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My God and My Neighbor is a “Bible talk show” that looks at religious issues, Christian living and world events in light of the Word of God to give hope. This podcast is a ministry of Tennessee Bible College. TBC offers a bachelor's in Bible studies, a master of theology, and a doctorate of theology in apologetics and Christian evidences. TBC also provides Christian books, audio recordings on the Bible, and free Bible courses in English and Spanish. Tune in to My God and My Neighbor to experience the educational content that TBC has been delivering for nearly five decades!
Kerry Duke: Hi, I am 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.
We've been looking at the question “Why, Lord?” We've seen that great men in the Bible, even prophets of God, cried out to Him asking Him this question. Men like Moses, Job, David, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and even the Lord himself wanted to know why. Today we wonder the same thing. Why does God allow our loved ones to be taken from us? Why does he allow them to suffer?
Why does the world have to be so unfair and so painful to us? Where is God when we need him the most? We are looking at some of the reasons why things happen the way they do. We're talking about some things God has told us in the Bible about how and why He manages the world the way that He does.
We will be talking about the sufferings we endure and the reasons for them. I know you want to learn more about how to cope with the heartaches and the pains of this life, but I want to ask you to consider this question from another point of view. Now, this may apply to some of you more than to others, but it will help all of us gain a better perspective on this part of life.
Sometimes when we're struggling with a problem and we can't figure it out, it's good to turn the question around. Sometimes we may need to, as we say, flip the question. Sometimes instead of asking God why Lord it would be good for us to listen to God ask us the same question.
We get upset and we ask God why He does things the way that He does. But if you listen to God in the Bible, you find that God aims the same question at us. It's as if God is saying, “You ask me why I do what I do. I'm asking you why do you do the things that you do? You ask me why I allow sin. My question to you is why do you commit sin? You complain to me about evil in the world. Who caused that evil? Who is responsible?”
Take King Saul as an example. God chose him and gave him the great honor of being the first king of Israel. God was with him and God gave him an early victory over the Philistines, and even though he made mistakes as a king, God didn't strike him dead all at once.
God was merciful. He allowed him to continue his king. The story in I Samuel chapter 15 was after he had sinned by not waiting for Samuel like the prophet had told him in I Samuel 13. It was in spite of his rash and harsh treatment of his own son, Jonathan, in I Samuel chapter 14 in I Samuel chapter 15.
God through the Prophet Samuel gave Kings Saul a simple command. Go and destroy the Amalekites. These people had attacked the Israelites as they were traveling toward Canaan. The attack was entirely unprovoked, and God said to Moses that someday he would take vengeance on these people. Hundreds of years later, Saul was selected by God to be the one to execute God's judgment upon these people, and the instructions were clear.
Samuel told Saul to kill the Amalekites. He was not even to spare the animals. So Saul, the commander in chief, took his forces to battle these old enemies of Israel, but this king who gave orders to everybody else didn't follow the orders that God gave him. He went to war with the Amalekites, but he spared the king and saved the best of the sheep and oxen.
When he returned, God sent Samuel to confront him. The first thing Saul did was to boast to the prophet. “I have performed the commandment of the Lord.” Samuel replied, “What then is this bleeting of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?” That should have embarrassed Saul. It ought to have shamed him.
He heard the command that Samuel gave him. He didn't misunderstand or forget. He deliberately disobeyed. And to make matters worse, he acted like that he had done what God told him to do, so he tried to set the record straight with Samuel. That was a bad idea. He said that they had carried out God's command to slay the Amalekites with one exception. That was Agag the king.
His reasoning was that God gave him a rule, but he could make an exception to that rule. Sound familiar? He also said that they brought back the best of the sheep and oxen. His army had evidently killed the rest of the animals. Now again, God didn't give him the right to make that exception, but he was the king of Israel and evidently he thought that he had the authority or he convinced himself that he had that right.
