Why Did God Create the World?

• Scriptures: Acts 17:27; Joshua 24:15; Ezekiel 18
• “God and Evil”—chapter five in Pillars of the Faith

• “Calvinism and Free Will”

Transcript

Kerry Duke: Hi, I am Kerry Duke, host of My God in My Neighbor podcast from Tennessee Bible College, where we see the Bible as not just another book, but the Book. Join us in a study of the inspired Word to strengthen your faith and to share what you’ve learned with others.
What would you say if someone asked you, “Why did God create the world?” Why did he make us and put us here? I’ve been asked that question several times. One time was in Russia, years ago. Two college students in Moscow wanted to talk with me about religion. One of them said, “If there is a God, what purpose did he have for making all this? What was the reason?” So I took them to Acts chapter 17.
Paul was speaking to a crowd of people who were mostly skeptics, and one of the first things he said was that God made the world and He made us. In Acts 17, verse 24, Paul said, “God who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is He worshiped with men’s hands as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life breath and all things, and He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being.”
Now notice in verse 24 that the first thing that Paul does is to point out that God made the world. Now remember, he’s talking to people who, for the most part, don’t believe in the one true and living God. Athens was the intellectual center of the day, and it was full of idols.
So Paul begins by talking about the fact that God is the Creator. He created everything and in verse 26, he talks about the fact that God made us. God created human beings. Why did He do that? He says in verse 26,that God made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth. God made us, and He put us here.
Now, why did God put us on the earth? Why did he create us and place us here? The answer is in verse 27: so that they should seek the Lord. It’s just that simple. God made us and He put us on the earth that He made so that we should seek the Lord. That’s the purpose. That’s the reason. We’re not here to live forever on earth. We’re not here to please ourselves. We are here to seek God, to find him, and to glorify him by serving him.
Now, in order to seek God, we must choose to seek Him, and that means that we have a will. We have free will. That’s part of the nature that God gave us when He created us in his own image. Now, animals and trees don’t seek God. They don’t make a decision to give glory to the Creator. But you and I have a will. We choose what we do. God wants us to love and to obey him, but He won’t force us to love him. Love is a choice, if anything is a choice and not forced it’s love. But that means that a person can choose not to love God if he wants to.
Human beings have a will, and we’re not perfect like God. God’s will is always pure and right. But we sin. We choose to go against the will of God. That’s the starting point. As far as the question of why there’s evil in the world is concerned, we’ve already mentioned the fact that Adam was not the first one to sin.
He was the first human being to sin, but he was not the first being who committed sin. That being evidently was Satan. The Bible says that some of the angels sinned. Second Peter, chapter two, verse four, talks about the angels that sinned. Jude verse six also goes into more detail about that, and judging from what Jesus said in Matthew 25, verse 41, it appears that Satan was the leader.
That verse talks about the devil and his angels, but the same question arises. Why did the angels sin? How did evil get a start among them? And the same answer comes back: because they chose to sin. They had free will. We are looking in this series at the question “Why.” Why is there evil in the world and why does the all-powerful, all-loving God allow it?
And as we said before, there are two kinds of evil. There’s moral evil, which is sin, and then there is natural evil, which is suffering. Right now we’re focusing on moral evil. That is sin. Lord willing, we’ll talk in weeks to come about suffering and why God allows it. But we need to begin with the problem of moral evil or sin.
God is not to blame for the evil of sin. James one verse 13 says, “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: because God cannot be tempted with evil, neither does He tempt any man.” So that verse of scripture says that God cannot even be tempted with evil. It’s not simply that God cannot sin, it’s that God cannot even be tempted to sin. And James goes on to explain that every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust. That’s James one, verse 13 and 14.
The sin problem is man’s fault. Ecclesiastes seven verse 29 says, “God made man upright, but they have found out many inventions.” That is mankind. We are responsible for the evil of sin in the world.
