God\'s Providence
"Take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up."
GENESIS 6:21
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God's Providence
In this passage we observe the providence of God, according to whose counsel the ungodly are punished but the good are preserved. . .. It would have been easy for God to preserve Noah and the animals for an entire year even without food, as He preserved Moses, Elijah, and Christ for forty days without any food, yes, even as He made everything out of nothing, which is greater and more amazing. Nevertheless, as Augustine learnedly states, God governs the things He has created in such a way that He allows them to function with their distinctive activities; that is (applying Augustine's statement to the instance before us), God makes use of definite means and tones down His miracles in such a manner that He makes use of the service of nature and of natural means. And He demands from us too that we do not waste the products of nature (for that would be tempting God), but that we use with thanksgiving the means He has provided and offered. It would be a sin to expect food from heaven when one is hungry and not rather to provide it in some other manner or ask for it. Christ commands the apostles to eat what is set before them (Luke 10:7). Thus in this passage Noah receives the command to make use of the regular means of gathering food; he is not ordered to wait in the ark for some miraculous method of supplying food from heaven.
GENESIS 6:21
+
God's Providence
In this passage we observe the providence of God, according to whose counsel the ungodly are punished but the good are preserved. . .. It would have been easy for God to preserve Noah and the animals for an entire year even without food, as He preserved Moses, Elijah, and Christ for forty days without any food, yes, even as He made everything out of nothing, which is greater and more amazing. Nevertheless, as Augustine learnedly states, God governs the things He has created in such a way that He allows them to function with their distinctive activities; that is (applying Augustine's statement to the instance before us), God makes use of definite means and tones down His miracles in such a manner that He makes use of the service of nature and of natural means. And He demands from us too that we do not waste the products of nature (for that would be tempting God), but that we use with thanksgiving the means He has provided and offered. It would be a sin to expect food from heaven when one is hungry and not rather to provide it in some other manner or ask for it. Christ commands the apostles to eat what is set before them (Luke 10:7). Thus in this passage Noah receives the command to make use of the regular means of gathering food; he is not ordered to wait in the ark for some miraculous method of supplying food from heaven.
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