When the prophet of God saw how stubborn Saul was, he told him to be quiet and to listen. He shared with the king what God had said to him the night before. God said when he was a little man in his own sight, God made him king over all Israel. Then we see that piercing question that begins with one word in verse 19 of I Samuel chapter 15.
“Why?” “Why did you not obey the voice of the Lord?” Why didn't you do what God told you to do? Now, of course, Samuel is not asking to get an answer out of Saul. He's rebuking him. If you're a parent, haven't you said the same thing to your children? When you've told them not to do something and they do it anyway, how many times have you said, “Why did you do that?”
You want to know what your child was thinking. Now, of course, they're not going to give you a sensible answer most of the time because they don't even understand themselves why they did it. Now, I'm not saying it's a silly question to ask them why. We know that it's proper because God is asking Saul that very question, knowing that he's not going to get an honest answer out of him, at least at first.
When God asks man, why he's not looking for information; he's giving correction. That's a question we need to hear God asking us. Instead of secretly criticizing God and being angry with Him because of what's happened, instead of asking Him why, we might need to ask ourselves the same question. That's especially true if we're having trouble because of sinful decisions we've made.
The Bible says in Galatians six, verse seven that we reap what we sow. In Proverbs 13, verse 15, the Bible says the way of transgressors is hard. When we sin, we pay for it. We suffer because of sin. We feel guilt and pain in life, and we ask God “Why?” When we should be asking ourselves why. Of course, I'm talking about the problems we have because of our sins.
I realize there are other times where we're not directly responsible. Not all suffering in this life is the direct result of our sins. We will talk about that more in later lessons, but even then, if we're not directly responsible for the hardships that we endure, we are still sinful people. We're prideful people.
And if we know that we have sinned and we're suffering because of it, we certainly don't need to complain to God. We need to ask ourselves why on earth we said what we did or committed what we have done. We need to ask, “Why did I do that?” and then learn from it and if need be, repent. But God also asked Saul another why question.
He said, “Why did you swoop down on the spoil?” Now the spoil of war here was the good livestock of the Amalekites. So the real answer to the question, “Why did you do all this and not obey me?” is because Saul was being selfish. He didn't do God's will. He followed his own will. Now, this kind of correction from a prophet of God should have brought him to his knees, but it didn't. Incredibly, he was so stubborn that he still insisted that he had done what God told him to do.
In verse 20, he said, “But I have obeyed the commandment of the Lord.” As we look at that story, we wonder “What's wrong with this man's thinking? Has he lost his mind?” But the way he's arguing is no different from anyone today who's trying to justify his sin. People say ridiculous things when they're caught.
They're not rational when they're trying to justify their behavior. After Samuel rebuked Saul again, the king finally gave in and admitted what he had done. He admitted and confessed that he had sinned. Now the sad part is that it was not a clean confession because he blamed the people for pressuring him.
This man's life was full of trouble until the day that he took his own life. So in his case, the answer to the question “Why?” was staring him in the mirror.
Ironically, God posed the same question to the next king of Israel who was a much better man. David's life was a sharp contrast of blessings and curses. He was a loyal and brave young man, and the people loved him. He was a man of faith. A man, God said, was a man after his own heart. And the more he trusted God, the more he accomplished. But Saul was jealous of David and he did his best to kill him. Some of the Psalms appear to have been written during this uncertain time in his life.
No one had to teach David that life is unfair. He lived it. And you see that in some of the Psalms that he wrote. He cried out to God in Psalm 13 and said, “Why, Lord?” But when Saul died, David's burden was lifted. He went from being hunted like an animal to sitting on the throne of Israel as king.
He had wealth, power, fame, and the loyalty of his army. God gave him victory over his enemies. So in the life of this great man, we see a lesson that applies to each one of us. Life is not all good, but life is not all bad either. If life were always good, we wouldn't appreciate what we have, but if life had only bad days, our spirit would faint.
God designed this mixture. He keeps it in place. In Ecclesiastes seven, verse 14, the Bible says, “In the day of prosperity, be joyful. But in the day of adversity, consider; surely God has appointed the one as well as the other, so that man can find out nothing that will come after him.”