So at this stage of the study (and remember, we’re just getting started) we are looking at how man has abused his free will from the beginning, Adam and Eve disobeyed God. Why? Because they chose to. God warned them. They knew better, but they did it anyway. And as a result, they brought death, spiritual death, or separation from God into the world.
In Romans 5:12, the Bible says, “Therefore, just as through one man, sin entered the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Now that verse does not say that we inherited sin. In fact, it says just the opposite. If we read the whole verse, Paul said that this spiritual death came upon or was passed upon all mankind because all have sinned.
Romans 6 23 says the wages of sin is death, so evil in the form of sin is in the world because Adam and Eve sinned and we follow in their footsteps and sin as well. We are tempted in the same basic ways they were—through the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (I John chapter two, verse 16).
Now the specific form of temptation and the setting are different. We’re not in the Garden of Eden and the devil doesn’t come to us in the form of the serpent, but the same basic feelings are at work when we sin. Eve saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise (Genesis three, verse six).
If we ask why God made the world knowing that man would sin, we can only know what God has revealed in his Word, the Bible. We don’t know and we can’t comprehend all the mind of God. We can only go as far as his Word teaches, as far as our feeble minds can take us. But on a human level, the reason moral evil, that is, sin, is in the world is because we as human beings choose to sin.
The answer to this problem of evil, even part of the answer, is not the doctrine of inherited depravity or original sin. The Roman Catholic Church and most Protestant denominations teach this. It means that all human beings from Adam are born without that state of grace that Adam and Eve had when they were created, and we are born deprived or depraved.
Now, this would mean that we have no choice in the matter. We’re born sinners. Some put it this way: man is a sinner by nature and not by choice. That is their alleged answer to the problem of evil. They say that evil is in the world because we can’t help it. We are destined to sin because we are born that way.
In fact, this doctrine says that we are predestined to sin, that God ordained evil in the world so that he could send Jesus to save only those God chooses to be saved. Now this is the doctrine of Calvinism. It basically looks at the problem of evil and says there is no problem because God wanted it this way. It was all in his plan.
So evil in Calvinism is actually decreed by God. Now, there are many reasons why this teaching is false. In Joshua chapter 24, verse 15, the leader of Israel said, “And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served, that were on the other side of the river or the gods of the Amorites, and whose land you dwell, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Notice what he said: choose for yourselves whom you will serve.
Here’s what Moses said to the Israelites in Deuteronomy, chapter 30, verse 19: “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life that both you and your descendants may live.”
Jesus said this in Matthew chapter 23, verse 37, “O, Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” That means they chose what they did.
In the book of Hebrews, the Bible says in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 24 and 25, “By faith, Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin.”
Then toward the close of the Bible, the scriptures say, “And the spirit and the bride say, Come, and let him who hears say, Come, and let him who is athirst come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely (Revelation chapter 22, verse 17).
Are babies born in sin? No. Are little children totally depraved because they descended from Adam? No.
In Matthew chapter 18, when the disciples ask Jesus, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? The Lord set a small child before them, and here’s what he said: “Unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” That’s Matthew 18 verses three and four.
Now, in what way must we be like little children to enter the kingdom? We must be humble, not prideful. The nature of a child is humility, not pride and not sin. Jesus taught the same view of children in Matthew chapter 19, when some brought little children to Jesus. The Bible says that His disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew chapter 19, verse 14). This same kind of innocence is taught in I Corinthians 14, verse 20: “Brethren, do not be children in understanding; however, in malice be babes, but in understanding be men.”
In this book of I Corinthians, Paul rebukes the church at Corinth. He tells them to stop acting like babies and act like men. But here in I Corinthians 14, verse 20, he says to imitate children in another way, and that is in their attitude toward malice or evil. Why? Because children are pure and innocent when it comes to evil.
Deuteronomy Chapter one, verse 39 is also a very important verse on this topic we’re looking at. In this part of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is recounting what the previous generation of Israelites did when they came to the border of the promised land.
