Transcript: Episode 0080
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WEBVTT 00:00:37.431 --> 00:00:39.711Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.711 --> 00:00:40.771 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.771 --> 00:00:41.831 Mahler. 00:00:41.831 --> 00:00:44.691 And I'm still Woe. 00:00:44.691 --> 00:00:50.331 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing God's active hand in the universe. 00:00:50.331 --> 00:01:00.031 One of the terms for that is providence, something that we talked a little bit about in the Thanksgiving episode that we did last fall called God's Gifts, Man's Duties. 00:01:00.031 --> 00:01:04.611 And in that episode, we were mostly focused on after God gives you gifts, what do you do with them? 00:01:05.311 --> 00:01:13.531 This episode is going to be focused entirely on the activity of the supernatural in our lives, both God and evil. 00:01:13.531 --> 00:01:27.171 And the reason for doing this is that, as we've said before, there's, I think, a very strong case to be made that the vast majority of people in Church pews are somewhere between functional deists and functional Gnostics. 00:01:27.951 --> 00:01:30.491 And so they managed to combine both of those. 00:01:30.491 --> 00:01:48.131 And so today, we want to make the case from scripture that it's important for us as Christians to realize when and how God is active, and when and how Satan is active, when and how there's evil, actual supernatural evil acting in the world, in our lives and in the lives of those around us. 00:01:48.131 --> 00:02:00.751 Because when we separate one from the other, when we pretend that, well, this is just random happenstance, when we take God out of the equation, that's the watchmaker theory, that's deism. 00:02:00.751 --> 00:02:02.931 That's saying, well, God doesn't really do anything. 00:02:02.931 --> 00:02:04.431 He's just kind of up there. 00:02:04.431 --> 00:02:06.931 He's trapped in heaven, and he gave her this book. 00:02:06.931 --> 00:02:12.091 And so we read the book on Sunday and try to follow the rules, but otherwise, God's not doing anything. 00:02:12.091 --> 00:02:15.191 That's really how most Christians actually view the world. 00:02:15.191 --> 00:02:19.691 Even the ones who will pay lip service to say, no, God's doing stuff. 00:02:19.691 --> 00:02:22.511 When push comes to shove and you say, well, did God do this? 00:02:22.511 --> 00:02:23.351 Like, who could say? 00:02:24.091 --> 00:02:32.311 And so, we're going to give a number of examples today from scripture, where Christians who are given to us as examples, don't behave the way we do today. 00:02:32.311 --> 00:02:36.231 They set an example that we, by and large, refuse to follow. 00:02:36.231 --> 00:02:40.751 And it's not simply that we're not copying their pattern of behavior. 00:02:40.751 --> 00:02:42.851 We don't believe the way they believe. 00:02:42.851 --> 00:02:48.311 We don't believe that God is active, and that Satan is prowling like a roaring lion. 00:02:48.311 --> 00:02:53.111 And because we don't believe those things, it affects the way we act. 00:02:53.471 --> 00:02:56.691 It affects the way we work with others, the way we communicate with others. 00:02:56.691 --> 00:03:05.851 And crucially, it affects how we confess the Christian faith in the very moments where God is making himself known through both good and evil events. 00:03:05.851 --> 00:03:07.971 So that's what we're going to lay out today. 00:03:07.971 --> 00:03:09.271 Fifteen seconds of housekeeping. 00:03:09.271 --> 00:03:13.131 Corey got a shipment of the Challenge Coins out last week on Saturday. 00:03:13.131 --> 00:03:15.091 So some of you are receiving those. 00:03:15.091 --> 00:03:18.351 He thinks he'll probably be able to get the rest of them out by the end of the week. 00:03:18.351 --> 00:03:29.291 So hopefully by the time you hear this recording next week or next week's recording, everyone who had pre-ordered or had ordered subsequently will have received their Stone Choir Challenge Coins. 00:03:29.291 --> 00:03:31.051 Thank you to everyone for your support there. 