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The Dark Side of God
John 9:1-7
Skip Heitzig

John 9 (NKJV™)
1 Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth.
2 And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
3 Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.
4 "I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.
5 "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
6 When He had said these things, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay.
7 And He said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which is translated, Sent). So he went and washed, and came back seeing.

New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Biography of God, The

"If God is in charge and loves us, then whatever is given is subject to His control and is meant ultimately for our joy" -Elizabeth Elliot. That perspective (which is the biblical one) is far from the typical sentiment about pain. Most ask, "If God really loved me, how could there be evil and suffering in this world--especially for me?!" To study God at all, this issue must be dealt with: Why is God’s world so messy? Where is the evidence of His power and love in such a suffering world?

Thomas Jefferson. Martin Luther King Jr. Winston Churchill. C.S. Lewis. All outstanding men with amazing life stories, but in all of history, one biography stands out above the rest. The Biography of God gives an in depth look at His character and nature, and delves into the theological and personal profile of our Heavenly Father. As this series searches the scriptures to lead the believer to a discovery of who God is and how He is sensitive to the human condition, it will both lift up and humble at the same time.

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Detailed Notes

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I. A Common Contention (vv. 1-2)


II. Some Typical Explanations (v. 2)


A. The "Sin" Explanation


B. The "There Can't be a God" Explanation


C. The "God Wants to Help but Can't" Explanation





III. A Needed Clarification (v. 3)


 


IV. A Spiritual Obligation (vv. 4-7)




This Could Become More Than Another Sermon:

1. Can you look back on your past and see where it seemed like you were being "trapped by suffering"--only to discover later on that the event benefited you in the long run?


2. Suggested Resources:

Philip Yancey, Where is God When It Hurts? Dr. Paul Brand, Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants, Jon Tal Murphee, A Loving God & A Suffering World, Warren Wiersbe, Why Us? When Bad Things Happen to God's People, James Dobson, When God Doesn't Make Sense.