Forty years before they had disobeyed God because they didn’t believe him. As a result, God said that they would die in the desert except for Joshua and Caleb, but what about the little ones? Now, here’s what Moses said. This is Deuteronomy chapter one, verse 39. Moreover, your little ones and your children who you say will be victims, who today have no knowledge of good and evil, they shall go in there.”
The infants and the little children were not held responsible for the rebellion of the adults. The adults chose unbelief. They chose to disobey. God punished them because they were accountable. But the children were not punished. Why? Because they didn’t choose to disobey. They were not knowledgeable enough.
They did not have enough knowledge between good and evil to make that choice. Ezekiel, chapter 18 is another powerful chapter about free will. We’re looking at the fact that evil is in the world in the form of moral evil because of the free will of man. In verses five through nine of Ezekiel 18, the prophet describes a man who is just and does what he says is lawful and right, and he shuns evil.
But then in verses 10 through 13, that same good man has a son who is just the opposite of his father. He’s evil. And he was not bad because he was born depraved. He was evil by choice just like his father was good by choice. This evil son robbed. He committed adultery. He served idols. Babies and little children don’t do these things.
They don’t even desire to do them, and they don’t have an inherited propensity to sin. That’s like a ticking time bomb. This evil son was evil because he chose to do evil. That’s what verse 13 means. When it says His blood shall be upon him, that is upon himself, he and he alone is responsible for his spiritual condition.
Then there’s a third generation in Ezekiel chapter 18 verses 14 through 17. Now, remember, this is the son of the evil man in verses 10 through 13, and the grandson of the good man in verses five through nine. What kind of man did this son become? He became what he chose to be just like all of us do.
This son in verse 14, the Bible says, sees all the sins which his father has done and considers, but does not do likewise. Now, this is the son of an evil man. He sees the sins of his evil father. He considers them, he thinks about them, but he decides that he’s not going to do what his father has done. Now, this is an encouraging verse.
It gives hope to children raised in bad homes by mean parents. The son in verse 14 saw what his father did and he thought about it. He decided not to be like his father. So we have this old saying, “Like father, like son,” and that proverb is often true, but not always. So in all these verses, and there are many more, we find that the answer to the problem “Why is there evil in the world?” is not because people are born in sin.
It’s because people choose to sin. But what about Psalm 51 verse five? Does that mean that we are born sinners and we can’t help but sin, and that’s the reason why evil is in the world? Is that what David was saying? Here’s what he said in Psalm 51, verse five. In the King James version, we read, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me”
The New King James Version is very similar. It says, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” Now, there are many people who believe that this verse teaches original sin and that that’s the reason why we have evil in the world.
Now, in the first place, we need to remember that the emphasis in this passage is on David and his sin. It’s not about his mother. There’s nothing in the Scripture to support the idea that David’s mother was a sinful woman. In the context, David talks about my transgressions in verse one. He talks about my iniquity and my sin in verse two. He talks about my transgressions in verse three, and then we have that famous statement “Against you, and you only have I sinned, Lord” (verse four). So David is talking about his sinfulness not his mother’s. That’s the first thing that we need to notice.
In the second place, David is not talking about the sinfulness of mankind in general. He’s not saying that he was born into a sinful environment. Now again, the emphasis through the context is on his sin, not the sinfulness of the human race in general. So he’s not saying that he was simply born into a sinful world.
The title that the ancient Jews gave to Psalm 51 is a Psalm of David when Nathan, the prophet, came to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. Now, this was an ancient Jewish tradition. And if this Psalm is not specifically about this episode in David’s life, it still shows his remorse about his sins in general.
On the other hand, if he did write this about his sin with Bathsheba, it’s not surprising that he spoke in such strong terms. The guilt he felt must have seemed overwhelming. He had committed adultery with the wife of a soldier who was very loyal to David. Then he had that soldier killed. David had trouble in his family for the rest of his life because of this sin.
