Why, Lord?

• Scriptures: Numbers 11; Job 3; Jeremiah 12:1-3; Habakkuk 1:1-5; Revelation 6:9-10
• God at a Distance, Kerry Duke

• “Is There a God?” Bible Doctrine audio

Transcript

Kerry Duke: Hi, I’m Kerry Duke, host of My God and 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.
Do you ever wonder why God made a world with so much suffering and so much evil? And do you ask why God allows all this? Why doesn’t He do something to stop it? I’m sure you struggle with this dilemma. If God is all powerful, then wouldn’t he be able to make the world better? And if God is all loving, doesn’t it stand a reason that he should want to rid the world of pain and sin?
This is a very old question. It’s called the problem of evil, and one thing is for certain, if you’ve ever been frustrated because life is not fair, if you’ve even doubted your faith because of this problem, then know that you’re in good company. In fact, a large company. Did you know that many great and godly men in the Bible had trouble accepting this sometimes?
Today we begin a series on this monumental topic. So let’s look at some Bible characters for help. First of all, let’s go to numbers chapter 11, and here we’re going to read about the great man Moses. Moses was the leader of the Israelite people, and in Numbers chapter 11, the Israelites were doing something that you read about many times.
That is, they were complaining. The Bible says in numbers chapter 11 verse one, “The people complained and it displeased the Lord.” The Bible says that God punished many people there and many people died. But the Bible says also in verse four that “the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving, so the children of Israel also wept again.”
Now, notice what’s happened. The Bible says that God sent fire and killed some of these Israelites because of their rebellion, and these other Israelites are complaining again in spite of that. Where was their fear? Where was their fear of death and their fear of God? But they said, “Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish that we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our whole being is dried up. There is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes.”
And so they were tired of eating the manna. Now the manna was given to them straight from heaven. This was a special food that God gave, and these Israelites said we want something else. We want the same kind of food that we had back in Egypt. The Bible tells us in verse 10, “Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, everyone at the door of his tent; and the anger of the Lord was greatly aroused. Moses also was displeased.”
Now it’s here that you find Moses saying this is not fair to me. This is not right. This is just too much for me to have to put up with all this. So in verse 11 of Numbers 11, Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you afflicted your servant?” He’s talking about himself and the first word that he uses is “why” Lord?
He goes on to say in verse 11, “And why have I not found favor in your sight that you have laid the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people? Did I beget them that you should say to me, carry them in your bosom as a guardian carries a nursing child to the land which you swore to their fathers? Where am I to get meat to give to all these people? For they weep all over me saying, give us meat that we may eat. I am not able to bear all these people alone because the burden is too heavy for me. If you treat me like this, please kill me here and now if I have found favor in your sight and do not let me see my wretchedness.”
Moses is obviously frustrated. He’s angry here. This is not fair to him, and he’s asking God why. Moses, the great man of God is so discouraged. He is so frustrated here that he simply says to God: if this is the way that it’s going to be, if I’m going to have to endure this kind of treatment from these people, then go ahead and take my life now.
He was that desperate. So this problem of evil that we talk about, the fact that life is sometimes not fair to other people and to us, can drive us to the point that we’d rather leave this life than to stay in it. God heard Moses and he gave him help. He said to select other people to put under him so that they could hear some of the problems and bear this burden with him and for him.
That of course is a very simple and it’s a very common sense principle that you have to remember in life, and that is don’t try to bear all your troubles or all your burdens yourself. That’s why the Bible teaches us as Christians in Galatians six verse two: “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
You need help because if we try to bear our burdens ourselves, if we try to fix things on our own and be independent, then we’re not going be able to bear the pressure at times. The other thing that you see about this great story is that even some of the greatest men of God, prophets of God like Moses, became frustrated with God.
Moses was angry with God here. I don’t know any other way that you can describe it. When you look at the words that we just read, you find that this man was frustrated with God. He was angry with God. That doesn’t mean that he was rebelling against God. It doesn’t mean that he did or said anything wrong. It’s just the fact that he’s human and he’s having so much pain on the inside. It came out as anger. If that happened to the great man Moses, that will happen to us today.
Let’s look at another example. The next man that we’re going to look at is Job. The Book of Job is a great book on human suffering, and there are so many lessons of encouragement and direction and faith in this book that we will look at later.
