Who Is God? (Col. Mustard with the Lead Pipe?)

When I was growing up, I remember our family liked to play games. And I don’t mean just sports. I’m talking about family games too, like Monopoly, Twister, Life, Candy Land, Battleship, Uno, and other classics. And when I got in high school, Risk became the ultimate favorite for me and my friends. Nothing like an all-night Risk party complete with pizza for a bunch of teenage guys.

And then there’s the greatest “Who Done It” game of all-time – Clue. I recall that being one of the favorites among our family and friends. There’s nothing like a good mystery, and this game had it all. Who did it? Where did it happen? And what weapon did they use? That was the essence of the game.

If you ever played the game, then you know that the object was to try to gather as many clues as you could to eliminate suspects, rooms, and weapons until you were ready to make your guess. Of course, the other players were gathering clues too so you had to be good at gathering clues quickly. Whoever was the first person to guess all three correctly won the game.

The problem was that players would sometimes make their guess before they had gathered all the clues. Sometimes they might be right, but often they would be wrong. Guessing incorrectly meant you were out of the game. So you had to be pretty confident that you had all the right clues before you put yourself out there on a limb. Making the guess too early could mean that you hadn’t seen the whole picture yet, and that could lead to some very misleading conclusions.

I believe that is what often happens when people read the Bible. We make assumptions about things based on some very incomplete information, and that can be a dangerous thing to do. It can lead us to draw some conclusions about God that end up being totally wrong, and that can end up shaping how we see a lot of things. Let me give you an example.

King Saul was Israel’s first king. He started off pretty good, but he was soon having his share of struggles. According to the Bible, his struggles came from evil spirits sent by the Lord because of Saul’s disobedience. As we read in 1 Samuel 16:14-15, “Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. Saul’s attendants said to him, ‘See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you.’”

Now if you stopped right there and had little knowledge of the rest of the Bible, you would come away with the idea that God sends evil spirits to torment his enemies. In that case, you would be holding a very distorted understanding of God. Why? Because the picture you would have of God would be extremely incomplete. It would be like playing Clue and guessing that it was Colonel Mustard in the billiard room with the lead pipe with only a portion of the clues. There’s so much more to the picture.

As the story continues, some of King Saul’s advisors suggested that they find someone who could play the lyre, which would soothe the king whenever the evil spirit from God began tormenting him. Then one of his servants spoke up and said, “I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the lyre. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the Lord is with him (1 Samuel 16:18).” That son of Jesse was none other than David, the man who would succeed Saul as king.

David was brought to King Saul and did exactly as he was told. “Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him (1 Samuel 16:23).”

Now let me see if I’ve got this straight. God sent an evil spirit to torment Saul, but then through David drove that evil spirit out. So God was working against Himself? Does that make any sense at all? So does God send evil spirits or not? Again, we do not have the complete picture.

So how do we get the complete picture? As I mentioned last week, we have to turn to Jesus Christ. It was Jesus who said that he came to reveal his Father to the world. And in this case, he answers the question we have about the evil spirit in a couple ways.

First, we turn to a story about a man born blind in John 9. Jesus’ disciples ask him whether it was the man’s sin or his parents’ sin that caused him to be blind. Implied in this question would seem to be that God causes blindness and other terrible calamities, such as evil spirits, because of sin. A close look at Jesus’ answer is quite interesting. “‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.  As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me (John 9:3-4).’”

Notice that Jesus refers to the works of God twice. What works is he talking about? That brings us to the second way Jesus answers the question. He answered it by his actions. When it came to evil spirits, what did Jesus do time and time again? He drove them out of people. It would seem a very strange thing to me that God would send evil spirits upon people only to have Jesus drive them out. And since Jesus is God, that would mean that he would be working against himself.  That seems quite absurd.

When Jesus first publicly announced his ministry, he quoted from Isaiah as his mission statement. Amongst the reasons he stated that the Lord sent him was to “proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free (Luke 4:18).” Who would the prisoners and oppressed be? I would think that would include those who were had evil spirits. So again we see from Jesus’ own words that God wanted to set people free, not put them in bondage to evil spirits. Additionally, we are told that God gives good gifts (Matthew 7:11, James 1:17) and that He doesn’t tempt anyone with evil (James 1:13-14).

What does all this tell us? It tells us that we should be careful about deciding who God is without all the clues. Doing so can cause us to miss that it was Professor Plum in the kitchen with the wrench. Or to be more precise, it can cause us to think that God sends evil spirits to torment people. Once we have all the clues as provided by Jesus and his inspired disciples, we see that Jesus – God in the flesh – came to set people free from oppressive evil spirits and that God is a giver of good gifts, not a bringer of evil.

All this leads us into a concept that is extremely important to understand. It’s a way of comprehending the Bible that’s critical for getting the whole picture. It’s called progressive revelation. What is it? Hang in there. We’re going to get to it, but not until next week. This article is already long enough. So come back next week as we continue to explore the incredible nature of our loving, grace-filled Father.