The first tragedy was the death of the child that he had with Bathsheba. Then one of his sons raped David’s daughter. Then another son of David killed that son. Then that son Absalom started a war that divided the nation. In the end, the head of David’s army killed Absalom against the direct order of the king.
Finally, toward the close of his life when he was old and feeble, David’s son Adonijah tried to take the throne. Nathan the prophet had told David, “The sword will never depart from your house” (Second Samuel, chapter 12, verse 10). And so in all that, we find that principle that is stated in Galatians six, verse seven and eight, that whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap. And that is a very important principle to keep in mind when you ask: why is there so much evil in suffering in the world? Oftentimes, we bring it on ourselves just like David brought this suffering on himself. Not every time, not in every case, and we’ll talk about that later, but in the case of sin, that’s definitely true.
Now those fateful words that Nathan told him—the sword will never depart from your house. In other words, you will have trouble. You will have division for the rest of your life. Those words haunted David for the rest of his life. Nathan, the prophet, had told David that God had forgiven him, but he had to live with the consequences of his sin for the rest of his life.
Now David oftentimes pours out his heart to God in this book of Psalms. These psalms are called penitential psalms because David shows his deep regret for his sins. Now, Psalm 51 is a Psalm of deep remorse and repentance. The compliment to these psalms is another type of Psalm known as a Psalm of forgiveness.
Psalm 32 is a good example. Psalm 51 has the same element of divine forgiveness. Now these psalms are very personal. They’re very emotional.
Now this brings us to another aspect of the Book of Psalms that we have to remember if we’re going to understand Psalm 51, verse five. The Book of Psalms is a book of Hebrew poetry.
Some of it is literal, but much of it is filled with figures of speech and symbols of all kinds. Now, one of these figures is known as a hyperbole. That is an intentional overstatement, a deliberate exaggeration for emphasis. Now, this figure is not to be taken literally. Now, for instance, in Psalm six, verse six, David’s heart is breaking, which is a figure’s speech in our times.
He said, “I am weary with groaning all night. I make my bed swim. I drench my couch with tears.” Now, would anybody say that David cried enough tears to make his bed float and swim? We understand what he means when he says I’m crying so much that I make my bed to swim. He’s not being literal. A good example of the same kind of language that is found in Psalm 51:5 is in Psalm 58, verse three.
There David said “The wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies.” Now, does anyone who believes in original sin think this means that newborn infants are so evil that they start lying the moment that they’re born? This can’t be literal. It has to be symbolic.
It is a hyperbole. Newborn babies don’t lie. They can’t even talk. This is a figurative way of describing how evil these adult people are. They are so thoroughly sinful that their whole life is one of continual evil. It is as if they began to speak lies as soon as they were born—figuratively speaking.
It’s even more obvious that Psalm 58 verse three is figurative when you look at the next verse. It says, “Their poison”—that is the poison of these people—“is like the poison of a serpent. They are like the deaf cobra that stops its ear.” That’s verse four. So if verse four is not literal, then neither is verse three.
And if Psalm 58, verse three is figurative, then so is Psalm 51, verse five. In Psalm 51, verse five, where the Bible says, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me” David is expressing deep feelings of remorse in the language of Hebrew poetry. Psalm 51 5 is not any more literal than Psalm 58, verse three. Both are cases of hyperbole.
David was so overwhelmed with grief for his sin that he’s saying in a highly figurative way that his whole life was stained by his sin. It was as if he was sinful since the moment he was conceived, just like he spoke of the wicked in Psalm 58, verse three. In Psalm 51, verse five, David is poetically describing how he felt, not literally stating the history of his sin.
So far, we’ve been looking at the view that the nature of man, spiritually speaking, is what causes sin in the world. We are not sinners though, because we are born in sin. We’re not sinners because we are born with inherited total depravity. It’s not true that man is a sinner by this nature instead of by choice.
