The God Who Sends the Evil Spirit

The Bible says God sent an evil spirit, and most of us have trained ourselves not to see it.

“But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.” Read it again, because the grammar does not leave you a way out. The evil spirit came from the Lord. Not allowed from a distance. Sent. The same book that anointed David put a tormentor in Saul’s house, and it records both without one word of apology.

It is not the only time. When God decided Ahab would die at Ramoth-gilead, a spirit stepped forward in the throne room of heaven and said he would be a lying spirit in the mouth of all the king’s prophets. And God said, “Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so.” Four hundred prophets told Ahab exactly what he wanted to hear, and every word was a lie God had licensed, aimed at a wicked king walking to the grave he had earned.

Then there is Job, where Satan cannot touch one hair of the man until he asks. First God says all that he hath is in thy power, only upon himself put not forth thine hand. Later, he is in thine hand, but save his life. The devil in the book of Job is on a leash, and the hand holding it is not his.

People want a universe where God runs the light and something else runs the dark, two kings splitting the land between them. The Bible will not hand it to you. There is one throne. The evil spirit that troubled Saul came on an errand. The lying spirit that drowned Ahab’s court was dispatched. The accuser who stripped Job needed permission and got it by the inch. Nothing dark in your life reached you without passing the same desk.

That should frighten you and steady you in the same breath. Frighten you, because the God you answer to is not safe, and He will use a hard thing to break a hard heart. Steady you, because if even the evil spirit is on an errand, then nothing loose in the dark is actually loose. It is sent, it is measured, and it is called back by the One who loves you enough to let it do its work, and not one inch more.

Saul drove out the Spirit of God, and God did not leave the room swept and empty. That is the warning. The leash is the mercy. Both are in the same Bible, and most pulpits will only ever hand you one of them.

Dead Hidden hands you the whole verse, not the half that fits on a bumper sticker. There is a new one all the time, and the archive is open to members. Come sit in the dark passages with me.