Transcript

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We're continuing our series on The Biography of God and this is where we get to the side of God that a lot of us don't like to think about. But John's gospel chapter 9.
Let's have a word of prayer together. Heavenly Father, we want to commit the rest of our time together and pray that it would be glorifying to you and profitable for us your children. We thank you for the promise of your presence when we gather together and even when we're alone that Jesus will never leave us and never forsake us. Lord, I pray that we might get tonight by your Spirit, in your Word, a value check, that we could understand what you use for our benefit is not always what we'd choose. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Well this last week I found myself on an airplane sitting down with a little bit of time to kill and you have to turn your phone off at a certain point so I couldn't play Yahtzee on my little phone any more, I had to turn it off. So I resort to grabbing the magazines that are sitting in the seat in front of me. And there's always a catalog in every airplane ride that I've been on. And there's a little section in that on-flight catalog that has a section of motivational posters and motivational plaques. And typically it's extolling the virtues of success or determination or achievement or greatness or imagination. I got to thinking about that and I thought, "You know I have never seen yet a poster or a plaque extolling pain. Have you? Or suffering. I have never yet heard a song about how great suffering is, no statues erected in honor of pain, no Pain Day that is part of our calendar. Phillip Yancy in an excellent book called Where's God When Life Hurts? Writes, "If you pinned him against a wall in a dark secret moment, many Christians would probably admit that pain was God's one mistake. He really should have worked a little harder and invented a better way of coping with the world's dangers."
Well we've been doing several weeks on what we call the biography of God. And we have kind of gone from general to specific and we've learned that there's definitely really a God who exists and reveals himself. And God reveals himself as one who is holy, perfect, just, all-knowing, all-loving, everywhere-present. Which according to some presents a huge problem. Here's the problem: If God is so perfect and so loving and so knowing and so powerful, then why is his world so messed up? If all of the things that we have uncovered about the character and nature of God, if all of those are true, then why can't he stop evil and why can't he stop pain now? 
Have you ever had the experience of driving in your car and have a little rock fly up from the pavement and strike your windshield and crack it? Maybe it's small at first, maybe it fractures the whole thing at one time. I remember that happening to me, I was driving in an older vehicle, it was a flat windshield and a pebble struck it and what was bright and clear and clean was now fragmented and distorted. It was difficult for me to see. Well that can also happen with God, where God at one time is bright and clear and we have a packaged clean theology about God, he is in our minds very predictable, you see everything, you know it all, you've got it down pat. And then a pebble strikes the windshield. It could have been some catastrophe. Someone dies, someone leaves, the diagnosis of a doctor that is devastating to you and your family. But suddenly what was once clean and bright and clear to you is different. Your view of God has changed, it's not as bright and predictable and clean any longer. For me, a pebble struck my theological windshield when I was 22 years of age and I got a phone call from my father that my brother was instantly killed in a motorcycle accident. It took me completely off guard, it's something nobody ever expects to hear. I remember going through that, things were a little bit fragmented and distorted. Another pebble hit sometime later when on exactly the same day, in the beginning of the second semester, my wife miscarried a second child that we were carrying and on exactly the same day my mother called to tell me that my father had died. Those were pebbles that struck my windshield. It wasn't that I didn't believe in God, it wasn't that I didn't trust God any differently but the view was different. The view was different. It was C.S. Lewis that wisely said, one of his most famous things, "God whispers to us in our pleasures and God speaks to us in our consciences, but God shouts to us in our pain. Pain," said Lewis, is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world." Now if that's true that God shouts in suffering, what is he saying, exactly? And how are we to interpret episodes of pain and suffering or evil in the world? I take you now to John chapter 9, we're going to look at the first seven or eight verses in a message I call "The Dark Side of God." This is not to imply in any way that there's any darkness in the character of God but simply from our very limited human perspective, we don't see the whole picture and what we think is dark is sometimes very bright. "Now as Jesus passed by he saw a man who was blind from birth. And his disciples asked him saying, ‘Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents? That he was born blind.' And Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned but that he works of God should be revealed in him, I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. The night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.' When he had said these things, he spat on the ground, made clay with the saliva and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And he said to him, ‘Go was in the pool of Siloam (which is translated sent). And so he went and washed and he came back seeing. Therefore the neighbors and those who previously had seen that he was blind said, ‘Is this not he who sat and begged?'" Now what the disciples voiced to Jesus was and is a very common contention. Here's a guy suffering. Why is he suffering? Which leads to a larger question: Why is there suffering? No, he was a blind beggar and there was a lot of reasons that a person could be blind. Unsanitary conditions because of poverty was very common, unrestrained and unfiltered sunlight in the Middle East, sandstorms that blew, they didn't wear eyeglasses as such. All of that would yield to eye diseases and even blindness. But perhaps the most common and probably what this guy was afflicted with was a disease contracted in the birth canal, something called a neonatal conjunctivitis, and that is there's a bacterium that can be gathered while the baby is being born and within three days pus forms around the eye and if untreated the child goes completely blind in a very short period of time. And they didn't have erythromycin readily available back then to counteract that so effectively the child was born blind. And it was a hard life, it was a hard life because he couldn't work, families often did not support or could not support such a one so they ended up as beggars in city gates or in the temple gates and so the disciples see what Jesus sees and they said, "What's up with that? We're following you, you've healed people, what about his guy? Who sinned? His parents or himself that he was born blind?" Now would you agree that human suffering is one of the great roadblocks to people believing in God? The people that I have talked to, it is, it's