteousness tsedeq - basic idea is to be straight; came to ref
to an ethical or moral std; the yardstick for this std is the character of God.
- Ps 145:17 The Lord
is righteous in all His ways.
- Lev
- also used of weights and measures
in Lev 19:36,
- Passage that closely parallels what Solomon is describing
here is in Amos 5:10-24
- Might take note of God's attitude toward evil and
wickedness;
- Ps 5:4;
Hab 1:13
- The Believer is to love righteousness and hate wickedness - Ps
45:7
Solomon quickly adds here that man is held accountable by
God for his actions - NO ONE WILL ESCAPE GOD'S JUSTICE.
- 2 Cor
HOW DO WE EXPLAIN EVIL IN THE WORLD ?
Christians affirm that God is omnipotent, omniscient, as
well as faithful and all good, but that His allowance for volition allows for
the possibility of evil.
God does not cause evil or is He
unable to prevent evil if He chose to do so, but that He allows evil as a
consequence of volition, man's choices.
We know from the Bible that evil will not exist forever, and
that a lifetime in the midst of evil and suffering is insignificant compared to
eternity in perfect peace with God.
One of the most forceful arguments that is
put forth goes like this:
1. If God is all-powerful, he could destroy evil.
2. If God is all-good, he would destroy evil.
3. But evil is not destroyed - its still there.
4. Therefore, no such God exists.
The great skeptic and philosopher David Hume (1711-1776)
questioned the Christian God's existence this way.
1. Is he willing to prevent evil, and not able? Then he is
impotent.
2. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
3. Is he both able and willing? Then why is there evil.
How can we as those who believe in God answer these kind of attacks and arguments? Is it rational to believe in
an omnipotent, omniscient, all-good God in the face of the reality of evil and
wickedness in the world?
EVIL AND FREE WILL
First of all, the word "destroy" (Gk. apollumi) can be understood in two ways.
#1. It can mean to annihilate
completely, in its strongest sense or #2 it can mean simply to defeat entirely.
We must understand that moral evil, wickedness is evil by
choice. It is evil for which someone, the agent, is morally responsible. Moral
good is goodness by choice. It is good for which some agent is morally
responsible.
The point is that neither moral evil nor moral good can
occur apart from free will.
When it becomes impossible to blaspheme God, it also becomes
impossible to worship Him. How would a
robot bring glory to God?
Conclusion: The only way for God to actually destroy the
possibility and actuality of all evil would be for God to destroy all free
choice.
This argument can be summarized as follows:
1. The only way to destroy all evil is to destroy all free
thought and choice.
2. Even atheists do not want their freedom of thought and
choice destroyed.
3. Therefore, even atheists do not really want God to
destroy all evil.
EVIL AND GOD'S PATIENCE
The application of the second definition of
"destroy", to defeat entirely, is to defeat evil without destroying
free creatures. If this is possible, and it involves no actual contradictions,
then the atheists argument cannot stand, i.e. that
because there is evil in the world there is no God.
We should be able to see that their last statement, their
conclusion to the argument, does not follow logically from the previous
statements:
1. An all-good God would defeat evil.
2. An all-powerful God could defeat evil.
3. But evil is not yet defeated.
4. Therefore, no such God exists.
As a matter of fact, if God is Omnipotent and Omniscient and
all-good, then it is reasonable to believe that he will defeat evil in the
future.
There is only one way the atheist can salvage his argument
at this point. He must change his statement in #3 above to "But evil is
not yet defeated and never will be defeated."
Thus logically the atheist must become God in order to
disprove God.
This should raise a question as to why people reject God and
become atheists, agnostics or skeptics.
Paul in Rom 1:18-20 states the principle that is pertinent.
Notice that he declares that all men without exception
"know about God", come to the point of God-consciousness, know that
He exists. But what is evident to them,
that God exists, is nevertheless repressed, suppressed by them. They have made a
conscious decision to reject the existence of God.
The real reason for or cause of atheism is not the lack of
rational proof for God, but the presence of rebellious pride against God.
It is the spectacle of the creature shaking his fist at the
Creator and declaring, "I refuse to believe in you even if you are
there."
Excellent material dealing with this subject in detail can
be found in a book by Dr. Francis Schaeffer The God Who Is There.