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NASB | Exodus 4:24 ¶ Now it came about at the lodging place on the way that the LORD met him and sought to put him to death. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Exodus 4:24 ¶ Now it happened at the lodging place, that the LORD met Moses and sought to kill him [making him deathly ill because he had not circumcised one of his sons]. [Gen 17:9-14] |
Subject: God sought Moses to kill him |
Bible Note: Hi, Budderfligh... No, I don't believe there is any passage in Scripture that attributes God as the cause of evil. Quite the contrary: to assert that God was the cause of sin would be blasphemous, for He is perfectly holy and righteous in every regard. The old Baptist divines put it this way, "From all eternity God decreed all that should happen in time, and this He did freely and unalterably, consulting only His own wise and holy will. Yet in so doing He does not become in any sense the author of sin, nor does He share responsibility for sin with sinners. Neither, by reason of His decree, is the will of any creature whom He has made violated; nor is the free working of second causes put aside; rather is it established. In all these matters the divine wisdom appears, as also does God's power and faithfulness in effecting that which He has purposed. (Numbers 23:19; Isaiah 46:10; John 19:11; Acts 4:27-28; Romans 9:15, 18; Ephesians 1:3-5, 11; Hebrews 6:17; James 1:13; 1 John 1:5)" (1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 3, Paragraph 1) Note that God decrees all things, but in such a way that He isn't the author of evil and doesn't share responsibility for it. He also does so in a mysterious way that allows the will of His creatures to be exercised in what we would think of as "free." Note the insertion of the statement "nor is the free working of second causes put aside, rather is it established." This bit gets into an area of thought called causality. The church came into existence couched in the context of Hellenistic Greek culture. Consequently, you see a whole lot of Greek thinking expressed through the New Testament. When you talk about Greek thinking, you naturally pretty much talk Aristotle. The early church would have been as aware of Aristotle as you and I are aware of Abraham Lincoln. (That's not a perfect analogy. We generally think more highly of Lincoln in a personally and morally.) We can see Aristotle's methods being used by Paul, for example. Throughout Christian history Aristotle has been used, sometimes too far -- especially when the doctrine of sola Scriptura became obscured. Without getting into too much detail the idea is kind of like setting up a series of dominoes. When you push the first one with your finger, the dominoes all fall in sequence. In one sense all you did is push over one domino. In another sense, you pushed over all the dominoes. God created the angels and man, Lucifer fell then deceived Eve, Eve sinned, Adam followed in sin, etc. There are a clear set of causal relationships, but the Scriptures assure us that the moral culpability does not work backwards in such a way as to impugn the moral excellency of the Creator. I'm probably doing a very poor job of explaining "secondary causes." It's hard to get into it all in this venue. If you want a good starting place dealing with theodicy, you might try: http://www.theopedia.com/Theodicy By the way, when people start talking about fairness, then ask "Whose fairness?" As Creator, God can and does dictate what is fair. But who would want anyone other than God to do that? He is perfectly knowledgeable, perfectly wise, perfectly holy, etc. etc. Besides, what's all this stuff about fairness anyway. Anyone who wants fairness from God doesn't understand the disaster of the fall and the horrendous nature of sin. The most fair doctrine in Scripture is the doctrine of hell! What we desperately need is not fairness... what we desperately need is mercy! In Him, Doc |