a huge roadblock. It's the pebble that challenges people's faith: How can there be a good God with bad stuff that happens all the time? And this enters into a realm of theological study known as theodicy, T-H-E-O-D-I-C-Y, theodicy, from two words theos-God and dicay, the root word of righteousness. The idea of how can you reconcile God being righteous when there is so much unrighteousness around? How can you defend God's all-power, all-loving, all-knowing, when evil happens; how can an all-loving, all-powerful God allow evil to exist? Now who hasn't struggled with this? From the highest philosopher and theologian to the common street person asks this same question. In fact a few years ago, George Barna asked people, "If they could interview God and ask him one question, what would it be?" Seventeen percent or the largest percentage in the poll said, "I'd ask God why he allows pain, suffering and evil to exist in the world." And to make it worse, it's not just that there is suffering and is evil and is pain, but even what we would call innocent people suffer, people who haven't chosen war or chosen to live in conditions that would bring them into suffering. I mean we might think that if only villains got broken limbs, if only hardened criminals were the ones that got cancer, if only cheaters got Parkinson's disease; at least there'd be some sort of celestial justice that we could see. Why is it that good people, what we would call good people, would also suffer?
Now I just want to throw something out at you in this discussion: In the midst of this discussion you ought to know that it's typically people in countries like ours that struggle with this issue, in plentiful nations, in hedonistic nations, we're the ones that struggle. You should know that in other countries, developing countries, places with far more suffering than we will ever see, they as a whole don't seem to be so preoccupied with needing an answer to why people suffer. But in a country that has been traditionally pampered and self-oriented and hedonistic; we struggle because we have deemed suffering as the greatest evil and pleasure as the greatest good. That's why we struggle so much with it. That's a common contention: why is there suffering?
Now we have to come up with some explanations and there are some pretty typical explanations. The first one is in our text and that is the sin explanation. Notice the question the disciples pose, again verse 2, they asked him saying, "Rabbi, who sinned?" In other words, sin must have brought this on. "Who sinned? This man or his parents? That he was born blind." Do you see a little trouble with that question? How could you sin if you were born blind? Where did you sin? In the womb? Now some of you are laughing but that's exactly what some people believed two thousand years ago. There was a belief among many of the Jews two thousand years ago and obviously the disciples, they believed in something known as pre-natal sin. Because some rabbis taught that the impulses for evil developed in the embryonic stages. They had all sort of weird stories that when a baby kicks it's rebellion and he's trying to get out and… Prenatal sin. Or, many were influenced by the thinking of the Greeks like Plato who taught that the soul was immortal, it pre-existed before we were born, all of the souls of humanity existed before creation and they were waiting around for bodies to inhabit and they (those souls) could have sinned before they were incarnated into bodies. Or perhaps it's because they had a bad view of the scripture. Do you remember that scripture in Exodus chapter 20 verse 5 where God says, "I will punish the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation." Well some had an erroneous view that if your great grandpa sinned, he's going to pass that generational curse, you don't know where it's coming from, you have to have it cast out, it's sort of an idea that goes around today. And that generational curse started way back when. Now ultimately sin is the root cause of all misfortune in the world. But not personal acts of sin are always directly the cause for evil that we see. But that was their question: Well, who sinned? Was it this fella or was it his parents, that he was born blind? Now there is today as I hinted at a false theology and see if you recognize it: it says this: If you're a Christian, you're not under the curse that everybody else in the world is under. And thus, if you're a Christian and you have enough faith, you will never experience illness. You'll always walk in perfect health. And for you to experience disease is because of sin or Satan. It's an oversimplification of a very complex issue but essentially this group of people will look at you if you're sick and ask The Saturday Night Live question from years ago: "Could it be, Satan?" That's what they want to peg it as. 
Well, all one has to do is go back to the book of Job where we look at this man whom God said was perfect, walked in integrity, and there was no one on earth like Job and yet Job suffered immensely. But then his friends came along, remember? They said basically the same thing, they couldn't figure this out, you know these wise men really showed how stupid they were the moment they talked. They were really wise as long as they kept it zipped. But chapter after chapter reveals the same thing, "Job, there must be sin in your life. You wouldn't have this." Or, "If you had faith now you would be healed." The truth is, God doesn't automatically remove pain and he doesn't automatically heal all diseases if you're his child.
Chuck Coulson puts it very clearly, he writes, "It's absurd for Christians to constantly seek new demonstrations of God's power, to expect a miraculous answer to every need, from curing ingrown toenails to finding parking places. This only leads to faith in miracles rather than faith in God. And the truth of the matter is, sometimes God will calm the storm for his child and other times he'll just calm his child in the storm while it's blowing in gale force all around you, if you remain calm." That's one explanation though, it's got to be it. "Who sinned? This guy or his parents?" There's other explanations of evil and suffering. The common one among atheists or agnostics becoming atheists is that there isn't a God. There isn't a God, this proves there isn't a God, because how could a God who's all-powerful and all-loving and all-knowing allow evil to exist? And it's often put in philosophy classes in a syllogism form or a series of logical statements. And here it is: The biblical God is loving, the biblical God is perfect, the biblical God is all-knowing, the biblical God is all-powerful; yet massive evil and suffering exists. Therefore, the biblical God does not exist. That's how they often put it. However, there's a problem just in the statement. See whenever somebody says, "There's so much evil in the world." It presupposes there must be a standard of goodness for you to say it's evil. Where did you get the idea that there was supposed to be goodness? You see, in a test taken in a classroom, if a student gets ninety percent and another student gets seventy percent and another student gets fifty percent, it's supposes there's a real standard of what? A hundred percent. So it's the same problem here, if there's no God then where did we ever get a standard by which to call something evil or bad?
