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- Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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- This is a daily conversation about Scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective.
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- Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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- Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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- Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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- My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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- Today is Friday, November 13th, 2020.
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- If you're following along in our daily Bible reading today, you're going to be reading John chapter 19.
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- Friday the 13th, this is a day which has long been considered a day of bad luck.
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- In fact, I have pulled up on my computer today from history.com a little bit of the history of Friday the 13th, and I want to talk to you about it because I want to talk about the subject of luck.
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- Long considered a harbinger of bad luck, Friday the 13th has inspired a late 19th century secret society, an early 20th century novel, a horror film franchise, and not only one but two unwieldy terms.
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- And you'll forgive me if I say these incorrectly.
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- Parascovetriophobia, that one I did not do well.
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- And then frigatriscodecophobia, that of course is fear of the number 13.
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- And it goes on to say that described fear of the supposedly unlucky day, the fear of the number 13.
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- And just like people fear all kinds of things, and I remember growing up if I was crossed by a black cat, I was told to take my hand and make a cross.
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- And if someone said something that I didn't want to come true, I would knock on wood.
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- Or if someone, this was a big one for me, if someone hands, and I still, this one is so ingrained in me, I sort of still follow this rule, if someone hands me an open pocket knife I don't close it, and I know again, and I don't believe in luck, and I'm going to talk about that in a moment.
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- It's just a habit that I grew up with.
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- And so a lot of us have these sort of ingrained habits and ingrained fears of things, you know, fears of black cats, fears of walking under ladders.
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- And I kind of years ago, I kind of got to thinking, I bet a lot of these are founded on true things.
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- Like for instance, why would somebody think black cats are dangerous? Well, maybe because black cats are harder to see in the dark, and they can trip you and make you fall down.
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- Why is walking under a ladder considered to be something that is unlucky? Well, if you walk under a ladder, and somebody just happens to be standing above you, and they drop something on your head, it can hurt you or even kill you.
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- Why do we consider it unlucky to open up an umbrella inside? Well, every time I've opened up an umbrella inside, I've knocked into something, whether I've knocked a lamp over or knocked a cup over.
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- So I understand a lot of these fears come from actual real potential dangers.
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- And so but they become superstitious.
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- They become part of a culture.
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- And the big culture for many people is that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day.
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- And of course, as I said, it spawned secret societies, it spawned fear.
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- The number 13 itself is considered to be an unlucky number.
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- Some buildings will not even have a 13th floor, because they know no one's going to purchase real estate on a 13th floor.
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- So they'll go from 12 to 14, even though everyone knows the 14th floor now is the 13th floor.
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- But just the feeling of being, it's sort of like an apartment with the number 666, nobody's going to rent an apartment 666.
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- So an apartment building that has a 600 block probably will skip apartment number 666.
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- And because there's just a lot of feelings that people have that are superstitious in nature and we are a naturally superstitious lot, the human mind is very, very creative and very imaginative.
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- And we always sort of imagine how these things can be connected.
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- And we imagine how if someone tells us that the full moon is dangerous and even there is some statistics that show that on a full moon night, there often are more crimes and things and people say, well, why is that? And again, going back to my philosophy, that there's actually a reason behind it.
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- Well, on a full moon night, it's brighter outside at night.
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- And thus, it makes sense that people would be doing more activities outside and therefore more dangerous and potentially criminal activities because it's brighter outside.
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- There's more there's more light to to be able to see what you're doing.
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- So, again, I think that a lot of superstitions are connected to real things, real things that actually happen.
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- But at the end of the day, they're still they become part of the psyche.
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- People think Friday the 13th is dangerous.
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- And even think about 2020.
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- We are in 2020 now.
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- How many times have maybe even you have said, boy, 2020 is just awful.
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- And people will say 2020 is the reason, you know, 2020 is now a verb.
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- People will say, wow, that's very 2020 when they hear something that is bad that has happened.
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- In fact, I've said it, you know, some things, some difficult things have been happening recently.
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- And and I've even said, boy, this is like this is like the whole year of 2020 is pushed into a week.
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- It's been a difficult week.
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- And so I understand the use of the vernacular and the use of the language.
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- But I wanted to remind you today that if you are a biblical Christian, then there is no place for an understanding of luck in the Christian life.
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- The Bible tells us that God is sovereign.
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- Psalm 139 tells us that God has fashioned our days before us, before there was ever even one of them.
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- Therefore, when someone says, oh, well, I've had an unlucky day or someone has experienced an unlucky event.
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- It's not luck that guides our lives.
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- We are not living lives that are governed by pure chance or luck.
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- In fact, R.C.
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- Sproul, years ago, he preached a sermon called Not a Chance.
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- He said there's our life is not governed by chance and our life is certainly not governed by luck.
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- People go and they go and gamble.
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- And what do they say? A gambling gambling is luck.
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- It's you know, they they talk about how lucky they are if they go and they win money or how unlucky they are if they don't win money.
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- But the Bible says that the lot that is thrown into the lap, every turn is from the Lord.
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- The Bible says that God is sovereign over everything in our lives.
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- And even if we are struggling in a situation, we can know this for certain.
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- We are not struggling in this situation because we are unlucky.
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- We're not struggling in this situation because we are we've forgot to cross out the black cat or we have walked under the ladder or we have said something without knocking on wood or it's Friday the 13th.
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- That's just not the way it works.
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- Christians really need to remove the word luck from our vocabulary because we do not live lives governed by luck.
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- We live lives governed by the providence of Almighty God.
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- In fact, even at our church, we sort of make a joke because in many churches they have something called a pot luck.
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- But we say as Calvinists, we don't have potlucks.
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- We have pot providence because we don't believe in luck.
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- So my encouragement to you today is this.
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- Yes, it's Friday the 13th.
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- And yes, some people make a big deal that today is an unlucky day or 2020 is an unlucky year.
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- And so Friday the 13th, 2020, boy, that's going to be an unlucky day.
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- There's no such thing.
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- The Bible says God is the one who fashions our days.
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- The Bible says we have many plans in our hearts, but the Lord directs our steps.
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- The Bible says the king's heart is in the hands of the Lord and he turns it wherever he wills.
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- At the end of his life, when Joseph was looking at his brothers and they were concerned that he might want to kill them because all that they had done to him and selling him into slavery and all of the pain and suffering that they had caused him, Joseph looked at his brothers and in Genesis chapter 50 and verse 20, he said to them, what you meant for evil, God meant for good to save this day, many people alive.
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- You see, Joseph understood the providence of God.
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- Joseph understood that everything in his life, all of the successes and the failures, all of the lucky days and unlucky days were all ordained by God because God has a purpose in the days that we might think are easy and in the days that we might think are hard.
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- So beloved, if you're experiencing a hard day today, don't say, well, that's Friday the 13th for you.
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- Don't say, well, that's 2020 for you.
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- Say this, oh God, help me to trust in you on my most difficult days.
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- As James tells us, take joy in our trials, knowing that our trials produce patience and patience will ultimately bring us into maturity.
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- I hope this has been an encouraging word for you today on this Friday, the 13th, November the 13th.
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- Thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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- My name is Keith Foskey and I have been your Calvinist.
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- May God bless you.
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- Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
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- If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe and provide us feedback.
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- We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
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- As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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- All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect savior.
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- He is the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the father except through him.
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- May God be with you.