00:03:31.051 --> 00:03:35.091 And we'll probably be talking a little bit about how that plays into Providence because that's part of it. 00:03:35.091 --> 00:03:42.491 You know, when we receive these gifts from you for something that we've done, in a sense, that is truly God's providence in our lives. 00:03:42.491 --> 00:03:44.251 And that's the way I see it. 00:03:44.251 --> 00:03:49.591 One of the first things that Christians typically teach their children is to say grace before meals. 00:03:50.331 --> 00:03:53.071 You pray at bedtime and you pray before you eat. 00:03:53.071 --> 00:03:57.571 And if you as a parent aren't doing that or haven't doing that, please start. 00:03:57.571 --> 00:03:58.671 It's an important thing. 00:03:58.671 --> 00:04:00.651 It doesn't need to be a long, elaborate prayer. 00:04:00.651 --> 00:04:06.051 It can be as simple as I often just say, come Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let thy gifts to us be blessed. 00:04:06.051 --> 00:04:06.411 Amen. 00:04:06.811 --> 00:04:09.651 It takes eight seconds. 00:04:09.651 --> 00:04:17.071 Should do more maybe, but I always try to pause and to remember that whatever I'm about to eat came from God. 00:04:17.831 --> 00:04:25.711 And that is the essence of the Christian life, is to know the good things that we receive didn't just come out of nowhere. 00:04:25.711 --> 00:04:28.151 Food doesn't just come from the grocery store. 00:04:28.151 --> 00:04:30.291 It's an example we've given before. 00:04:30.291 --> 00:04:38.331 Gifts from others don't just fall from the sky, and it's not just one person being kind to another person or helping another person. 00:04:38.331 --> 00:04:43.151 Those are good works that God has prepared beforehand for us to do for each other. 00:04:43.151 --> 00:04:50.611 And so when the time comes and those good things happen, and if we're recipients of them, we need to remember where they came from. 00:04:50.611 --> 00:05:01.191 And to fail to do that is to fail to acknowledge that God is active in our lives, both when we act and when we receive the acts of others, for good or for ill. 00:05:01.191 --> 00:05:04.511 And so some of the examples we'll give are when bad things happen. 00:05:04.511 --> 00:05:06.031 This is the Crux Theologorum. 00:05:06.031 --> 00:05:09.911 It's the question that has long challenged theologians. 00:05:09.911 --> 00:05:11.251 I don't think it's really that difficult. 00:05:11.251 --> 00:05:14.271 You just have to keep your head on straight. 00:05:14.271 --> 00:05:15.371 Where does evil come from? 00:05:15.531 --> 00:05:19.291 How is it the good men are the subject of evil things? 00:05:19.291 --> 00:05:24.171 And there's an entire book, The Book of Job, that we'll talk about today, that goes into that. 00:05:24.171 --> 00:05:26.091 That's what the whole book is about. 00:05:26.091 --> 00:05:29.111 And what's interesting there is we'll get into the text. 00:05:29.111 --> 00:05:32.771 This whole episode could just be about Job, and we can make the point. 00:05:32.771 --> 00:05:34.251 We're not going to belabor that. 00:05:34.251 --> 00:05:39.751 And we're not going to end with the Job 38 through 41 reading that we so often commend. 00:05:39.751 --> 00:05:50.251 But I am going to read parts from chapters one and two, because it lays out very clearly that God, at least in that one particular circumstance, was active in the world. 00:05:50.251 --> 00:05:51.931 God was interacting with Satan. 00:05:51.931 --> 00:05:54.031 Satan was active in the world. 00:05:54.051 --> 00:06:04.951 And while that is a specific example that's recorded in scripture for us of events that happened, of conversations that occurred, it's also an example of the principle here. 00:06:04.951 --> 00:06:27.711 And I think that one of the dangers that we have when we treat what's in scripture as Bible stories, is that it becomes the story of Job, or the story of Noah, where it's the self-contained thing, where it's an old dead guy who did something and God talked to him face to face, and so somehow he is going to have a different experience than we would have when it comes to our own faith. 