Here's an interesting passage that I had to deal with in our Sunday School lesson. It's a passage from 1 Samuel 16 that I've read before but I must have excused the cognitive dissonance that the stuff that I will put in italics is giving me now (I'll use NIV)-
15 Saul's attendants said to him, "See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. 16 Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the harp. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes upon you, and you will feel better."
17 So Saul said to his attendants, "Find someone who plays well and bring him to me."
18 One of the servants answered, "I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the harp. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the LORD is with him."
19 Then Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, "Send me your son David, who is with the sheep." 20 So Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine and a young goat and sent them with his son David to Saul. 21 David came to Saul and entered his service. Saul liked him very much, and David became one of his armor-bearers.
22 Then Saul sent word to Jesse, saying, "Allow David to remain in my service, for I am pleased with him." 23 Whenever the spirit from God came upon Saul, David would take his harp and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.
Yes, that is an evil spirit from God. Some translations go with harmful rather than evil, but it is coming from God per the passage. That sort of shoots down the "God is good all the time" meme that we've come to know. A quick search on God's goodness comes up with Joshua 23:14-16(NIV)
Square that with 3 John 11(NIV)-
If we take John and the two OT passages at face value, God's never looked Himself in the mirror.
We either have a much more malevolent God that we normally teach in evangelical circles or the OT passages are of another era. However, it may work well in a hell-fire-and-brimstone milieu; Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God would likely fit into the meme of a vengeful, lightning-bolt-slinging deity.
One could go with some sort of dispensationalist approach and say that the OT passages were from another era, accurate for an old-school God but not for a new covenant God. However, that throws out the "God never changes" meme out the window, since we have a God who actively delivers evil in the OT and one who can't stand the stuff in the NT.
Another route, anathema to most evangelicals, is to chuck Sola Scriptura out the window; just say that those two verses really don't mean what they're saying. However, that kicks the backstop out from under evangelical thought, once you've allowed selective editing of the Bible, all bets are off and you're quickly off into the Church of What's Happinin' Now.
I managed to fudge the issue with our three-year-old class, just focusing on Daniel being helpful as a shepherd and a harpist and casting Saul as being depressed and sad because he had second-guessed God one time too many; that got the message down to a rug-rats level without butchering the story. However, the adult message is still giving me a lot of theological indigestion.
How do you square this circle, denizens of the Peanut Gallery?
Mark, there is absolutely no problem here at all.
The statement that Saul is plagued by an evil spirit from God was made by Saul's attendants. Scriptures never give any indication that Saul's attendants had any special knowledge about the nature of God.
The attendants were, quite simply, horrible wrong. This is no different than the false statements about God made by Job's friends.
I think we can both be confident that there words were accurately recorded and that they were simply wrong on the facts.
Posted by: Jeffrey Collins | July 12, 2009 at 07:14 PM
Very good, Jeff. Eileen gives a thumbs-up on that reply as well.
Posted by: Mark Byron | July 12, 2009 at 08:52 PM
Here's my $0.02 - this situation is a bit like Job chapters 1 & 2. Did God send an evil spirit on Job? No. God basically withdrew some protection (Star Trek analogy: the shields failed), and Job got attacked. I can see David's playing-- which probably included a fair bit of worship of God, something evil spirits don't like-- as temporarily chasing the spirits away. God's mercy is long-suffering, but that doesn't mean he can't give people over to what they deserve, even temporarily.
Or, to switch metaphors once again, Saul was outside God's protection, like being kicked out of a house into a thunderstorm. David extended an umbrella over Saul temporarily, but once David wasn't nearby, Saul was back into the nasty weather, spiritually.
Posted by: Nathan Mates | July 13, 2009 at 04:31 PM
Um, Jeff, but the first verse doesn't seem to reflect the statements of Paul's attendants but presenting the story which his attendants then describe.
I think Nathan is more on track here but I am not sure there is an easy answer.
Posted by: Kevin Holtsberry | July 15, 2009 at 07:35 PM
I think John MacArthur answered it well....
Questioner
I have a question about 1 Samuel 16:14, “Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.” And I’m just curious about that "evil spirit from the Lord."
John MacArthur's Answer
The statement that there is, "an evil spirit from the Lord" and the question is, "How can a good God sent forth an evil spirit?" Right? Obviously, the answer to it has to be in line with all other scripture. And all you have to do is to keep this in mind: The holy angels are at the command of Jesus Christ, right? Are the fallen angels at the command of Jesus Christ? Sure they are! In Mark 5, Jesus approached the maniac of Gadara, you remember? And they said to him, "do not"...what? "send us out, but cast us into..." what? "...the swine." They knew that they would have to do what He commanded them to do. You see in Ephesians 1, it says, and I will read it, "The exceeding greatness of His power which was wrought in Christ…so forth…far above all principalities and powers and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come. He’s put all things under His feet, given him to be head over all things…" right? Doesn't matter what it is.
There are times when God himself, in His sovereign will, actually allows the demon hosts to carry out His will. And I think in that case He simply, in line with His sovereign will, acted authoritatively over a demon to allow him, to permit him to do what he was going to do. So I think we have to give the ultimate sovereignty to God.
Posted by: rhonda | August 31, 2009 at 03:21 PM
I'm really not sure what to make of this passage. However, in agreement with Mark this passage does not bode well with modern theology. I have heard just about every explanation and they are all quite unsatisfactory and flimsy. It seems we like to explain things away more then taking them at face value. I would have to say the best explanation is that God controls the universe and has to give some degree of permission and allowance to anything that acts, especially spirit things. Perhaps he does send evil spirits as a form of judgment. After all, "no evil comes from God." Yet revelation is an entire corpus of God sending evil as a form of judgment
Posted by: J. J. Kelly | September 10, 2009 at 03:34 PM