This is what I would call the view of a spiritual nature causing the evil in the world. But let’s look at a variant of that. Another idea about the reason for evil in the world is that we can’t help it because we are born that way genetically. This idea says that some people at least are biologically predetermined to do what they do, to have the lifestyle that they live in other words. It denies free will. Now, modern psychology and modern sociology are full of this kind of idea, and it goes directly against the Bible. It goes against the verses that we’ve already looked at. The Bible teaches that man chooses what he does.
This idea says, for instance, that some people are homosexuals because they’re born that way. They inherited that condition. They don’t choose to be homosexuals. They’re just that way because of genetics, and that is false. Now, there may be things in the body that influence a person’s behavior. There’s no question about that, but influence and predetermination are two different things. The thing that does not enter into the thinking of many people in the field of psychology and sociology today is the idea of free will.
Everything is either nature or nurture. Everything is either genetics or biology or the environment around the person in question. If you want to do something interesting, just pick up a college textbook on sociology or psychology and see if you can find one word about free will in it. I’m not talking about specifically those very words, but see if you can find anything about the concept or the idea of free human choice.
It’s all about genetics or environment. And speaking of environment, that is being blown out of proportion, and it’s being used to give an excuse to people for the sins that they commit. The idea of environment now is being used to say that the evil that is in the world is because of the environment of the world.
Well, who made the environment? People are not even thinking about that question. They’re not thinking at all about the question of how this arrived. At this point, they’re not looking at Bible history at all. Many times they don’t even believe that. That doesn’t enter into their thinking. But if you look at it from the Bible standpoint, you find that God created us with free will and we choose what we do.
Now, the environment does have an effect on us. There’s no doubt about that. But still what we find in the Bible from beginning to end is that man, regardless of the environment that he is in—the home that he’s raised in, the town that he lives in, the culture that he’s a part of—man is able to choose his own way to either find God or to reject God, to do right or to do wrong.
But man is always looking for someone or something to blame. He’s always looking for a way to excuse himself. This idea that we’re talking about is just one more idea. We’re looking at two different basic ways that people use to try to say are the reasons or are the reason why evil is in the world. Some people say, “Well, that’s just our nature.” Then there are other people that say it’s because of the environment that we’re in. We really can’t help it.
And this latter one is really quite old as well. I’m looking at a statement made in 1902 by a famous lawyer. He was at the Chicago County Jail, and here’s what he said to the inmates there. “There is no such thing,” he said, “as a crime, as the word is generally understood. I do not believe there is any sort of distinction between the real moral condition of the people in and out of jail. One is just as good as the other. The people here can no more help being here than the people outside can avoid being outside. I do not believe that people are in jail because they deserve to be. They are in jail simply because they cannot avoid it on account of circumstances which are in entirely beyond their control and for which they are in no way responsible.”
Now that attorney was the one who later defended John T Scopes in the famous evolution or monkey trial in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. His name was Clarence Darrow. That was long ago. And it makes you sometimes wonder though what that man would’ve said if a vicious criminal had broken into his house and beaten and killed his wife and murdered his children? Would he have said, “Well, you can’t really blame that criminal because society made him that way, so we don’t even need to prosecute him. And I won’t feel angry toward him because he couldn’t help it.”
But there’s a story in the Bible long ago that refutes this kind of thinking. It’s the story of Cain and Abel. Cain murdered his brother Abel. The New Testament asks the question: why did he do that? In first John chapter three, verse 12 the Bible says we are not to be as Cain who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him?
That’s the very question that we’re talking about, and the Bible says that the answer is this, because his works were evil and his brother’s were righteous. It was because of spite. It was because of envy, and it was because of his choice. It wasn’t because he was born a sinner. It wasn’t because he was biologically predisposed to sin.
It wasn’t because he was raised in a bad environment. He sinned because he chose to sin. And that is the bottom line to the question, why is there moral evil in the world?
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