A Good, Good Father (Part 1)

For centuries, and even today, many Christians are unsure of the trials they face in this life. For many, it comes down to these questions. "Does God permit bad things to happen to His people." Does God use bad thing to chasten His People." Is God behind all the bad things that happen in the world." When I use the expression bad things, I mean sickness, disease, poverty, premature loss of life, wars, and what we call natural disasters (hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, etc). It will certainly take some time to thoroughly address these questions, but I do want to give you the answer to these questions up front now, emphatically NO! Bad things do not come from God!

One of the reasons why many believers have fallen prey to believing that God uses bad things, for whatever reason, against His children, is due to church leaders having a lack of understanding God's true nature and character which effects their understanding of His will. They use the statement that "God is sovereign" but in saying so they insinuate that God in His sovereignty permits Himself to operate outside of His Word. God certainly is sovereign, but He does not operate outside of His Word. Several times in John's gospel we see statements from Jesus such as, "Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work." (John 4:34) "I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me." (John 5:30) "For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." (John 6:38) 

So, the words and actions of Jesus are God's will. There is no account in the ministry of Jesus as revealed in the gospels, that God used Him to promote bad things upon people because it was His sovereign will. On the contrary, "how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him." (Acts 10:38) The reality is, God always did and always will do good. Of course the end will eventually come where those who oppose God will pay the price for their rejection and hatred toward Him and Jesus Christ.    

Another thing that we need to look at concerning this, is that many church leaders have a gross misunderstanding of creation. These two together have promoted a false image of the Living God. Genesis records, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"..."Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was VERY GOOD. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day." (Genesis 1:1, 31) and "Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made." (Genesis 2:1-3) Note that after God had created everything, "God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from ALL His work which He had done."

In other words, everything that God would ever do was set in motion in the six days of creation and after the sixth day, His work was completed. This means that everything that would happen from this point forward to the end of time in the mind of God was very good. There is no indication in creation the God meant, desired or even purposed that He should use something to foster bad things. Remember, God is the Alpha and the Omega the Beginning and the End. He is not bound by time and space and therefore He saw the end at the beginning. If we can comprehend this, we will begin to understand many wonderful things concerning God's will, nature, character, purpose and plan.

In chapter two of Genesis we see in great detail what God had created on the sixth day specifically those things pertaining to man. First, we see that God formed man of the dust of the ground, but it wasn't until God breathed His Spirit into man that man became a living soul, he was made alive in God. There is not one other created being or thing in all creation that God gave such special and intimate attention to other than man. We see this as He Himself breathed His Spirit into man. We also see that God had created the earth, water and vegetation which means that the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were present before man was created. We also see that God chose a specific place called Eden where He place man and gave man specific direction. In those directions, God gave Adam authority over all things on the earth. Basically, from God's perspective, if anything on earth got out of line, Adam did not have to ask God to deal with it, but he had the power, the authority, to put it back in line. All things were subject to Adam.

The only one that had more authority than Adam was God Himself. King David reveals, "For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas." (Psalm 8:5-8) In the Hebrew, this indicates that God had made man a little lower than Himself. This is very significant to the believer today when we begin to look at what redemption truly means through Jesus Christ.

Next, we see that God gave Adam one command that required his obedience, "And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (Genesis 2:16-17) And finally, we see that God made Adam a companion whom he called woman. Keep in mind that the creation of man, God's directives to man and His placement of man in Eden had all taken place on the sixth day of creation. At the end of the sixth day of creation, everything was set in motion by God. Believers must understand this if they are to truly understand that bad things do not come from God. As we proceed, I pray for the Holy Spirit to give us a greater revelation of our God, for He truly is a good, good Father...