But for now, I want you to notice that job raised this very question and that is “Why?” In Job chapter one, the Bible says that he lost his possessions. He was a very wealthy man, but he lost it. In Job chapter one, the Bible shows that his 10 children died. He lost his family. He lost his children. His wife was alive. But as you read through this book, you find that she wasn’t much help to him at all. And then in chapter two, he lost his health. He had a terrible disease. He couldn’t sleep; he couldn’t eat. He was in all kinds of physical and emotional pain. It was constant. And then we find in Job chapter three that he’s tired of it all and he wonders why that God has put him in this situation.
So in Job chapter three, the Bible says in verse one, “After this job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.” Now when it says that he cursed the day of his birth, that doesn’t mean that he cussed it as we would sometimes think of that word. It simply means that he is regretting the fact that he was ever born and he’s crying out to God here.
I want you to notice what he says in Job chapter three, verse 11: Why? “Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish when I came from the womb? Why did the knees receive me or why the breasts that I should nurse? For now I would have laid still and been quiet. I would have been asleep; then I would have been at rest with kings and counselors of the earth who build ruins for themselves” and so forth.
So Job is saying I don’t understand why I had to live to see this day. I don’t understand why I didn’t die when I was born. If life was going to be like this, then what’s the purpose of all this? He says in verse 16 or “Why was I not hidden like a stillborn child? Like infants who never saw light?” Then down in verse 20: “Why is light given to him?” That’s life, the light of life. “Why is light given to him who is in misery and life to the bitter of soul who long for death But it does not come?” Job is asking a question here that many people ask today, and that is, “If I’m going to have to live a painful and miserable life, then why do I have to live at all? Why can’t I just die?”
That’s a very common question. Job raised this question to God thousands of years ago. Look at it again. He says, “Why is light given to him who is in misery and life to the bitter of soul, who long for death, but it does not come?” Job is saying I don’t think that’s fair. Now that’s Job chapter three, verse 20 and 21.
This is what we’re talking about. Job himself was a good man. He was not just a wealthy man and a great man in the eyes of men, but he was a very good man. God said that there was none like him on the earth. A man who was perfect, that is, he was complete and upright, one that feared God and turned away from evil. He was a righteous man, but he was a man. He was human. Sometimes when pain is so great, it brings out some of these questions and some of these feelings that we read about in the Book of Job, and we’ll talk about that more later.
But for now, let’s turn to the Book of Psalms, and here we’re going to see that David struggled with the same problem. In Psalm 13, beginning in verse one, notice these words. David cries out to God as he oftentimes does in these Psalms. Some of the Psalms are Psalms of praise, where he’s glorifying and magnifying God. Some of them are penitential, that is, David is expressing remorse for his own sins. Sometimes David is crying out to God for help. He had troubles. He had enemies who were trying to kill him. And sometimes God didn’t answer him or deliver him when and how David thought that he should. David, in a sense of desperation, cries out to God in Psalm 13. Here’s what David said. “How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?” And now we enter into the second phase really, of this problem. The first part that we’ve looked at is “Why?” Why, Lord, why do these things happen? Why is life so unfair? And now David says something that we oftentimes say when we are in great pain.
When we are in great sorrow of heart, and that is how long will this last? How much longer? How much more can I take? That’s what David is saying in Psalm 13, verses one and two. This doesn’t seem fair. Sometimes in life, our complaint with God is not so much the fact that there’s something painful that we have to experience. It’s how long it lasts. There are things that we could take if they only lasted for a moment. Think about that. If you only had to endure whatever trouble it is, whether it’s physical pain or whether it’s heartbreak and sorrow and grief or whatever it is, if you only had to experience that for a few seconds, it wouldn’t be so bad.
But as the hours and the days and the weeks and sometimes the months and the years go by, and you still have to endure that kind of pressure and bear that kind of burden, that’s when you begin to say, “Lord, how much longer?” And this is what David was saying 3000 years ago here in Psalm 13, verses one and two. But David also asked that question: “Why?”
Look at Psalm 22. This is a very familiar passage of Scripture because it’s quoted in the New Testament. Psalm 22 verse one: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Now that’s how David felt. David was under severe pressure. He was under intense strain at this point in his life because David’s life was oftentimes in danger of his enemies.
