A Christian's Response to Evil

When we see darkness in our world, we call it what it is and we say God is the light that provides true purpose. Scripture doesn't give us a gray area here. It shows us what is good, what is evil. And as Christians, we should not be weak. We should not be reserved in sharing that. Instead, we proclaim that truth and we proclaim it loud and boldly. [Music] In Judges 21 25 the prophet Samuel he writes in those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did whatever seemed right to him. Other translations said everyone did what was right in their own eyes. You see, today we live in a time when too many people don't see Jesus as king of their life. Today we live in a time where too many families do not acknowledge Jesus as king. Today we live in a time when too many communities do not acknowledge Jesus as king. Today we live in a time where too many cities do not acknowledge Jesus as king. Today we live in a time where too many nations do not acknowledge Jesus as king. Today we live in a world that does not acknowledge Jesus as king. A culture that doesn't see him as king over all creation. And as a result, people do what is right in their own eyes. This past week, there are many tragedies that saw the depravity of men that when we don't have an acknowledgement of Jesus, evil runs free in people. In this past week, as we witnessed tragedy after tragedy, on Tuesday, we started seeing videos come up where evil stabbed and killed a young lady in Charlotte. And we saw videos of her bleeding out and evil on full display. On Wednesday, evil shot and killed a young father in cold blood in front of his family, in front of thousands of other people and for us to see across our worlds. On Wednesday, evil didn't stop there and evil continued as another school shooting happened in Colorado. And you see today as we come into a Sunday with heavy hearts, with a lot of emotions, with a lot of things running through our mind, here is the sobering reality that we come to today. In a world that does not acknowledge Jesus as king, our world does what is right in its own eyes. Evil does what is right in its own eyes. And today, I don't know what you're feeling. Maybe you have grief. Maybe you have anger. Maybe you have resentment. Maybe you have some vengefulness in you. Maybe you're numb to all that is happening and feel desensitized to the things that happen in our world time after time again. But as we gather together as a church, here's what we want to do. as we step out of our normal study through 2 Corinthians is we want to dive into God's word and we want to ask not how we should feel about this not how our emotions should dictate our next action but we want to come to the face of God seek the answers of God and this is the question that we want to frame this through as we dive into God's word is how does the Bible call us to respond respond in the face of unspeakable evil? How does the church respond when we witness tragedy after tragedy as we did last week as we do too often in our world? What does the Bible call us to do? So, let me pray for our time right now and we will dive into God's word and seek his instruction for our lives. Dear Lord, I thank you. God, I thank you that you have given us a church to be faithful with. God, I thank you that you have given us your word that directs us, that guides us, that shows us the proper way that we are to respond in the face of tragedy. And God, I pray, Lord, as there are so many thoughts that may be going through our heads, so many emotions that might be raging through our hearts, Lord, that we can funnel it, that we can move it through what do you say to us through your scriptures? How does it dictate the way we should live our lives and how we as believers respond? lift all this up in the saving name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, as I said this morning, we're stepping out of our series through the book of 2 Corinthians, and we'll be getting back into that next week. But today, if you have a Bible, flip open to Romans chap 12. And if you have a Bible, you can grab the one right in front of you or you can grab your phone on the Bible app or even Google Romans 12:9. We'll be reading through the CSB version. And as we dive into this text, as we just kind of sit back for a second and we take in these tragedies this past week, all of us did so in a different way. It all hit home for us in different capacities. on Tuesday, uh, st more and more gruesome videos started to come out and make the r the rounds online of the murder of a young woman, a Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte on a train. And as we saw that and as I'm watching that online, my wife and I were preparing to host our first Bible groups where we had 18 to 30 year olds not married in our home. And all that was going through my mind during that night was these are the same age as that young girl in Charlotte. On Wednesday, the shocking news and horrible videos of Charlie Kirk being shot, killed, and murdered started to circulate. And all I could think of was his two children, his boy and girl, as a 31-year-old father being left without their dad for the rest of their life. And in my mind, it was hard to wrap around as a young dad myself, as 34 years old with four kids. What would I be like in that situation? What would my family that I leave? How would that handle? Then