C.S. Lewis writes, "If the universe is so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator? Ask that to your atheistic friends next time they say, "Well, there's so much evil, there can't be god." Ask them, "Why is it that ninety percent of the people who have ever lived on planet Earth in much worse circumstances and suffering than we will ever know, have believed in God as all-good and all-perfect?"
There's a third explanation and that is, "Well God would like to help, he does see that there is evil, he just can't do it. He wants to. You know, be easy on God, give him a break. He'd love to do it, he just can't. God would love to be involved, God's out there somewhere. He's just impotent, he's not powerful." Now you might think this is laughable and it is because it's wrong. But there's a whole group of people who claim to believe in God and believe in Christ who hold to this. It's called open theism, or finite Godism, or process theology. And here it is: God is a deity in progress, they say. So the God today is not the same God he was yesterday, he's not the same God as he'll be tomorrow, he's learning things. That God sitting up there going, "Whoa! Huh! Well I just learned that. And that's cool! That's not cool." So that God is in the process of learning, is not absolutely knowledgeable and totally powerful, he's growing and learning and developing just like we are. And that's the basis of thinking behind a book put out a few years back by Rabbi Harold Kushner called When Good Things Happen to Bad People. He says, "God would love for people to get what they deserve in life but he can't arrange it. Even God has a hard time keeping chaos in check." And then in the book he tells the reader to forgive God and to pray for God. I find that very funny, who do you pray to God for? And a God like that is certainly not a God worth believing in at all, sort of like having a big brother who can't stand up for you when a bully comes around. Impotent, powerless.
Let's see what Jesus says here. Now he gives a very needful clarification after that question and that typical explanation. Verse 3, "Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned but that the works of God should be revealed in him, I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day for the night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.'" Now don't misunderstand Jesus, he's not saying that this man is sinless and his parents are sinless, he's simply saying that neither of their sin directly caused this malady. Now one thing I really appreciate about our Lord Jesus Christ is he doesn't given pat, predictable, packaged little answers to the problem of suffering. What he does is he elevates it up to a higher level, taking us to the level of the sovereignty of God. So whether you're suffering or you're experiencing evil due to natural causes or sinful causes, Jesus would want you to know that behind it all God is still in control, he is still sovereign. So he says, "But that the works of God should be revealed in him." Now I want to give you a couple points that speak to this.
Number one, God did not create evil. He never created evil. He only enabled the possibility of evil to exist. How did he do that? Because he created people with free will. He didn't create evil. He created or allowed the possibility, the potentiality of evil by creating people with free will. Man comes along and actualizes the potentiality. Do you follow me? They make reality what is just a possibility. And they choose to go against God. Which brings up the inevitable next question: Well then God, why would God create anybody with free will? If that's the case, knowing that, why make a creature with free will? It's simply this: you can't have a world where people have genuine freedom unless there's the potential for evil and sin. And if there's no free will, then there's no genuine love. And if love is the greatest and highest that man can achieve, then a loving God couldn't create a world unless he gave creatures the freedom to choose anything they wanted. God didn't create it.
Number two, I want to point out here, suffering in the hands of a loving god can produce great good. Now we're getting personal here to all of us. Suffering, pain, even evil in the hands of a loving God can bring about great good. David said, "Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word." I'll give you an example, something that I read that really helped make sense to me. It was by a philosopher named Peter Creaft of Yale University. It said, "Okay, imagine a bear caught in a trap, hunter comes along, sees the bear in a trap, is concerned for the bear and wants to set the bear free. So he tries to win the bear's confidence. Unsuccessfully, lack of communication. The hunter tries to reveal himself to the bear as sweet and makes happy sounds and just spends time and gives it a little bit of food but it doesn't really help the bear in that cage. So, he knows he has to shoot the bear with a tranquilizer gun, shoot it with drugs to sedate it to move it out of the way. So he shoots at the bear and the bear is automatically in attack mode thinking, "This is an enemy, I've got to destroy I, he wants something that's harmful to me." Furthermore, the hunter has to push, poke the bear, back in the cage because he's on the mechanism that keeps the door shut. So all of these overtures make the bear think, "This guy's out to kill me. He's my enemy." Why? Because the bear isn't a human. The bear doesn't understand the motivation of the hunter, he has no faculties to understand it. In the same way, we cannot comprehend all of God's movements or allowances in our lives any more than a bear in a cage could understand what a hunter wants who's trying to set him free. And that's why you and I must be careful whenever we designate something as bad when God is actually using it as something very good. We say it's wrong, we say it's unjust, we say it's evil, we say it's bad. And it might be actually very good. This seen in chemistry. You can take two harmful substances, when combined in the right way, become a blessing. Sodium and chlorine, both in and of themselves poisonous. Combine them, sodium chloride, that's salt, it can do people a lot of good. At least it can flavor your food an awful lot more than if it would be if it didn't have it. It can be actually good.
Okay, this is all theoretical, right? Up to this point. Let's get practical. God plays by his own rulebook, he tried this on himself. See, God took what most people would say is the very worst thing that could ever happen in human history and turned it into something that was the very best thing that could happen in human history. I'm speaking of the cross. What could be worse than the death of God? When Jesus was nailed to that cross, people around thought, who knew who Jesus was, "Now this is the worst thing ever." Not knowing that it was the best thing ever, that that would open the door for the salvation of millions of people from that point onward. Salvation.