00:06:27.711 --> 00:06:44.951 And that's true to an extent, but the gift that they had of interacting with God face to face, in some ways is fundamentally different than, and I think in some ways it's arguably almost lesser than the way that we interact with God, where we receive scripture. 00:06:44.951 --> 00:06:48.031 God laid everything out in writing. 00:06:48.031 --> 00:06:53.911 It's over a thousand pages that you can sit down, you can read in a couple weeks if you put your mind to it. 00:06:53.931 --> 00:06:58.791 And it's God laying down everything that he ever wanted to communicate to all of mankind. 00:06:58.791 --> 00:07:05.131 The conversations that he had with Noah and with Abraham and with those other men, absolutely a blessing. 00:07:05.131 --> 00:07:13.471 They were blessed in ways that we have not been, to speak with God face to face, and to know things that he said to them that were not recorded for our benefit. 00:07:13.471 --> 00:07:15.031 That was for them. 00:07:15.031 --> 00:07:17.731 And so they're certainly superior in that sense. 00:07:17.731 --> 00:07:30.471 But we have the superior advantage, particularly after Christ's birth, death and resurrection, is that all of those promises, all those gifts, all those prophecies for us are in the rear view mirror. 00:07:30.471 --> 00:07:43.331 And so we've received scripture, just it lands in our laps, especially if you're raised a Christian, if parents are Christians, and then they raise Christian children, this is just given to you as an inheritance. 00:07:43.331 --> 00:07:46.631 In a way, that's much richer than what those men had to go through. 00:07:46.631 --> 00:07:49.871 We call them the Patriarchs, justifiably so. 00:07:49.871 --> 00:07:56.111 But they kind of had to do it the hard way compared to us in terms of receiving all the bounty of God. 00:07:56.111 --> 00:08:14.531 And so when he gives us these things like the story of Job and these other examples where men specifically interacted with God and they were blessed and they also went through tremendous travails, you know, most of those stories are about loss and suffering and hardship and chastisement. 00:08:14.531 --> 00:08:16.011 And that's another element to this. 00:08:16.011 --> 00:08:21.071 There are things that God does and that God permits to happen that are evil. 00:08:21.071 --> 00:08:27.591 And we'll talk about what that means, because we're not saying that God is evil or that God does evil things. 00:08:27.591 --> 00:08:33.271 But Scripture very clearly says that God permits evil to occur and he will actually have a hand in it. 00:08:33.771 --> 00:08:38.611 And Job says that straight out, and then God says that he didn't sin by saying that. 00:08:38.611 --> 00:08:48.551 So it's a very tricky thing to understand, because you have to be careful not to turn to a hair take where suddenly God is doing bad things and it's like, oh, whatever, he's God, so I guess he can do bad things. 00:08:48.551 --> 00:08:50.691 When God does it, it isn't bad. 00:08:50.691 --> 00:08:54.711 But that's not the same as saying that God is capricious. 00:08:54.711 --> 00:08:56.351 It's talking about his nature. 00:08:56.351 --> 00:08:58.551 It's not talking about him having license. 00:08:58.551 --> 00:08:59.531 It's two different things. 00:09:01.011 --> 00:09:10.171 For us to look at the way God acts in those Bible stories is a template for us understanding how he acts in our lives because it's ongoing. 00:09:10.191 --> 00:09:30.971 And I think one of the particular challenges that we have in the church age, after Pentecost, is it's clear from both scripture and from church history that basically after the last of the apostles died, it seems like, by and large, miracles stopped occurring routinely. 00:09:30.971 --> 00:09:32.511 Miracles have certainly still occurred. 00:09:32.511 --> 00:09:33.591 We're not cessationists. 00:09:33.591 --> 00:09:36.451 We're not saying all miraculous activity stopped. 00:09:36.451 --> 00:09:40.531 In fact, part of this episode is a point that that's not the case at all. 00:09:40.531 --> 00:09:49.751 However, when you look at what was going on in the first century of the church, you have the apostles in particular running around raising the dead, healing the lame. 00:09:49.751 --> 00:09:51.871 They were doing the same miracles that Jesus did. 00:09:52.471 --> 00:09:55.991 And then those miracles themselves don't happen. 