we had news come out Wednesday later that afternoon of another school, high school shooting in Colorado. And that night, I came here to our men's group and to our youth night, and I was high-fiving cross church students and talking to them all while thinking that at some high school, kids these age were experiencing a tragedy they had no business experiencing. And as we look around our world, there is evil after evil that just we cannot begin to fathom, that seem to be unspeakable. And it comes to this idea of how do we respond to that? And how do we respond not with our emotions, how do we respond not with what's welling up in our side, but how do we go to the word of God to get guidance, to get handles, to get guard rails on responding the proper way and engaging our world during this time. And in Romans 12 starting in verse 9, this is how Paul the Apostle starts this when he is writing to the church at large over almost 2,000 years ago. This early church that was starting across the known world at this time. And he says this, "Let love be without hypocrisy." That's important there when he says without hypocrisy. He said don't love people who just love you. Don't love people that only think the same way as you. Don't love people when you add conditions to it. He said just love without hypocrisy. But this is what he goes on to say. He says detest evil. Now hear those words again. Detest evil and cling to what is good. Here's the first thing in our response when we talk about what does the Bible call us to do in the face of evil is we need to denounce the darkness in our world. You see the Bible makes no compromises here. Paul holds no punches here. He says that we are to detest evil. You go into the Greek of that word detest and it would be more translated fully to hate or abhore, to loathe, to want no part of in our life. And that is is you hear that and you're like that makes sense. I don't like evil things. None of us like evil things. Like I hate evil. It's terrible. It's awful. But here's how we need to keep going down this road. How do we define evil? And as we go down that road, there comes a lot of questions that come up. When I ask questions that I need to find, I go to two sources of the Bible and people smarter than myself. And this past week, I I started reading of John Piper. John Piper has been a faithful pastor. I think he's like 120 years old right now. I don't know how he's still alive. But when I was a kid, I listened to John Piper. I listened to Matt Chandler. I was engaged in my local church, but also hearing this pastor Mo Voices feeding into my life. And as I was reading a Piper quote, I love this when he talks about evil. He says, "The core essence of evil is preferring anything more than God." Hear that? He says, "The core the essence of evil is preferring anything more than God." And you see, we get this from scripture and speaking through the prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament in Jeremiah 2:13, God told his people through the prophet, for my people have committed a double evil. They have abandoned me, this is God saying this, the fountain of living water. That's how he describes himself in this situation. And instead, they have dugistns for themselves, cracked sistns that cannot hold water. You see, when our world looks to other things over God, it is replacing the living water, the light of the world with an unquenching drink that can never fulfill, a darkness that can never let us see. So here's what we need to ask is if evil is desiring something more to God is preferring something over God. If it is that then what are the guidelines to make sure that we are in the good and not the evil. Jesus says in Matthew 22:37 he said he said to him love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets depend on these two commands. You see, Jesus summed up the law and the prophets on these two commands. And he's hearkening his people to go back to the Old Testament to form their worldview, to form their thinking through the Old Testament. And it gets us to as we mine those details, the Old Testament gives us guidelines of what is evil and good, of what is preferring God and preferring other things. And one of the most basic easy places we see this is in Exodus 20:3. We know this as the Ten Commandments. And and hear these real quick. He says this, "Do not have other gods besides me. Do not make an idol for yourself. Do not misuse the name of the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. Honor your father and mother. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not give false testimony. And do not covet. You see, when Jesus is telling us how to love our God, how to love our neighbors, he is doing so through the lens of what the Old Testament has established as a foundation as the line between good and evil. Eight of the ten commandments in the Old Testament say do not because it's when you do those you are crossing the line of preferring other things over preferring God. When we lie we cross the boundary from good to evil from preferring God preferring ourselves. When we murder someone we are not preferring God but we are destroying his creation and not treating others how we should. In these we're crossing this barrier, this line that God has established. And here's the thing. When we cross these lines, both in our personal lives, in the life of our world, what