So, if ultimate evil can bring about ultimate good with Jesus, wouldn't we suppose that that could happen elsewhere? Like in our lives? So that if things are happening that are bad and painful and we're suffering that maybe God's behind all this, actually working out something good. We don't understand it but God's in control. I could list several benefits but let me just give you a couple. Number one, the development of character. The people that you have met, who impressed you the most, who in your life that you've met had the deepest character, the most to offer, the best perspective, but those who have suffered the most? If you were to ask Corrie Ten Boom who was in a concentration camp while she was in it, "Where's God?" She might be tempted to say at first, "I don't know." But she came to know. And later on she looked back on that as the plan of God. If you were to have asked Johnnie Earickson-Tada who became a quadriplegic right after her diving accident how she felt about it, she probably would have said, "I feel suicidal. This is horrible. How could God allow this to happen?" Year later she would say, "It's the best thing God ever allowed to happen in my life." 
Number two, what about repentance? How many people have we met when in times of suffering, be it a divorce, a sickness, a death of a loved one; has been brought to Christ by that? I can think of so many. One story pops out to me, a guy I had been witnessing to, he at one time in his life was a drug lord in another country, attempted assassin of the president of that country. His mother called me and said, "Talk to my son about the gospel." He didn't want to hear it. Then he developed cancer. And right before his death he gave his life to Christ. So, would that mother rather have a child that would live on, become a PhD and influence the world with his great knowledge and then die and go to hell? Or a son that would develop cancer, receive Christ, and is tonight and forever will be in heaven? God used that.
Here's my question to you, to me, to all of us: Are you willing to embrace your suffering if it drives you to God? And if you drives you to God and the relationship is deepened, then is it really bad? 
I remember as a kid for Christmas, I get a lot of different gifts at Christmas. Some I liked, some I did not like. Bicycles and trains, I liked those. Gloves and underwear, unh-uh. I needed both gifts, I can't live on trains on bicycles, I needed other things to balance out my life. And they were all gifts, they were all good. And that's why Job when all of the bad things that happened to him happened, he fell down and he said, "The Lord gives, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
We can't close there, we have to finish out the story. It leads us to a fourth point and that is an obligation, a spiritual obligation. Up to this point, we've just been dealing with the academic, the theoretical, for the most part with some application, but look at verse 4 again, "I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day, night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." And when he said these things, he spat on the ground and made clay with his saliva. (I'm sure the disciples are thinking, ‘What is he up to?' Maybe he was forming an eyeball. But spit in your eye. I've always wondered why a lot of televangelists don't do what Jesus did. Probably they wouldn't be so popular.) He anointed the eyes of the blind man with clay and he said to him, ‘Go wash in the pool of Siloam' (which is translated sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing." Here's what I want you to see: to Jesus Christ this blind beggar was not an academic case to be discussed in a theology class or a school of ministry. He was a person who needed compassion. He needed to be healed. And he said, "The day is going to wear out." That's the time where I have opportunity and we have opportunity to help and to heal and to bless and to fix. See there's coming a day when you and I will be forever in perfection, in heaven. And in heaven we're not going to be able to pray for people to be healed, everybody will be. We're not going to be able to counsel people or alleviate suffering or pass out a tract and evangelize. So right now is the day, here is the period of opportunity. So we can't just deal with the problem of pain and evil theoretically or academically, that's a copout. We have a spiritual obligation. I saw a cartoon that had two turtles (why turtles I don't know but the cartoon guy wanted two turtles). So they were talking to each other and one turtle said, "You know sometimes I'd like to ask God why he allows poverty and disease and famine and injustice when he could do something about it." And the other turtle said to him, "I'm afraid God might ask me the same question." Here we are, the body of Christ, the hands, the feet, the mouthpiece, the outreach, the expression of our Savior. And we have that responsibility. If you think about it, throughout history, who have typically been the ones to alleviate suffering and pain and hardship? It's been the believers in Jesus Christ who would go into war-torn areas and in His name alleviate suffering. So, how do Christians deal with evil? How do we deal with evil and pain and suffering in the world that God made? By putting it all in perspective. Yes, the biblical God is all-loving. Yes, the biblical God is all-knowing and all-powerful and everywhere present. And one day he will judge evil and he will eradicate injustice. And until then, until he does, I need to help alleviate it and I need to let it work for me and not be so quick to say it's evil or bad or unjust or unfair. But to allow it to work for me. Let the pain work for you.
I close with a parable. Once upon a time there was a little plant, small and stunted, growing under the shade of a broad spreading oak. The little plant valued the shade that covered it and the rest which it's noble friend the oak afforded. But one day a woodsman came along, and with this razor sharp ax cut down the oak tree. The tiny plant wept and cried, "My shelter has departed. And now the rough winds will blow upon me and the storms will uproot me." "Nonsense," said the woodsman, "Now the sunshine will reach you. And now the rain will be able to fall in more abundance on you than ever before and your stunted form will spring up." That's really good for me to hear, that God looks upon my stunted Christian growth and says, "I've got just what it takes to make you into a strong persevering godly well-rounded person." I'm after your growth. All things. Boy, wouldn't it be a lot easier to believe if Romans 8:28 said, "There's a few things that work together for good." Or, "Okay, most things work together for good to those who love God." But remember what it says, "All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose." Do you believe that? All things. Remember all things, next time a pebble hits your little theological windshield. All things, when you hear the bad news, all thing. When the doctor calls, all things. All things. 
You are a good God and that's why we say, "God is good all the time, Lord." All the time God is good. And here we are in this world, fallen, corrupt, sinful. At the same time, a place that still bears the marks of your power, creative genius. And we have a book, a revelation. And people of that revelation who tell of your love, your deep compassion, your care. And so tonight, we will say, "Lord, by your grace we are willing to accept what you give, what you allow. And still say that in the presence of evil and suffering and pain, there is that biblical all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God. Thank you Lord for your commitment to us, to grow our stunted lives into mature men and women of God. You're committed to that. You're committed to that far more than we are. And we thank you for that love. And we pray that ultimately you'd get the glory because of our lives in whatever you allow. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Additional Messages in this Series