00:09:55.991 --> 00:09:58.771 People aren't being raised from the dead later on. 00:10:00.691 --> 00:10:12.971 I think the important thing when we're looking at those is to recognize that as the gospel is spreading, in the very earliest days of the church, people didn't have the benefit of scripture, not certainly of the New Testament. 00:10:12.971 --> 00:10:25.571 And even the Septuagint, which they had, the correlation, the teaching that the apostles were giving to the church and to unbelievers being brought into the church was, hey, all these prophecies in the Septuagint have been fulfilled in Christ. 00:10:25.571 --> 00:10:29.731 They're being fulfilled in us giving you this good word today. 00:10:29.731 --> 00:10:37.551 And the miracles were there as proof that the promises of scripture were also true, just as in Jesus' day. 00:10:37.551 --> 00:10:41.171 He wasn't there to heal all of the lame or to raise all of the dead. 00:10:41.171 --> 00:10:46.771 Those specific miracles were performed to say, I can do this, I can also forgive sins. 00:10:46.771 --> 00:10:49.471 I can do all the things that are promised of me in scripture. 00:10:50.131 --> 00:10:55.731 And the miracle was the physical performance of his power, of God's power. 00:10:55.731 --> 00:10:59.031 And so when the apostles continued that in the first century, it was the same thing. 00:10:59.031 --> 00:11:04.911 It was a physical performance of miraculous power that could only possibly be supernatural. 00:11:04.911 --> 00:11:10.151 And then the question is, is it supernaturally good or supernaturally evil? 00:11:10.151 --> 00:11:15.451 As one of the admonitions is given in the New Testament, Paul specifically says, test the spirits. 00:11:15.451 --> 00:11:19.011 It said that there will be false prophets who will. 00:11:19.011 --> 00:11:27.451 You know, the passage we frequently quote, where those false prophets cry out, Lord, Lord, do we not prophesy and cast out demons in your name? 00:11:27.451 --> 00:11:29.991 And Jesus said, I never knew you. 00:11:29.991 --> 00:11:31.631 They were performing miracles. 00:11:31.651 --> 00:11:36.431 Evil, wicked men in some cases are able to do things that seem miraculous. 00:11:36.431 --> 00:11:39.711 There's supernatural activity that is demonic. 00:11:39.711 --> 00:11:50.291 And when we refuse to acknowledge that there's an aspect of this, certainly a lesser aspect than God's activity, but nevertheless real, there are times and places where evil will do things. 00:11:50.291 --> 00:11:52.731 And it's not always apparently bad. 00:11:52.731 --> 00:12:01.631 I gave the example recently in another interview I did with someone else that I watched a documentary about mushrooms, about psilocybin, psychedelics. 00:12:01.651 --> 00:12:06.051 And there was a man who's apparently very famous in that community. 00:12:06.051 --> 00:12:06.851 Terrible name for it. 00:12:06.851 --> 00:12:08.331 It's not a community. 00:12:08.331 --> 00:12:09.051 They're lost. 00:12:09.691 --> 00:12:21.551 But he was up a tree in a storm tripping his mind out on psilocybin, and he communicated with an entity, and he had a horrible stuttering problem. 00:12:21.551 --> 00:12:27.411 And he asked the entity up this tree in this thunderstorm to cure his stuttering. 00:12:27.411 --> 00:12:28.171 And it did. 00:12:28.831 --> 00:12:31.791 He was a lifelong stutterer, went away, never happened again. 00:12:31.791 --> 00:12:35.971 And he attributed that to being on a psilocybin trip and saying, what a wonderful thing. 00:12:36.431 --> 00:12:40.411 What great blessings we can all have if we go down that rabbit hole. 00:12:40.411 --> 00:12:43.271 There's something down there that's going to fulfill our wishes. 00:12:43.271 --> 00:12:44.391 And it didn't hurt him. 00:12:44.391 --> 00:12:45.511 It fixed something. 00:12:45.511 --> 00:12:59.351 It fixed a malady, similarly to the miracle that Jesus performed, where He healed people who had problems that were similarly medical in nature, psychological in nature, but inexorable. 