we are saying is we are preferring other things over God. And what is good as he has defined for us to live so that we can be in harmony with him, and harmony with other people. And when we are facing evil in our world, this is the first place we start is we must be bold and unashamed to call evil evil. When we see things that are wrong, that are outside of God's design, that go outside of the barriers he set up, we point at that and we say it is evil, it is wrong, it is sinful, it is outside of God's will. When we see darkness in our world, we call it what it is and we say God is the light that provides true purpose. Scripture doesn't give us a gray area here. It shows us what is good, what is evil. And as Christians, we should not be weak. We should not be reserved in sharing that. Instead, we proclaim that truth and we proclaim it loud and boldly. But here's the deal. A lot of Christians don't have a hard time saying, "Yeah, that's right. You guys didn't say amen." But you could have said amen a few times there. And we don't have a problem with that. When we say evil is evil, we're like, "Yeah, dude. I'm good with that. That's great. Agreed. That's awesome." But here's where often time it starts to get harder because Paul's not done talking. Keep going in verse 14. We're skipping down a little bit because we're going to come back to some of these verses. But in verse 14, he says, "Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud. Instead, associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own estimation." You see, we not only denounce the darkness, call evil evil, but here's where it starts to get more difficult is we demonstrate Christ's difference. This is where it starts to get tough is all of a sudden we start to live like Jesus lived. And and Paul here starts us down this path and tells us to do something that goes against every natural instinct we have. He starts in in verses 14. He says, "Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse." I don't know about you, but one of my first reactions in my heart when I saw just the evil that happened this past week in all these different videos, all these different situations, you read about this after this and it was just all so overwhelming that happened in such a short span. We see it right in front of our face. One of my first reactions is like, "This is messed up." The first thing I wanted is I want justice now. I wanted someone to pay for this. Like they got to find someone. They got to be held accountable. All this needs to be reconciled. We need to place blame. And that's probably your first reaction a lot of people. But Paul says that that's not where we jump to. Instead, Paul says when hardship comes, we demonstrate Christ's difference by blessing, not by cursing. And here's what a little caveat here, and we'll dive deeper in this in a second, is this doesn't mean we pretend evil didn't happen. We already established we call it what it is. It is evil. But now we should show the world something different, something they can't understand. We show them the person of Jesus Christ. And look at verse 15. He gives us some practicality. It says what some of that looks like. He says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep." Right now there are families weeping. A young woman's family in Charlotte and she was a Ukrainian refugee. So probably in Ukraine as well if she saw his family there. They are weeping for the death of their daughter. Charlie Kirk. His family is weeping. His daughter and his boy and girl they are weeping. And his extended family and beyond that the families in Colorado are weeping for what has happened and the tragedy in the life of their kids. and we weep with them. The Bible says we don't minimize their pain. We don't rush to silver lining. Instead, we sit in the ashes with people when they're weeping. But we also don't let that grief turn into bitterness. We don't let sorrow turn into hate. Verse 16, he says, "Live in harmony with one another." You know what evil wants? Evil wants division. Evil wants chaos. Evil wants people turning on each other, blaming each other, pointing fingers. If you go online right now, it is a hot mess of hate. It is people pointing fingers. They're to blame. They're to blame. Keep waiting a few hours. They're going to find someone else to blame. And all it is is hating other people, dividing, digging in heels, drawing more lines. And again, there's things that need to work out that justice be had. I get that. But as the church, we are not called to further divide. As the church, we are called to preach the unifying message of Jesus Christ. And Paul, he says, we demonstrate Christ's difference by refusing to play the games of the world. By refusing to play the games of evil and of Satan, we don't further divide during this time. We refuse to let evil divide us further. Instead, we show the world what it looks like when people who have every reason to hate choose to love instead. We show the world when people who have every reason to retaliate, choose to bless instead. And church here, this this is not being weak. This is not letting things go. This is living out the power of the gospel. But Paul keeps going and in verse 17 he starts to continue and he says this do not repay anyone evil for evil but he say he says give careful thought therein to do what is honorable in everyone's eyes he says if