So in Psalm 13, he asked the question to God: how long? And now in Psalm 22, he asked the familiar question, why Lord? And it was Jesus himself who quoted these words when he was on the cross? “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Now he did that because he was a human. He felt physical pain like you and I feel he also experienced human emotions, so he felt grief, he felt sorrow.
The Bible says in Isaiah chapter 53, verse three, that he would be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. So Psalm 22 again raises that question “Why?”
Now let’s turn to Psalm 73, and here we find a case of a man who did more than simply ask “Why?” He reached the point where he thought that it was useless. He almost gave up. He almost gave up his faith. This man’s name was Asaph (Psalm 73). And what you read about as this Psalm opens is what we call the problem of evil. He just couldn’t put it together in his mind at this point.
Psalm 73, beginning in verse one: “Truly God is good to Israel, to such as are pure of heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped.” Now, what does he mean by that? He’s not talking about physically falling down. He’s saying that he almost lost his faith. Well, what happened? What brought that about? How did he reach the point where he almost turned away from God?
Here’s what it says in verse three. He said, “Because I was envious of the boastful when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” There it is. You see, sometimes we say the problem of evil is why is it that bad things happen to good people? But the flip side of that is, why do good things happen to bad people?
Why do bad evil people have such good things in this life? He goes on and explains in verse four—he says, “There are no pains in their death, but their strength is firm. In other words, it seems that when they die, they don’t suffer like the rest of us. In verse five, they are not in trouble as other men, nor are they plagued like other men.”
He says as a result, they’re prideful. He says in verse seven that they have more than heart could wish. They’re prosperous; they’re rich. And not only that, they are so arrogant that they will speak against anybody or anything. In verse eight, they scoff and speak wickedly concerning oppression. “They speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue walks through the earth.” In verse 11, Asaph says, “And they say, how does God know and is there knowledge in the Most High? Behold, these are the ungodly, who are always at ease. They increase in riches.” Now, that was the problem. That’s what he had seen, and he was so frustrated that these evil people seem to have it so good in life that he wondered whether living for God was even worth it.
Verse 13—He said, “Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain.” He said there’s no use in this. There’s no point in me living a good life when these evil people have it so good. He said, “I have washed my hands in innocence for all day long. I have been plagued and chastened every morning.” Now, that’s how he felt.
That’s what was going through his mind. When he was at that low point in his life, he was wrestling with the problem of evil. Why is this happening? Why is it that these bad people have such a good life and I’m trying my best to live for God and I have so many problems in my life? He said this is basically unfair, and he almost lost his faith, but we know that he really turned it around.
If you’ve read Psalm 73 before you know that he turned things around because he realized something that he had forgotten, and we’re going to talk about that later. As we study more, we will look at Psalm 73 in the future, Lord willing, just like we will these other passages I. All I’m trying to do right now is lay a foundation for our studies in the future by pointing out that so many of these people in the Bible who were prophets and great and godly men struggled with the same kind of issue that you and I do.
Now, let’s turn to another prophet, and this man’s name was Jeremiah. Let’s look at Jeremiah chapter 12, beginning in verse one. “Righteous are you, O Lord, when I plead with you yet, let me talk with you about your judgments.” Now, let’s think about what he just said. He says, you are righteous. You’re righteous, but I’m going to plead with you.
So he’s being careful here. He’s being reverent toward God. He’s being respectful. He says, I know that you’re righteous, which means I know that you are a fair God. The word righteous means to be fair and equitable. But he says, still, I want to talk with you about your judgements. I want to talk with you about how you administrate this world, how you manage this world.
You’re righteous, you’re fair. I know that. But he says why does the way of the wicked prosper? “Why are those happy who deal so treacherlously?” You’ve planted them. Yes, they have taken root. They grow. Yes, they bear fruit. You are near in their mouth, but far from their mind. So notice again the familiar word why in verse one.
But he says, look at me Lord, in verse three. He says, “But you, Lord, you know me. You have seen me and you have tested my heart toward you. You know that I’m a good man. You know that I’m righteous. You know that I’m trying to serve you. So he asked God in verse three, “Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter and prepare them for the day of slaughter.”