So now that things are better, what did David do in this more blessed stage of his life? He made the biggest mistake of his life. You see, before, while he was going through so much trouble, he was alert spiritually. He had his guard up. That was necessary to protect his life. But now that he had the security of being the most powerful man in the world, he dropped his guard. It happened on that fateful evening in II Samuel when he saw a beautiful woman from his housetop.
He took her and committed adultery with her. She was the wife of one of his loyal soldiers. As a result of this affair, she became pregnant with his child. Almost unbelievably, he came up with a plan to avoid embarrassment. He gave the husband of this woman leave to go and be with his wife so that it would appear that he was the father of the child and no one would think anything about it.
But this husband, whose name was Uriah, was the better man in this instance. He refused to go home and enjoy time with his wife because the security of David, the king and the nation depended on men like him. As a result, David even more incredibly told Joab, the ruthless captain of his army, to set up Uriah in battle so that he would die.
David then took the man's wife, Bathsheba, and he married her. Here again, we see a principle that we must remember in the study of the problem of evil. It's that same principle of sowing and reaping in Galatians six, verse seven. Whatever a man sows that shall he also reap. God rewarded David for his goodness before, and now he's about to repay him for the evil that he did.
The prophet Nathan came to David after this with a story in II Samuel chapter 12. He told the king about a certain poor man that had a special lamb. He loved and cherished this pet. A certain rich man in the same city who had a great abundance of livestock was being visited by a traveler. So instead of killing one of his own animals for the meal he took the poor man's one little lamb and killed it for his guest.
David had been a fair man in general in his life. He saw right and wrong in terms of black and white, and when he heard this story, he was furious. He was so angry at the rich man in this story that he prescribed a penalty that was beyond what the law of Moses even required. The law said that a man who had stolen sheep was to pay the owner four times what he had stolen.
But David said in this case, the rich man would die in addition to paying this amount. He was oblivious to the meaning of the story, but his heart was pierced when the prophet told him, “You are the man” [second Samuel chapter 12, verse seven]. The rich man in the story was David, The king saw evil in someone else, but he was blind to sin in his own life.
Nathan went on to explain, “You are the man, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel. I delivered you from the hand of Saul.” Now, here we find again, a remarkable yet not so surprising aspect of our nature. When times are hard, we pray to God, but when times are better and we have it good, we forget God and we forget quickly what he had done for us.
A soldier in the Civil War kept a diary like many of them did. He wrote that when there was a pause in the fighting, the soldiers would cuss and gamble and drink, but when the cannons started firing at them again, they would pray to God.
A Vietnam soldier said it this way. In his diary, he said, “I am an atheist until the shooting starts.”
David was not an atheist or a drunkard. But he did forget what God had done for him when he was being chased by Saul. He thought that he was going to die. In fact, in his mind he was quite sure of it. He said, “I will perish someday by the hand of Saul” [First Samuel 27, verse one]. He even said, “There is but a step between me and death” [I Samuel 20, verse three]. That's how David felt, but he was wrong. God spared his life. God gave him his life back and much, much more.
God said through the prophet Nathan, “I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your keeping and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more.”
How amazing. God said I gave you all this and if that wasn't enough, if you wanted more, I would have done it for you. Then comes the question from God. Why? “Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in his sight? You have killed Uriah, the Hittite with the sword. You have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite, to be your wife.”
How do you explain this? David had cried out to God “Why?” when he was down and afraid. Now God is asking him the same question. If we think that the problem of evil is a great mystery, then how do we explain human behavior?
Centuries later, the people of Judah had turned away from God. They served idols and lived sinful lives. God sent the prophet Jeremiah to warn them. He preached to these people for 40 years. He told them their nation would fall to the enemy and even named the enemy—the Babylonians—but these Jews mocked Jeremiah. They put him in prison. They threatened his life.
This godly man had trouble understanding why God sent him on this mission. He brought up the problem of evil to God. When he asked, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper—that's in Jeremiah chapter 12—he even accused God of deceiving him about what he would experience at the hands of the Jews.