00:12:59.351 --> 00:13:04.791 And then when they're miraculously healed and someone's life improves, when Jesus did, it was proof of his power. 00:13:05.231 --> 00:13:12.411 When that guy was up a tree in a thunderstorm and the psilocybin entity, it was a demon, said, what do you want? 00:13:12.411 --> 00:13:13.571 And he said, I want a stutter. 00:13:13.571 --> 00:13:15.371 He said, okay, you're not going to stutter anymore. 00:13:15.371 --> 00:13:16.511 And it went away. 00:13:16.511 --> 00:13:18.091 That was a performance of a miracle. 00:13:18.091 --> 00:13:19.011 It was absolutely a miracle. 00:13:19.011 --> 00:13:20.611 That was supernatural. 00:13:20.611 --> 00:13:24.371 And it was wicked, even though the outcome itself was good. 00:13:24.371 --> 00:13:27.111 And so these things occasionally happen. 00:13:27.111 --> 00:13:35.771 And God willing, you'll never see anything wicked like that, because it's particularly troublesome for those who deny that there's any supernatural. 00:13:35.771 --> 00:13:43.331 And because we don't see it anymore, after the first century, there are occasional miracles that I do believe were sincerely miracles. 00:13:43.331 --> 00:13:48.191 And certainly in our own lives, there are individual cases where people are miraculously healed. 00:13:48.191 --> 00:13:50.111 That happens fairly frequently. 00:13:50.111 --> 00:13:55.891 It's not the sort of big ticket thing that you don't hear a voice, there's no flash of light. 00:13:55.891 --> 00:13:58.611 It's just there's the intense prayer of the faithful. 00:13:58.611 --> 00:14:02.571 And then something that seemed medically impossible is granted. 00:14:02.571 --> 00:14:07.051 And someone has spared what seemed like was going to be a terrible outcome. 00:14:07.051 --> 00:14:08.871 That is no less miraculous. 00:14:08.891 --> 00:14:12.551 And historically Christians have always viewed things that way. 00:14:12.551 --> 00:14:25.351 And so one of the challenges that we have to get over today as Christians in the 21st century is not thinking the scientific knowledge of things gives us an excuse to say that God didn't do it. 00:14:25.351 --> 00:14:27.831 And it's one of the key lessons from this whole episode today. 00:14:28.351 --> 00:14:37.171 The fact that we have an explanation, some natural explanation for how something came about doesn't mean that there was no super natural element. 00:14:37.171 --> 00:14:45.471 So we'll give some examples throughout this episode today, but it's part of the reason that I still am not ashamed of saying that I love science. 00:14:45.471 --> 00:14:47.471 That's a completely cursed comment today. 00:14:47.471 --> 00:14:48.891 You used to say someone loves science. 00:14:49.531 --> 00:15:02.691 I love it, not because it's an abandonment of God in my heart, but because when I see discoveries made by intelligent men who are generally atheists, I see them revealing God's creation in amazing new ways. 00:15:02.691 --> 00:15:10.311 I see them revealing God exactly as he wants us to find him in creation as well as in scripture. 00:15:10.311 --> 00:15:26.271 I don't mean to set those against each other, but when I see a scientific discovery, whether it's molecular biology or astronomy, whatever it is, some amazing new learning about the world, like thank God, what a miracle. 00:15:26.271 --> 00:15:30.311 We have a natural explanation for something that's just staggeringly beautiful. 00:15:30.311 --> 00:15:33.951 It's inconceivable the things that actually happen. 00:15:33.951 --> 00:15:48.391 And so the I Love Science guys who are all atheists, they're able to just merrily trot down that path because they feel this sense of ebullience and discovery, and it's so much fun to be seeing these beautiful things, but they don't understand why it's beautiful. 00:15:48.391 --> 00:15:55.431 They see it as beauty for its own sake, whereas scripture makes very clear that that beauty is revelatory of the Creator who made them. 00:15:55.431 --> 00:15:59.011 And so Christians should celebrate those things too. 00:15:59.011 --> 00:16:00.771 We shouldn't be snarky about it. 00:16:00.771 --> 00:16:02.511 We shouldn't be dismissive. 