possible as far as it depends on you live at peace with everyone verse 19 friends do not avenge yourselves instead Leave room for God's wrath because it is written, "Vengeance belongs to me. I will repay, says the Lord." You see, when we're going down this path of how we respond to unspeakable evil in our world, we see this next part it leads to as we defer to God's justice. Now, let me be clear here as we start to jump in. This is this doesn't mean that there shouldn't be earthly justice. actually you have some homework you can do is if you read this week just flip a chapter over in Romans 13 Paul explains the rule in the in the purpose of a government and he says that governments have been established by God to punish earthly consequences and and there should be earthly concepts we should support things in our government seeking justice support that process going through but here's what he's also saying is we defer to God look at verse 19 he says do take revenge, my dear friends. But he says, "But leave room for God's wrath." Here's the thing is there's a difference between justice and revenge. Justice restores order. Revenge just creates more chaos. And here even says that vengeance is mine, says the Lord. God can take vengeance because God is holy and perfect and all knowing. When we take vengeance, we operate out of our sin, not out of our holiness. But you know what's so hard about this? It It's easy to say this. It's in some ways it's easy to preach this, but to live this out is hard because God's timeline isn't our timeline. Many will say like, "Hey, I want something to happen now. I I want people to have I want people to pay now. I want things to happen now. I want everything to be fixed now. I think people should see the weight of their consequences now. But God says, "I've got this. It's in my time and in my way." And here's what I've learned that is so important is God's justice is also much more complete than anything we could come up with. Is we might punish the body, but God deals with the soul. We might see the action and judge the action, but God sees the heart that is even uglier behind those actions. And when evil seems to win, when the wicked seem to prosper, when violence goes unpunished, we don't take matters into our own hands. We trust the judge of all creation and all earth to do it on our behalf. You see, and then Paul continues down this road, and I love cuz this is huge because this is already counter. He's like, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can go that way. But in verse 17, he says, "If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone." Notice he puts in there a few caveats. First, he says, "If possible, I like him adding that there. If possible, to be at peace." But then he continues and he says, "As far as it depends on you." You see, Paul's being very realistic here. You can't control other people. You cannot make people be at peace with you. You could try this, but if you forcefully grab someone and sit them down and say, "We are going to be at peace." And you use force to make them be at peace with you, I don't think it's going to last. And Paul says, you can't make people do anything. You can't make them be at peace with you. But he says, as far as it depends on you, what Paul is saying, you can't control others, but you can control you. And here's why we need to hear this, church, is you can choose not to post that inflammatory comment that's going to make all the people mad online. You can choose not to post that divisive meme that's going to make half of your friends hate you instead of seeing Christ through you. You can choose at the dinner table with family members that disagree with you. Not to bring stuff up that is going to further divide so they are not going to want anything to do with Jesus ever. You can choose not to say those things. You can choose peace as far as it depends on you. And Paul is calling us in this time where we are frustrated, we are mad, we are angry, or we're grieving or or we're desensitized, we we feel numb to all the things happening or you're mad on a different way. He's choosing in all this to show a different path. And he wraps up this section in verse 20. After he's been building this, we we call evil evil. Uh we we show them Christ, something different that our world doesn't see. We defer to the judgment of God. And in verse 20, here's what he says. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For in doing so, you will heap fiery clo coals on his head. But do not be conquered by evil. but conquer evil with good. Here's the last thing we see. This is we need to defeat evil with disciplehip. You see, this is the game changer right here that we don't just denounce evil. We don't just act different. We don't just wait for God's justice. We do all those things, but then we actively overcome evil that is happening in our world with good. He says, 'If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. And I love this. There's no passivity here. This is actually aggressive goodness. This is going on the offensive with love. Think about this for a second. Evil, Satan, sin in our world, it wants us to be cowering in fear in times like this. It wants us locked in our homes. It wants us suspicious of everyone. It wants us to have a hate rise up in our heart. It wants us to do so many things that are outside of God will. But what if