He reached the point where he was so discouraged that he decided to quit, but he couldn't because his conviction in the word of God, he said, was like a burning fire within him.
After 40 years of rejecting Jeremiah's warnings, the Babylonians attacked. They broke down their walls. They burned their houses. They killed the old people and the little children. They raped the women. They left others to starve. War truly brings out the worst in people.
Some read the Bible and ask how a loving God could bring such suffering on people. But the real question is, why didn't they listen to God who gave them every good thing that they had?
They could have avoided this calamity. They had plenty of time to turn the nation around, but they only grew worse. The prophet Jeremiah also wrote the Book of Lamentations. This book is about the terrible suffering of the people left in Jerusalem. After the war buildings were on fire, dead bodies were in the streets, little children were crying out for help. The people were starving. Some of the women even ate their own children. Hear some of the verses that talk about this. “Arise, cry out in the night at the beginning of the watches. Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lift your hands toward him for the life of your young children who faint from hunger at the head of every street. See, oh Lord, and consider, to whom have you done this? Should the women eat their offspring? The children, they have cuddled. Should the priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord, young and old lie on the ground in the streets. My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of your anger. You have slaughtered and not pitied” [Lamentations two verses 19 through 21].
In Lamentations four verse four, the Bible says, “The tongue of the infant clings to the roof of its mouth for thirst. The young children ask for bread, but no one breaks it for them.” Verse six in Lamentations four says, “The punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment.”
Verse eight says, “Now their appearance is blacker than soot. They go unrecognized in the streets. Their skin clings to their bones. It has become as dry as wood.”
“Those slain by the sword are better off than those who die of hunger. For these pine away, stricken for lack of the fruits of the field.”
“The hands of the compassionate women have cooked their own children. They became food for them in the destruction of the daughter of my people.”
In the middle of these horrifying images, chapter three goes to the heart of the situation. Here Jeremiah talks about the problem of evil. This is a great chapter to remember when you think about this subject in Lamentations chapter three.
Jeremiah seems to be speaking on behalf of the whole nation. Their pain and suffering is great, and it's interesting that several verses in Lamentations three are very similar to the Book of Job. The book of Job in chapter six, verse four says, “The arrows of the Almighty are within me.” In Job chapter seven, verse 20, he said that God was using him for a target.
Now this sounds very much like what we read in Lamentations chapter three, verse 12, where Jeremiah said he has “bent his bow and set me up as a target for the arrow.”
Job said, “You hunt me like a fierce lion.” Jeremiah said God was like a lion waiting to ambush him in Lamentations three verse 10.
Job said the people taunted him and his name was a by word to the people [Job 30 verse nine]. Jeremiah said, “I have become the ridicule of all my people, their taunting song all the day” [Lamentations three verse 14].
Job said we receive good and evil from God [Job chapter two, verse 10]. Jeremiah also said, “Both wellbeing and woe proceed from the mouth of the Lord” [Lamentations three, verse 38].
If you want to learn more about the problem of sin and suffering, read and learn all you can in these two books of the Bible about these two men. One of the themes that Jeremiah mentions in Lamentations three is the fact that God is a God of mercy as well as a God of wrath. Romans 11, verse 22 says, “Behold therefore the goodness and the severity of God.”
God is both good and severe. He is both loving and just. Jeremiah teaches great lessons about suffering in this chapter. One is that there is a good side to suffering at the hand of God. “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, he says to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth” [Lamentations 3:25 through 27].
Another tremendous point is in verses 32 and 33. “Though He causes grief, yet He will show compassion according to the multitude of his mercies, for He does not afflict, willingly nor grieve the children of men.” God gets no pleasure out of causing us pain.
He does it for our good. And here's the point that we've been looking at in verse 39, he asked, “Why should a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sin?” You talk about a “why” question. This is certainly one here. Instead of pointing the finger at God and asking God why, and even criticizing God, there are many people in the world today that need to ask themselves this question.