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10/12/2008
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Can God Be Known?
Hebrews 11:6
Skip Heitzig
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Today we start a brand new series of messages I'm calling, "The Biography of God". The very subject matter of "God" is the loftiest of all subjects and the pinnacle of all pursuits. As we discover who God is and how He is perceptible to the human condition, we will be both lifted up and humbled all at the same time. The great transition that must be made, however, is to not stop with gathering information about God but by believing and acting in the light of that information, thus truly knowing Him.
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10/19/2008
completed
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Is Anyone Up There? Looking For Clues
Romans 1:18-22;Psalms 19:1-6
Skip Heitzig
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We all remember the scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and her three friends come to approach the "Great Oz". Out of the corner of their eye, they notice a man pulling levers behind a curtain-working the mechanical, smoke-breathing Oz. The man then reacts by announcing, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" But how can they not? The man is the explanation for everything to them. They discovered that Oz didn't really exist! So how do we know that God exists and isn't a fabrication or projection of our own imaginations?
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10/26/2008
completed
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"Now Hear This!" How Does God Speak?
Psalms 19
Skip Heitzig
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This is the age of communication. Cell phones, email, text-messaging, i-chatting and YouTube broadcasting are as common as coffee. (Some people are even talking the old-fashioned way—face to face with the person.) So how does God communicate? How does His message, His biography get out to the world? And more importantly, perhaps, who’s listening?
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11/9/2008
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I'm God...and You're Not!
Exodus 33-34
Skip Heitzig
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The only way to know someone is for that someone to reveal himself/herself to us. We discover who that person is as he tells us about himself. Moses wanted to know God better and God tells Moses about Himself. This is the only place in scripture where God lists His own characteristics and qualities there are four phases to this touching story:
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11/23/2008
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God: A Short Autobiography
Exodus 34:5-7
Skip Heitzig
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In studying the Biography of God, there's no better source than God Himself. This is one of the primary passages in all of Scripture about who God is; it is His own autobiography. This is God telling us about Himself. As God reveals to Moses who He is, he begins by declaring His name and then listing several of His primary character traits. It's not unlike meeting anyone for the first time. We get their name and then learn some things about them. As we relate to God, then, these experiences are what we can expect to find.

