Wicked People

In this session we look at the meaning of wickedness that grieves God greatly. Despite the intelligence of man, mankind faces many problems due to the existence of iniquity, morally depravity. Before we look at the subject please answer the following questions:-

1. What is wickedness?
2. What is pride?
3. Who were the Nephilim?
4. What sort of picture does the word ' disobedience' conjure up in Romans 5:19
5. What does it say about Adam?

The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth - men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air - for I am grieved that I have made them." But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis 6:5-8

It is apparent in the Bible that God wants people to live with a certain mindset in order to know full mental and spiritual health. They must learn to live life with a claim on and a sense of God's forgiveness, even in the face of continued faults and failures. They must live with the confidence that God has a plan for their happiness and well being in this life and that He provides a source of power to meet every challenge. Furthermore they must retain the confidence that even when they fail to appropriate that power God still maintains control.
Dr P. Cosgrove in Mental Health - A Christian Approach. P 40

The Bible is a dispute about the identity and character of the true God. Israel's life is initiated and sustained by Yahweh, the giver of life. But Israel is always tempted and seduced by alternative gods and loyalties (Hos 2:8). The polemical question is always 'to whom will you compare me? Who is like Yahweh?' (Ex 15:11; Is 40:18) The answer of course is that there is no God like Yahweh who is the God who intervenes powerfully on behalf of the poor and the marginal in the face of oppressive power..this God is not known in any speculative or theoretical way but always through acts of social intervention and inversion that create possibilities of human life in contexts where the human spirit has been crushed (see Is 57:15)
Prof W. Brueggemann, A Social Reading of the O.T. p 54-55

We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. Romans 3:9-10

Sin - 'harmartia'. This word was not originally an ethical word and simply spoke of missing the target when shooting an arrow. Sin speaks of failing to be what we are called to be.

For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. Romans 5:19

Disobedience - 'parakoe'. Parakouein originally means 'to mishear, or fail to hear.' The word then came to mean to deliberately not hear and finally came to mean hearing what one wants to hear. It speaks of closing the ears to God in order to listen to oneself.

I surrendered my moral conscience to the fact that I was a soldier,' said Otto Ohlendorf, the commander of a Nazi death squad, and therefore a cog in a relatively low position of a great machine. As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me,' George Orwell wrote during the Second World War.
Prof Os Guinness in, Unspeakable 92

To be sure, the Nazis ranks included brutal sadists, perverts, and vicious Jew-haters, at the highest levels and all the way down. But the cooperation of most Germans was enlisted by such petty notions as 'follow orders', 'The desire to get ahead,' getting along' and 'respect for the Great Leader'
Unspeakable pages 92-92

Think of those who supplied the gas ovens, those who took the gold teeth, those who built the railways, villages nearby death camps who turned a blind eye and we begin to see what Oz Guiness is speaking about. It has been said that Nazism produced more evil with less malice than civilisation had previously experienced.
The Independent Newspaper, Sat 16th Sept 2006

They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. Romans 1:29

As God's creature, therefore, I can never sign a declaration of independence from my Maker. Instead, I ought humbly to acknowledge that everything which I have is God's gift.every second of life which I enjoy, every lungful of air which I breathe, every morsel of food which I eat, every thought I am able to form, every ounce of energy I use, every opportunity which comes my way, and even the capacity to lay hold on that opportunity - all of these are God's gifts. Consequently, I am like my Creator, and yet I am unlike Him. A measureless distance stretches between God as my Creator and myself as His creature.
Dr V. Grounds, Emotional Problems and the Gospel p 73

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin - because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Romans 6:6-7

Evil is conquered as evil because God turns it back upon itself. He makes the supreme crime, the murder of the only righteous person, the very operation that abolishes sin. The manoeuvre is utterly unprecedented. No more complete victory could be imagined.'
Dr H. Blotcher in Evil and The Cross, p 133

Now review the questions and your answers. What does this session tell you about the patience of God for His children?

Please review the questions and your answers. The final question above is one for personal reflection.