If God Is So Powerful and Good, Why Do Bad Things Happen?

The Gift of Sin?

I am so thankful for God leading me to the Bible study I am in currently. Without this study, I might never have heard of Voddie Baucham. What a passionate believer in the Word of God is this man! He puts on the hat of both apologist and family man, and the stuff that God speaks through this man is so powerful.

Here was an interesting case he made in a sermon on brokenness I just watched on YouTube (you can watch it too; just go to YouTube and search “Voddie Baucham brokenness”). Voddie made the case that God gives us a gift in allowing us to not forget our sins.

What?!?!?!

I know the verses that you might use to combat this. Psalm 103:12 would be a good one: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Jeremiah 31:34 would also seem to give some argument to this: “‘No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the Lord. ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’”

Ah, but these two verses speak to how God treats sin. He wipes the slate clean (Psalm 103:12) and He has promised that He would forget our sins (Jeremiah 31:34), but obviously we still remember times when we’ve messed up. This is a gift directly from God. Why? Three reasons:

1) If you could forget your sin, you could never testify to the goodness of God. Our sins allow us to be broken before God so that when we understand the fullness of what His grace means, we can testify to how good He is to do this.

2) If you could forget your sin, you couldn’t be warned against doing them again. Voddie uses the example of what would happen if we forgot what the effect of touching fire was. God allows these memories to scar us in hopes that we would learn from our sin and not be doomed to repeat it constantly.

3) If you could forget your sin, you couldn’t rejoice in your victories. How awesome does it feel to realize that you were about to do something wrong and were able to avoid it by the grace of God? Those are some of the best moments in the Christian life, I think. The memory of sin allows us to remember who we once were, and how God has enabled us to overcome such things to not be that same person.

It’s amazing the hidden beauties of God, that He would choose to make Himself known even in giving us a remembrance of our sins. I pray that He would continue to find ways to break me in my sin, because only under the brokenness of sin can man understand what it means to rightly worship God for His presence and His grace.

Why Believe In the Bible?

I saw the video on this last week, but for some reason I’ve put off posting about it. At our Bible study last Thursday we watched a sermon by Voddie Baucham about why the Bible should be believable. He gave a long statement explaining why (and supported by 2 Peter 1:16-21) and broke it down. Here is the statement, followed by some broken down explanations about why the Bible is believable.

The Bible is a reliable collection of historical documents written down by eyewitness during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claim that there are writings are divine, instead of human, in origin.

The Bible is a reliable collection: It’s a collection of 66 books written by over 40 authors. It’s reliable because it was written over a period of roughly 1,600 years; it was written down in 3 languages (Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic) on 3 continents (Asia, Africa, Europe) by men who mostly never met each other, yet they tell one single, unified story.

of historical documents: The Bible gives specific names, dates and locations as recorded in human history. There have been over 23,000 archaeological digs directly related to historical events in the Bible, and not one historical event has had to be changed in the text of Scripture based on their findings.

Written down by eyewitnesses: Most of the men who wrote in the New Testament were alive at the time life of Jesus. 2 Peter 1:16 supports this, as does 1 John 1:1-3.

During the lifetime of other eyewitnesses: These things were written down during the time that people who were eyewitnesses to the life of Christ were still alive. 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 says this: For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. ⁶After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. Verse six says that he appeared to more than 500 people, most of whom are still living. That means at the time of the writing of 1 Corinthians, at least 250 people who were witnesses to Christ’s life and death were still alive. Wouldn’t there be at least one manuscript that would have mentioned something about these writings of Paul being false if he wasn’t speaking the truth?

They report supernatural events: I.e. Jesus healed paralytics, the writers themselves heard the voice of God (2 Peter 1:18), they saw Jesus walk on the water, etc. Again, wouldn’t these stories have been refuted in other manuscripts if they didn’t tell truth?

In fulfillment of specific prophecies: When Jesus was on the cross, he cried out “Eli, Eli lama sabbacthani” which translates “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is the beginning of Psalm 22; in those days they didn’t have chapters and verses–the way you named a psalm (song) is by it’s first line. If Jesus started the song, those Jews who knew this psalm and were at the cross were probably finishing the rest of it in their heads. What else does this psalm say? “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads…I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me.My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.” This is exactly what was happening to Jesus; he was pointing out the specific prophecies that were being fulfilled, prophecies that were written over 1,000 years before Jesus was born by a man who had never once in his life heard of crucifixion, because it hadn’t even been invented yet!

And claim that they are divine, rather than human, in origin: The Bible claims God is the author, not men. It says in 2 Timothy 3:16 that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. How many times in the Bible does it say, “And God spoke to…” “God told…”? This should dispel the notion that the Bible can’t be believed because men wrote it. By the way, if you believe that the Bible is not believable because it was written down by men, then burn your library! Also, burn any other religious text because they were all DEFINITELY written down by men. But rather, the Bible only claims that the Word of God was written by GOD through man.

Whew! Some pretty heavy stuff. If you got through all of that, good for you! In case you want to see this for yourself, here’s the link to the first part of the message, and you can find the rest on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm-rtE5P9E8