00:16:02.511 --> 00:16:08.591 We shouldn't say, there's no space, you know, it's only this planet because somehow that's in the Bible. 00:16:08.591 --> 00:16:10.771 That's antithetical to Christianity. 00:16:11.431 --> 00:16:22.611 All the things that these idiot pagans, these genius pagans who are complete idiots because they don't believe the Creator, they worship creatures, they worship themselves. 00:16:22.611 --> 00:16:24.451 But the things that they discover are true. 00:16:24.451 --> 00:16:32.431 When they discover things, you know, 13 billion years away, that doesn't mean that the creation story is not true. 00:16:32.431 --> 00:16:33.291 It's not just a story. 00:16:33.291 --> 00:16:34.831 It's what actually happened. 00:16:34.831 --> 00:16:36.671 We covered that in 6000 years and counting. 00:16:37.311 --> 00:16:44.231 The more we learn about creation itself, the more we see God's active hand in it. 00:16:44.231 --> 00:16:47.431 And that is how Christians should view these things. 00:16:47.431 --> 00:16:52.171 We're not set in opposition to the world as it's discovering more things. 00:16:52.171 --> 00:16:55.391 We're the only ones who can actually put them in context. 00:16:55.391 --> 00:16:59.611 Because the context is that God is Creator of all things. 00:16:59.611 --> 00:17:05.231 And His supernatural power is not only unlimited, but it's continuously active all over the place. 00:17:05.831 --> 00:17:12.491 And so to see that distilled down to one specific detail or scientific moment is itself wondrous. 00:17:12.491 --> 00:17:14.071 It should be a source for joy. 00:17:14.071 --> 00:17:18.351 If you don't care about that, okay, it's not always cut out to care about science. 00:17:18.351 --> 00:17:22.331 But it's not inherently lame to think that those things are wondrous. 00:17:22.331 --> 00:17:25.611 What's foolish is to think that those aren't God's activities. 00:17:25.611 --> 00:17:34.151 Because when it comes down to, when you look at scripture, all the things that are natural processes are themselves miraculous because God is driving them. 00:17:34.711 --> 00:17:46.051 And so, I hope you'll take that away from this episode today, is that to understand something better naturally is not to separate it from the Creator, but to link those two together inextricably. 00:17:46.051 --> 00:17:51.811 Because creation testifies to the Creator, and we see that around us every day. 00:17:51.811 --> 00:18:03.211 I think part of the problem when it comes to seeing God's active hand in creation is that we think of those miracles in the Old Testament or in the New Testament. 00:18:03.291 --> 00:18:23.451 We think of someone being brought back to life, or manna falling from the sky, or any of these other things that are very in your face, as it were, very clearly miraculous, and really undeniable for those who see them, unless you are just entirely impenitent and hard-hearted. 00:18:23.451 --> 00:18:28.591 And so we miss just how many miracles are around us every single day. 00:18:28.591 --> 00:18:40.091 We could go all the way to saying that everything is a miracle, which is very well true, because of course creation itself and everything in it is an act of God, and God must continue to act to sustain it. 00:18:40.091 --> 00:18:47.091 It cannot exist apart from God, because nothing exists apart from God, in that sense of being apart from God. 00:18:47.091 --> 00:18:52.431 Separated from God certainly, but that is a different matter. 00:18:52.431 --> 00:19:01.191 And so we ignore all the small miracles in our lives, and certainly our lives are dotted with small miracles. 00:19:01.431 --> 00:19:28.491 I think that when we get to paradise, or the judgment, whatever it happens to be, if God permits it, we will look back on our lives and see a chain of events and circumstances that at the time here stuck in time, we may very well have thought were random or chance occurrences, and yet we'll recognize that God did have a plan for us. 00:19:28.691 --> 00:19:36.511 Now, we need to be careful when we go down that particular road, because you can fall off both sides of the horse, as is often the case. 00:19:36.511 --> 00:19:40.291 If you are a deist, you fall off the left side of the horse. 