In other words, Lord, you need to punish these people. You need to do something about all these evil people in the world. They’re just getting away with all this. And if you’re a righteous God, then why haven’t you done something about this? So he says, pull them out like sheep for the slaughter. Prepare them for the day of slaughter.
Notice that he asked the question why in verse one. Now, in verse four, he asks the second question that we’ve been talking about: How long? “How long will the land mourn and the herbs of every field wither? The beast and birds are consumed for the wickedness of those who dwell there because they said he will not see our final end.”
Now Jeremiah is using nature here to show how widespread the effect of these evil people was. He’s showing how great their wickedness was, how much damage that they were doing to society, and he even mentioned some of these elements of creation. In doing that. But Jeremiah’s question now—remember that he’s talking to God here—and he asks, how long?
How long are you going to allow this to happen? And implied in that is, why don’t you do something to stop this?—almost implying that God has taken too long. You need to do this, Lord. That’s what he’s saying to God. Now he’s being very respectful about that. That’s how he begins this prayer. But he is frustrated.
This is not the only time that he was frustrated. This is not the only low point in his life. As a matter of fact, in Jeremiah chapter 20 verses seven through nine, Jeremiah became so distraught that he decided that he was not going to preach anymore. He said I will not speak anymore nor mention his name because of all the persecution and all the oppression that he was having to endure on a daily basis.
It was getting to him. It wasn’t fair. And here in Jeremiah chapter 12, he said Lord, this is not fair. And he was pleading with the Lord to do something about it. Now this is what I mean by the problem of evil. And in Jeremiah chapter 12, he asked both these questions: why and how long? Actually the book of Jeremiah would be a great book to study on the problem of evil.
There are many different approaches you could take to doing a study of this book, whether you’re talking about a personal study or a series of sermons or a Bible class. You could take the Book of Job. Of course, that’s the one that probably stands out the most. But if you look at the book of Jeremiah, it’s interesting because there are two different levels of the problem of evil.
There is the personal level, and of course that applies to Jeremiah because Jeremiah is going through all kinds of personal struggles and emotional struggles with the problem of evil because he sees so much wrong in the society. He sees this imbalance and this unfairness, and he’s beginning to have questions about it to the point that he’s ready to quit, at least in Jeremiah chapter 20.
But there’s also a national level of the problem of evil in the book of Jeremiah. Now, what I mean by that is the book of Jeremiah is addressed to the people of Judah, the people of the southern tribes of Judah. They were in sin. There was great idolatry, there was great apostasy in the land, and God sent Jeremiah to preach to these people.
So for 40 years, Jeremiah preaches to the people of Judah and tells them to repent. And in that message of repentance, Jeremiah tells them, he warns them, that if they do not turn away from their sins, God will send the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, upon the land. And those Chaldeans will have no mercy upon those people.
And as a matter of fact, you also find in this great book of Jeremiah that several times, for instance, in Jeremiah 25 verse nine, God refers to the Babylonians as his servant. So God in his great providence, without overriding the free will of anyone involved, sent the Chaldeans into the land of Judah eventually, and they punished these people of Judah because of their sins.
So there are just so many fascinating things to learn when you read the Old Testament, as well as the New Testament on the problem of evil. Speaking of the Chaldeans and their role in the history of the people of Judah, that brings us to another prophet who raised the same question. He had the same kind of internal struggle with this problem that Jeremiah did, and that is the short book of Habakkuk.
Now, the book of Habakkuk is not as well-known as Jeremiah. You don’t hear as much about it, but this is a great book on the problem of evil. So let’s open to Habakkuk chapter one. I’m going to begin reading in verse one: “The burden which the prophet Habakkuk saw. O Lord, how long shall I cry? And you will not hear, even cry out to you violence, and you will not save.”
So right away the prophet Habakkuk gets to the issue. This is what he wants to talk about. Now, this is inspired of God, but sometimes God inspired men who were going through a particular situation so that God could record and preserve that record of that experience for all times. And the prophet Habakkuk is dealing with the same general kind of problem that Jeremiah did.
He’s talking about the people of Judah. He sees their idolatry, he sees the corruption, he sees the apostasy in the nation. So he is tired of corruption in politics. He’s tired of all this indifference when it comes to religion. He’s tired of all the immorality in the land, and he has prayed to God and prayed to God, but it continues.
