If you are oppositional to God, by definition, you're fired, okay?
By definition, you are in an adversarial relationship, and God is not employing you.
God doesn't need you certainly.
Another question that comes up; were the gods of the nations, the sons of God,
evil from the beginning of their appointment?
So, when the Lord allots, the gods to the nations,
the nations to the gods, "according to the number of the sons of God",
you know, all these Deuteronomy references,
of course, including verses 8, 9, Deuteronomy 32:8-9.
The question comes because we read of their judgment in Psalm 82.
Well, like when did they go bad?
And we saw last time that you basically had 100 year window here,
where you start to get references to idolatry in the biblical story,
in the family of Abram, (Abraham).
That's not very long after Babel.
So this question comes up. You have two options:
you can say no. No, they weren't evil from the beginning. They became rebellious.
They seduced the populations to worship them and not worship the true God,
and they sowed chaos among the nations.
This is actually the view I take.
And then there are others who would say, well, yes, they were evil from the beginning.
God punished the nations, not only by divorcing them,
but he consigns them to idolatry intentionally.
The disinherited can enter Israel, they can convert, but otherwise they're damned.
Now, the second part of that, you know, I would agree with.
You have to throw your loyalty, align your loyalty with the God of Israel.
But the first part of it again, I don't think necessarily follows
or necessarily is required to make the second statement there
(to the second half of number two),
you know, God punish the nations, not only with divorce,
but he consign them to idolatry, and that this was intentional.
So you've got two options. Now, if the latter one, this idea that they were,
these sons of God were corrupt from the beginning.
It's hard to know why the gods are therefore under judgment,
not only in Psalm 82 but earlier, I mean, they're basically just doing their job.
In other words, "God shouldn't be mad at me for corrupting the nations.
I was already corrupt,
and he's the one that put me over this nation to corrupt it.
So I'm doing my job."
And there's a bit of a problem there.
It's also hard to rationalize that view with the Kingdom of Priests idea
and the covenant with Abraham.
It seems from the get-go God wanted the nations back in the fold
and the Israelites and ultimately the Messiah were the key to that.
So why, if God wanted the nation's back, why would he
intentionally consign them to idolatry?
These two things seem to be sort of operating against one another.
It's like you know, I'm going to, I'm going to injure you.
I'm going to take a bat and hit you over the head and injury,
so that I can heal you, if I'm a doctor. I mean, that's just odd.
Again, these two things just don't seem to quite cohere together.
I'd also say if the answer is yes, again, this is intentional,
why would God care about what the gods are doing at all?
This goes with number one, you know, why be mad at them?
But why would he care at all, and judge them?
I mean, you think God would be happy
that the nations are getting what they deserve
This chaos. God should be happy, not angry in Psalm 82.
Who cares what happens to the non-elect, they are not elect.
Up! They do.
For these reasons, again, I land on the first choice.
I don't think they were evil from the beginning.
Again, I'll just make a general statement.
I think you'd have a really hard time in Scripture
showing that evil entities are ever on God's payroll for a single day.
If you are oppositional to God, by definition, you're fired, okay?
By definition, you are in an adversarial relationship, and God is not employing you.
God doesn't need you certainly.
He doesn't need anybody
but why would he need you over the ones that are loyal? Okay.
The whole idea that God would have evil entities on his payroll
that he's tasking them to do evil,
I think is quite contrary to the nature of God
and the overarching metanarrative of Scripture.
And a handful of specific passages too.
But again, I just wanted to add this
so that you know, sort of where I'm at on this and why.