instead when tragedy like this happens, instead of running to that area, instead of that, what if we became more generous as God's people? What if we became more kind? What if we became more engaged with our community in a amazing way? What if this week instead of you scrolling endless amounts of angry posts online which they are there in fold? What if instead this week you checked in on a neighbor who was alone? What if you bought a meal for those who are struggling? What if you volunteered at a local school to be a positive presence? What if you mentored a young person who you know needs some guidance in life? What if you supported a family who's grieving? He says we do this in the right way. But then he also tells us do not become overcome by evil. You see evil wants to overwhelm us. It wants us to give up. It wants us to become cynical. It wants us stop believing that good can win. I mean think about it for a second. Like our world is no less broken than it's been for 2,000 years. But we get to see a lot of the brokenness way quicker and a way on a broader scale than we ever have before. And when all collectively over the course of 24 hours we see people murdered on our screens, it's like, wow, the world has never been this bad. It probably has been. We've just never seen it all collectively together right in front of our face. And when we see that, we're like, man, I just saw a young woman murdered. I just saw a father gunned down in front of his kids and his wife. I just saw kids shooting kids. It's easy to think that evil is winning, but it's not. We'll put a pin in that. I got some more preaching to do on that one. Okay, but look at this last part. He says, "Overcome evil with good." Here's what I love. The the Greek word for overcome is the same word used when the Bible talks about athletes winning a race. When he talks about soldiers winning a battle, it's a word of victory. Is that overcome? It's is we're not just surviving evil, we're defeating it. And it's already been defeated and will fully one day be defeated for all of eternity. And and how do we do this though? How are we part of this? We do it through disciplehip. Through being the hands and feet of Jesus, through making disciples who make disciples, who transform families, who transform communities. Every time you choose forgiveness over bitterness, you defeat evil. Every time you choose generosity over greed, you defeat evil. Every time you choose truth over lies, you defeat evil. Every time you share the gospel with someone to push out the darkness in their life, you defeat evil. And you want to know the ultimate example we see of this is in Jesus himself on the cross. Think of the master plan for Satan for a second. Jesus told 12 guys, "You're going to follow me. Follow me for three years." He didn't tell him it'd be that long. They thought he was following him for a month. He's like, "Wow, this went a lot longer than I thought." But everywhere they went, they ate all their meals together. They slept in the same places. They were dependent on him to keep surviving. They walked so much. They were probably like closer than even our families at times. They were this huge, close-knit unit. And Satan's like, "I'm gonna take one of those guys, and I'm gonna flip him. I'm gonna take Judas. I'm going to make him betray Jesus, lie about Jesus, deceive Jesus, and and I'm going to get all these other people. And and this is going to lead to this horrible thing where Jesus is going to get arrested unfairly, unjustly, an innocent man. Jesus is going to be beat even though he didn't deserve it. And then eventually Jesus can be tried in a trial he shouldn't have even been at. And then eventually he's going to be hung on a cross to die even though he didn't deserve it. And it was the evil of Satan that hatched that. But it was also the evil of our sins and every person who's ever lived and ever will live our sins that put Jesus on that cross. But instead of overcoming evil in a different way, Jesus could have been like, "This is ridiculous. Let's just smite this. Let's just start fresh. Let's just kill them all. Let's be done. Instead, Jesus overcame evil with the ultimate good. He died on the cross for our sake, for our sin, he rose again to defeat those sins for all of eternity. And all of a sudden, when evil thought it had its day, Jesus laughed as he rose from the grave. And when we hear this and we see this and we think I I don't know like our world just seems too broken to repair Jesus like I already gave you the victory. You're already living out the solution and one day we will see this in all glory and all majesty at the end of our time. But all of this leads to cuz you hear all that and you're like that's that's great. That was the encouragement maybe I needed when I came to church. Yes, evil is evil. Yes, I need to live differently. Yes, I probably need to throw my uh phone in a pool so I can detach a little bit. You're like, "Yes, that's all fantastic, but now how do I practically live this out?" Well, chapter 12 of Romans, verse 12. We skipped this verse earlier. I think it's so appropriate because it kind of sums up the feet and the action steps we see that Paul gives us. And he says this, "Rejoice in hope, be patient in affliction and be persistent in prayer." Here's our response when we look at the sobering reality of a world that does what it sees fit in its eyes. When