God doesn’t reach down and stop it. And the prophet wants to know why. God knows better than he does what’s happening in the land. He sees all this sin, he sees all this corruption. So it looks like from a human standpoint that God should just do one thing and that is intervene and put an end to this.
Now, that’s the way that our simple minds work. And I’m not trying to say that the prophet of Habakkuk is as bad as we are about that, because he was a prophet of God, but he was human. And from the human standpoint, the answers seem simple, but that’s because we’re looking at the situation as men. We don’t see the entire picture.
We see a small part of the total picture. We don’t see everything in the past, everything in the present or everything, especially in the future, other than what] God tells us about the future. God sees everything in the past, in the present and in the future concerning all who were involved, not just the people of Judah, not just the Babylonians, but everybody who might be affected by a war that takes place between the Chaldeans and the people of Judah.
So those are just a few things that we fail to consider because we have our mind set on one thing. You know, when you’re focused on one wrong and you don’t look at anything else, then you’re not likely to be wise about your conclusions. And that was true here in many Bible examples. And we’re looking at one more here.
So Habakkuk sees all this. He has prayed to God before. Now look at the words in verse two. He said, “O Lord, how long shall I cry and you will not hear?” So evidently he’s been praying before. He’s been asking God to do something about all this and nothing has happened. How long? I don’t know. For weeks, for months, for years, we’re not told, but we do find that he is getting impatient here.
And unlike Jeremiah, when Jeremiah was upset about the situation, Habakkuk gets right to the point. Remember in Jeremiah chapter 12 that Jeremiah walked cautiously when he approached God in prayer. He said, you’re righteous, and yet I want to talk to you about this.
The prophet Habakkuk says, how long Lord? How much longer am I going to cry out to you and you won’t hear me about this? And if you look at verses three and four, he talks about this corruption that’s in the land. He says, “Why do you show me iniquity?” Why do you let me see all this and cause me to see trouble for plundering and violence are before me. There is strife and contention arises. Therefore, the law is powerless. Now that simply means that there’s no justice in the land. And justice he says never goes forth, for the wicked surround the righteous, therefore, perverse judgment proceeds. Now that lays the background for, that sets the stage for, the book of Habakkuk, and what you find in this book is that God responds.
God tells him, I am going to do something about this, but I will do it in my way and I will do it when I decide is best not you. And sometimes in life we have to remember that God is the one that knows much better about the situation than we do. God knew that the evil was going to happen before it even happened.
Yet we come on the scene and we try to advise God about it. At least we try to plead with God about what he should do. Now, that’s our human side. Habakkuk was doing that out of a good motive, but he was not seeing what God saw and God has to take him to school here. God has to give him an education in this and we can get the same education and should, if we just read the Bible.
Let’s go to Revelation chapter six. At the very end of the Bible, you find an interesting statement made about this problem. In Revelation, you find that the people of God are being persecuted, the saints of God are being persecuted, and as a result, some of these people are dying for their faith in Jesus Christ.
In Revelation chapter six, beginning in verse nine, the Bible says, “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. They cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, until you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
Now these are the saints who have been put to death. They have been beheaded for the cause of Jesus Christ. This is the first century setting now because persecution was getting very intense at this time. There was a Jewish wave of persecution that was followed by the Roman wave of persecution against the church, and so Christians were being arrested, they were being beaten, and some of them were being put to death for their faith.
Now these saints are represented then as their souls crying out from the altar, saying how much longer, Lord until you intervene, until you do something about that? And that’s where it gets interesting because the Book of Revelation actually does address that kind of question because it talks about the judgment of God, especially upon those persecutors.
So from the early days of the Bible, all the way through the Book of Revelation, you find this subject is very, very common. You find great men of God. You find holy men of God crying out to him about the injustice of life and about the fact that it’s so unfair.
Now, all these men had the same feelings and the same questions, the same thoughts, and the same doubts that you and I do. But they never gave up. They never turned against God. They didn’t get so mad that they turned bitter. They did just the opposite. They used the problem of sin and suffering as steps to a higher level of faith. You and I can do the same now. That’s why we’ll be talking about this profound topic for weeks to come.
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