Come and study the Holy Scriptures with us as Father Stephen DeYoung teaches verse by verse on the podcast, The Whole Council of God.

Father Stephen holds a Ph.D. in biblical studies, and it's an Orthodox priest serving at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Verse 16, do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of Lights

with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.

You may recognize that from part of the prayer behind the Amvon at the end of the

liturgy, right? But so notice, see, he's saying the other side, right, don't be deceived.

On the other side, all, every good thing that comes to us in our life comes from God.

Right?

Every good thing.

And with him, there's no variation or shadow of turning, right?

He's not going to change his mind about us one day.

Right?

He's not sending us good things one day and bad things the next day because he's in a bad mood

right he's not going to turn away from us we may turn away from him but he's not going to turn away

from us right that's what you're saying we're satin of his own will he brought us forth by the

word of truth that we might be a kind of first fruits of his own will, he brought us forth by the Word of Truth,

that we might be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

So Word of Truth isn't capitalized there, but should be.

It's talking about Christ, the Word of God, right, which was firmly established for Jewish people in the Old Testament tradition as being a way to refer to the second person of the Trinity,

right? This isn't just a thing in St. John's Gospel, St. James would have been aware of this too.

Right? God created everything through his word, through his logos, right? And that's what he's

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