God Is Good(er)
The most evil idea in the world is the idea that God cannot be trusted, that God isn’t good.
And it is in direct opposition to that destructive idea that Jesus performed the miracle at the Wedding of Cana.
Want to know what the water-into-wine miracle means?
It means that God is Good(er).
Preacher: Andrew Forrest
Scripture: John 2:1-11; Isaiah 25:6-7
“BUT IDEAS AND IMAGES are also a primary stronghold of evil in the human self and in society. They determine how we ‘take’ the things and events of ordinary life. They control the meanings we assign to what we deal with, and they can even blind us to what lies plainly before us. Again, this is seen over and over in biblical and in Christian history, and in human life generally. Their power for evil cannot be overestimated and is constantly at play in most human governments.
Ideas and images are, accordingly, the primary focus of Satan’s efforts to defeat God’s purposes with and for humankind. When we are subject to his chosen ideas and images, he can take a nap or a holiday. Thus when he undertook to draw Eve away from God, he did not hit her with a stick, but with an idea. It was with the idea that God could not be trusted and that she must act on her own to secure her own well-being.
This is the basic idea back of all temptation: God is presented as depriving us by his commands of what is good, so we think we must take matters into our own hands and act contrary to what he has said. This image of God leads to our pushing him out of our thoughts… and putting ourselves on the throne of the universe. The condition of the ruined soul and world naturally results. The single most important thing in our mind is our idea of God….”