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12/14/2008
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The God Who Knows-It-All!
Psalms 139:1-6
Skip Heitzig
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A little boy climbed his neighbor's apple tree when he saw their car leave. He didn't realize while he was stuffing his pockets full of apples that another neighbor was watching through a pair of binoculars and saw the whole thing! God isn't spying on people, trying to catch them doing something wrong; but God is aware of everything. Such a truth has a profound effect on us: it can either be very comforting or else extremely unsettling. As we continue with the biography of God, let's consider what God knows.
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1/4/2009
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Godisnowhere
Psalms 139:7-12
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1/11/2009
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My God is Bigger than Your God!
Psalms 139:13-18
Skip Heitzig
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There are so many different belief systems out there! Some people have a god that isn't very big and can't do very much. He smiles a lot but is weak and helpless to act. It's not a whole lot different from ancient times, really. The Syrians once said that Israel's God was "a god of the hills and not of the plains" (1 Kings 20:28). Their view of God was limited and powerless. So what's your view? Does it match the Bible's description of our Awesome God?
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1/18/2009
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God's Most Unpopular Attribute
Isaiah 6
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Ask most people to tell you the first word that comes to mind when they think of God and it will be "love" or "grace" or "forgiveness." All of these are wonderfully comforting attributes of God, but another key attribute that is seldom considered is His holiness. Today we observe one man's encounter with God, and we learn some lessons about what it means to have a personal relationship with a holy God.
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1/25/2009
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I Don't Get It! How Can Three Be One?
Matthew 28:16-20
Skip Heitzig
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1+1+1=1. Is this New Math? No, it's the doctrine of the Trinity. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. At the very heart of the Judeo-Christian faith is the belief that there is only one God. Yet the Bible clearly teaches the plurality within the Godhead--three persons who are distinct from one another yet perfectly One in essence. What are we to make of all this? And why is it important? Today let's consider two major truth statements.
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2/1/2009
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Two Thirds is Not Enough
John 14-17
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"The mind of man cannot fully understand the mystery of the Trinity. He who would try to understand the mystery fully will lose his mind. But he who would deny the Trinity will lose his soul" (Harold Lindsey and Charles J. Woodbridge, A Handbook of Christian Truth). Last week we discovered that Scripture reveals One God in three distinct Persons. Today we consider the personality of all three Persons in the One God and Their role in our lives. Further, how can we relate to the Triune God in practical terms?
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2/22/2009
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GPS: God's Positioning System
Acts 21:1-15
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Part of a relationship with anyone is knowing what that person expects. We wonder, "What does that person want from me in this relationship?" Relating to God is no different. So how can we know what God's will is for our lives? What kind of guidance can we expect? A notable example from Paul's life furnishes an excellent template for exploring this question. It was a confusing time, and many people didn’t agree with Paul's decision - but he felt it was God's will for him.
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3/1/2009
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How to Be God's Friend
Genesis 18:1-15
Skip Heitzig
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For the last fourteen weeks we've looked at "The Biography of God." In this loftiest of all subjects and the pinnacle of all pursuits, we've discovered Who He is, what He is like, and how to relate to Him. We must always remember not to stop with just gathering information about God--we need to truly know Him in a personal way. Abraham provided a model for us in how to do that as a friend. Four qualities form the template for being God's friend.
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There are 13 additional messages in this series.
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