evil run rampant, when we see it in front of our face, how do we respond? Well, here is our response today is we must root ourselves in God's word. We must be ready ourselves for sin storms and we must rely on God's provision. This is our response today. This is our movement from here. Let me break that down for us a second. We root ourselves in God's word. He says there in verse 12, he says, "Rejoice in hope." Here's the hope we have throughout scripture and through the Bible is that we are not fighting a battle that we haven't won. The whole corpus of scripture is pointing to the fact that our hope is not in politicians. It is not in the economy. It is not in how comfortable our life is. Our hope is in the fact that we are not dead in our sin, but we are alive in Jesus Christ. And we rejoice in that hope. And the only reason we know that hope is because we are rooted in scripture, rooted in God's word. This is how we respond to it. When we read this book and we've read through the first half of 2 Corinthians, it tells us how we seek him, how we know him. The more you read social media, the more depressed you will become. The more you read your Bible and what God has done and is doing for you, the more hopeful you are about the future. We rejoice in the hope of God. But we don't stop there. We also ready ourselves for sin storms. Look at what Paul says in verse 12. He says, "Be patient in affliction." Paul was beaten. Paul was arrested. Paul saw his friends martyed and killed. He would eventually be killed and martyed for his faith. But he didn't say, "Oh, when it gets too hard, I'm backing off." Instead, Paul knew the storms were coming and he weathered the storms. He was ready for it. He was ready for it because he was anchored in the hope of the gospel. He was anchored in God's word and he kept pushing through. He was ready for what other life would throw. And this leads into that last of being relying on God's provision because this is what he tells us to be persistent in prayer. Not to be persistent in trying to be stronger emotionally or physically and have our stuff together, but be persistent in prayer. Meaning, we know this is a battle we cannot win on our own. We know this is a power that we cannot fight and we cannot win. But we have the power of Jesus Christ that we pray to him. We ask him to give us strength, to give us provision, to give us enough to keep going another day. In a time like this, we pray for what is happening in our worlds. We pray for the families who are grieving today. We pray for our schools that they would be places of safety and learning. We pray for our nation that we would turn from violence to peace. We pray for our community that we would be known for love and not hate. the love of Jesus Christ. We pray for our church that we would be a light in the darkness that we would be a beacon of making Jesus known. Tonight we're continuing this time of prayer is we had a prayer summit already planned at 5:00 and we're changing the format of it because it's not really on the theme of what we have today. But we're just going to open this place and this opportunity to be a house of prayer and from 5 to 6 it is come as you go with your family. We'll have prompts on the screen to pray for but just come here just pray just be a part of what God is doing in his church in our communities. But let me close with this. When Judges says in Judges 21 25, when it says that there was no king in Israel and that everyone did whatever seemed right to him, everyone did what was right in their own eyes. [Music] It was describing one of the darkest times in all of scripture. Go read the book of Judges. It's a mess. And it was bad. It was hopeless. It was dark. There seemed like no redemption was coming. But what followed the period of the judges was the period of the kings. And the second king in that line was King David who brought about restoration, revival, who brought about a glimpse of the eternal kingdom that we see in Jesus Christ. And here just as in Judges, as just as in today is darkness does not get the last word. Evil doesn't win in the end. We serve a God who specializes in bringing beauty from the ashes. We serve a God who specializes in dispelling the darkness by being the light. We serve a God who brings hope from the pits of despair. [Music] So yes, today there are emotions you have. Maybe you're grieving. Maybe you're angry at the evil. Maybe you're longing for justice. But we don't stop there. We denounce the darkness in our worlds. We demonstrate Christ's difference by the way we respond. We defer to God's justice knowing he is the ultimate judge. And we defeat evil with the disciplehip of the church. Because church, greater is he who is in us than he, the evil Satan, the sin that is in the worlds. Because the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Because we serve a king who conquered death itself. Evil may do what is right in its own eyes, but it is operating on borrowed time. Because Jesus has always been king. Jesus is king. And Jesus will be king for all of eternity. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] And church. One day every knee will bow. That's right. One day every tongue will confess. that Jesus is Lord, that he is King over all creation. Amen. And for us be reminded that until that day, we overcome the evil in our worlds with the goodness of our God. [Music]