00:19:40.291 --> 00:20:00.171 But the right side of the horse, if you fall off, that would be saying that every little detail and everything that happens, every occurrence, all of it, were exactly what God intended, were part of his plan that is so detailed that every last thing that happens in your life is according to that plan. 00:20:00.171 --> 00:20:08.151 And the problems with that should be obvious, because of course that would attribute to God all of the actually evil and wicked things that happen in the world. 00:20:08.151 --> 00:20:13.391 Not evil in the sense of harmful or bad, because some of those do come from God. 00:20:13.391 --> 00:20:17.291 Certainly afflictions and things like that can be from God. 00:20:17.291 --> 00:20:20.931 The thorns that make it difficult to farm are from God. 00:20:20.931 --> 00:20:24.211 Those are evil in that particular sense of evil. 00:20:26.991 --> 00:20:37.111 But there is another sense of evil, which is the sort of evil that is committed by other agents, other sentient beings. 00:20:37.111 --> 00:20:41.431 So the evil that is done by Satan is from Satan. 00:20:41.431 --> 00:20:46.071 Now, God has a leash on Satan because the devil is God's devil. 00:20:46.071 --> 00:20:49.811 He can act only in so far as God permits. 00:20:49.811 --> 00:20:57.071 But the evil done by the devil that is wickedness is not attributable to God himself. 00:20:57.071 --> 00:21:01.391 The same as if one human being were to murder another. 00:21:01.391 --> 00:21:03.931 God did not plan that murder. 00:21:03.931 --> 00:21:07.371 God did not cause that murder to take place. 00:21:07.371 --> 00:21:12.911 That is wickedness that lies in the heart of man, not in the heart of God. 00:21:12.911 --> 00:21:20.271 And so we cannot fall off the right hand side of the horse and attribute absolutely everything to God. 00:21:20.271 --> 00:21:24.031 That would of course be to deny any sort of free will to man. 00:21:24.031 --> 00:21:29.571 We won't get into the depths of that issue today because it's certainly not the focus. 00:21:29.571 --> 00:21:38.131 But all of these things are not absolutely attributable to God univocally as it were. 00:21:38.131 --> 00:21:40.131 So don't fall off either side of the horse. 00:21:40.131 --> 00:21:46.551 Don't become a deist and don't become a fatalist, perhaps, or something even more than a fatalist in this case. 00:21:48.931 --> 00:22:00.571 But to turn to scripture and really providence proper, we should probably start in Genesis, which is appropriate at being the first book in scripture. 00:22:00.571 --> 00:22:09.531 We won't start with the first chapter, but I'll do a reading from Genesis 22, which covers the idea of providence very well. 00:22:10.551 --> 00:22:16.831 After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, Here I am. 00:22:16.831 --> 00:22:28.531 He said, Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. 00:22:28.531 --> 00:22:35.511 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. 00:22:35.511 --> 00:22:40.191 And he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 00:22:40.971 --> 00:22:45.651 On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. 00:22:45.651 --> 00:22:49.571 Then Abraham said to his young men, Stay here with the donkey. 00:22:49.571 --> 00:22:53.911 I and the boy will go over there, and worship, and come again to you. 00:22:53.911 --> 00:22:58.171 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it on Isaac his son. 00:22:58.171 --> 00:23:00.771 And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. 00:23:00.771 --> 00:23:02.711 So they went both of them together. 00:23:02.711 --> 00:23:08.051 And Isaac said to his father Abraham, My father, and he said, Here I am, my son. 00:23:08.051 --> 00:23:10.171 He said, Behold the fire and the wood. 00:23:10.651 --> 00:23:13.191 But where is the lamb for a burnt offering? 00:23:13.191 --> 00:23:18.451 Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. 00:23:18.451 --> 00:23:20.451 So they went both of them together. 00:23:21.511 --> 00:23:32.231