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CORE Evangelism School

A God Worth Knowing

Dee Casper

01 The God Who Hears and Knows

02 The Problem of Evil: Does God Care?

03 The Faith of Jesus

04 Are We In This Thing Alone?

05 A New Covenant Experience

06 Bad Religion

07 The Reminder of Your Value

09 A Matter of Life or Death

10 Unquenchable Love

12 A God Who is Always on Time

13 The Gospel in Types and Symbols

15 Last Church Standing

16 An Abundant Life

18 Why God Won’t Leave

19 Jesus Understands

17 A Voice of Reason

14 The Coming Crisis

08 Building a House for My Wife

11 A New Birth

It's a blessing to have you in our roof here.

And I believe the Lord has a blessing in store for us again this evening.

For those who were here last night, God did not leave us as orphans.

And I believe he'll do it again this evening.

So what I'd like to do is begin with a word of prayer, and then we'll start this evening's message.

Again, we're addressing the topic of the problem of evil.

We've always needed you, but we definitely need you this evening in tackling a topic that is difficult.

But I thank you that you're not intimidated by the world's problems or by our questions.

So we pray that you would speak to us and give us your perspective now.

I will preface this evening's message by saying this is technically a part 1 and part 2 will be our second to last meeting of this whole series.

As you exit this evening, we're going to give you a schedule to let you know what nights the meetings are happening, what the titles of those meetings are, and when they will conclude, when the last meeting will be, and the second to last meeting is entitled, Why God Won't Leave, and it's actually kind of a part 2 to this topic this evening.

But we're gonna be addressing the issue of the existence of evil.

And if God knows the future, as we talked about last night, and created everything good, good, very good, then why do people suffer today?

And what role does God play in all of this?

Well, the Bible gives us the origin of this problem.

If you brought 1 of those Bibles they gave you at the counter out there, I've got page numbers for you tonight.

This is in the book of Revelation, Revelation chapter 12, but it's page 1182.

So if you grabbed 1 of those black Bibles on the table as you came in, then that's the page number for you, 1182.

Michael and his angels fought with the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought, but the evil angels did not prevail nor is a place found for them in heaven any longer.

So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.

He was cast to the earth and his angels were cast out with him.

So there was a battle that took place in heaven, and we'll see what that was about here in just a moment.

And there were casualties as a result of this, that people were displaced.

There were angels that were in heaven who lost their place in heaven.

But heaven is not a place where you would think that war would occur, is it?

Just doesn't seem to make sense, but it did happen.

If you go a few verses previous to this in verses 3 and 4, it says, and another sign appeared in heaven.

Behold a great fiery red dragon, previously we saw that was the devil himself, having 7 heads and 10 horns and 7 diadems, that's crowns on his heads.

His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.

Now in verses 7 to 9 it talks about the angels being cast to the earth and in prophecy that's what's being said here.

A third of the angels ended up losing their place in heaven in this battle.

The devil himself, who we'll see here in a moment, used to be, you know, an angel, glorious in heaven, and a third of the angelic population that he convinced to join him in this rebellion are now displaced from heaven.

And so this word war that's used here in this text is the word polemos.

And It's the root word for where we get the words polemics and politics.

Both of those you can equate with arguing, right?

The art of polemics is debating or arguing and politics is politics.

I'm not going to get political because it makes me sick at my stomach.

So anyway, but it was primarily a war of words is what's being implied here.

Now that's not to say there wasn't a need for physical intervention, but what scripture is portraying here is that there's a war of ideas.

There's a war of worldviews that took place and eventually a third of the angels lost their place in heaven over this war.

Now Ezekiel chapter 28 gives us some more insight into this.

Page 830 the book of Ezekiel chapter 28 beginning of verse 11.

It says, Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me saying, Son of man, take up a lamentation, a song of weeping for the king of Tyre and say to him, thus says the Lord God, you are the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

The Sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold, a beautiful being.

The workmanships of your timbrels and pipes were prepared for you on the day you were created." This was a created being.

Now it's telling a story that cannot directly apply to the King of Tyre, though it's directed to him, and it's because it's speaking about the force of darkness behind the man.

There's a man behind the curtain, behind these dastardly deeds of the king of Tyre, and it's talking about Lucifer, it's talking about Satan.

They continue, you were the anointed cherub who covers.

Now if you have any familiarity of the Old Testament services, or maybe you just saw like Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark, right?

There are these 2 angels over the top of the Ark of the Covenant, portraying what's been told in scripture of what happened in heaven, right?

There were 2 ministering angels standing on either side of the very presence of God.

So when this person is referred to as the anointed cherubic covers, that means they were in the immediate presence of God in heaven.

You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.

You were perfect in your ways again from the day you were created.

They were perfect, but then sin was found in them and that tension's meant to be there.

They continue in verse 16, by the abundance of your trading, you became filled with violence within and you sinned.

Therefore, I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones.

Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor." So, there was this form of arrogance and pride welling up in the heart of this being.

"'I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings that they may gaze at you.'" Verse 18, "'You defiled your sanctuaries by the multitude again of your iniquities and again It says by the iniquity of your trading.

That's the second time they've used sin and trading together.

We'll come back to that Therefore I brought fire from your midst it devoured you and I turned you to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all who saw you.

All who knew you among the peoples are astonished at you, and you became a horror and shall be no more forever." Now this word trading that's used here is the word rikula in Hebrew which means to sell or to merchandise, and also could be an implication of gossip.

Lucifer, at this stage in heaven, was his actual proper name.

He was trafficking ideas about God that were not true.

He felt that what's going on here and how things are being ruled and led is not okay.

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Series

A God Worth Knowing

02 The Problem of Evil: Does God Care?

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

What If It's Better?

Bad Religion

36m

Bad Religion

34m

Michael Carducci Weekend

02 All Wrapped Up and Where to Go?: Who’s Salvation Is It Anyway?

1h 13m

What Jesus Said

2. The Unconditional Love of God

54m

The Day of Atonement

02 The Cleansing of the Sanctuary

55m

The Gospel Will Prevail

49m

Restoration 2024: The Message of Healing

The Cosmic Conflict

1h 7m

Life With the Spirit

The Greatest Spiritual Gift

1h 19m

The Weeping Prophet of Hope

51m

Peace be Still

52m

God’s Cancel Culture

41m

Restoration 2023

The Zombie Apocalypse

1h 21m

Sound Doctrine