What am I complaining about? Why am I complaining when I brought this suffering on myself? Again, I want to qualify this and admit that not all suffering, not all trouble in this lifetime, is the direct result of our sins. But some of it is, and when that's the case, instead of turning away from God in anger, we need to turn toward him in humility and in the fear of the Lord.
Now in regard to these Jews in the days of Jeremiah the prophet, we find that they were complaining about their calamities. We see that in the book of Ezekiel. Even these Jews were complaining about what had happened when they were responsible. Why should the Jews complain about their calamities? They were the ones who caused them them.
And yet this is the very thing that many people do today. So here are three pointed examples of God asking men, “Why did you do that?” He asked King Saul this. He asked David this. He asked the Jews this and brings it up in Lamentations chapter three. And I would urge you, as you read the Old Testament, especially to keep your eye out for that.
Look and see how many times the people of Israel fell into sin, and God asked them: Why did you do that? Why did you turn away from me after all that I've done for you? After all that you have seen all the miracles that I have done in your presence, all the power and love that I've shown, how could you and why would you disobey me?
It's a funny thing about human nature that man will complain about what's happening to him and yet at the same time he doesn't notice the things that he's doing willfully in his life. So this question is a powerful question that needs to be turned on mankind, and we can do that and be more humble and learn to live for God and have a better attitude if we'll just sometimes do this.
But let's take what we're doing a little bit further. Look at this question why from some other points of view that I believe will help us. There are other ways in which we need to ask the question why. When we're tempted to be angry with God, for instance, instead of asking the question, “Why are all these bad things happening to me? I don't deserve this,” maybe we need to ask the question, “Why are all these good things happening in my life? I didn't deserve them either.” Oftentimes we talk about what we don't deserve when we're talking about or thinking about something bad, and we don't ask the question: Did I deserve all the good things that I have in my life?
We need to count our blessings. We need to realize that life is not about getting what you deserve. It's not about fairness and equality. Eternity will take care of that, In this life, there will always be inequality, there will be unfairness, there will be things that we deserve. There will be things that we don't deserve in this life.
That's the nature of this life. So again, instead of focusing on the question why do I have these bad things in my life, maybe we need to ask the question why do I have all these good things in my life? And that might turn us a little closer to God.
When we ask the question, “Why me, Lord?” maybe we need to turn that around and ask the question, “Why not me?” What makes me any different from anybody else? Why should I not have to go through this? Other people do. Why should I be the exception? Sometimes we get so focused and fixed on our own problems that we fail to see other people around us, even right next to us that are going through the same thing or even worse in life. Sometimes we have that kind of self-centered attitude in view of ourselves.
Here's another way to look at this “Why” question. Sometimes we wonder why God even made this universe. We question why He put us here knowing that we would go through all this pain and all this suffering. Why would God do that?
So in other words, we sometimes can get to the point to where we question or even criticize God for his decision to create. You talk about man getting out of his place to question not just how God manages the world presently, but to question and even criticize him for making the decision to create all this!
And yet sometimes that is either done or it's insinuated. There was a man named Job that was questioning God along this line, and God had some questions for him in Job chapters 38 and following. Now we're going to talk about that later, Lord willing, in our studies. But for now, I just want you to think about how arrogant really that is—for a human being to question God and to criticize God about that kind of decision. But if we wonder out of pain and out of sincerity why God made the world and put us here, knowing that we would go through all this pain and suffering, maybe we need to turn that question around. Maybe we need to, as parents, ask ourselves the same kind of question.
Why do we as parents bring children into this world knowing that they will suffer pain and great heartache in their lives? Why would man question God and not question himself about the same thing? Are you beginning to see that it's not a good idea to ask God questions without being ready to answer His?
Thank you for listening to my God and My Neighbor. Stay connected with our podcast on our website, and on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Tennessee Bible College, providing Christian education since 1975 in Cookeville, Tennessee, offers undergraduate and graduate programs. Study at your level. Aim higher and get in touch with us today.