Thursday, May 15, 2014
“But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Genesis 15:16 KJV).
Today’s Scripture expressly declares why the God of the Bible “takes His time” when dealing with sinful mankind.
Imagine your “pet peeves,” every thing that annoys you. Now, visualize the other seven billion people in the world carrying them out, right in front of you! Billions upon billions of people doing exactly what you hate, for you to see and hear, essentially “rubbing your nose in it!” How long could you handle it? A few seconds, at the most? (Unlike God, who has seen and heard more offensive words and deeds than you will ever see or hear in your earthly life, you could not handle 6,000 years of it!)
The God of Scripture is often slanderously decried as being a cruel, bloodthirsty, tyrannical sadist (Someone who enjoys bullying humanity and takes pleasure when they suffer). All the people whining in this regard have never bothered to consider exactly what horrendous occurrences He witnessed before He inflicted such punishments as described in the Old Testament. These Bible critics never pause to ponder the days, decades, centuries (!), and millennia (!), that His wrath was held in abeyance. They never bother to realize that His mercy and grace was free to anyone who wanted it.
Previously, we saw six instances of God’s longsuffering in the Old Testament. Today’s Scripture demonstrates how He gave the Amorites 400 years to reform (today’s Scripture). By the way, God says He evicted them and installed Israel in their land because the Amorites never improved (Exodus 23:23-25)! Those who complain about a “cruel” Old Testament God need to hush and read the Bible, lest they continue to “speak evil of those things which they know not” (Jude 10).
After 4,000 years of dealing with sinful man, JEHOVAH God came in human flesh, Jesus Christ. He preached to Israel for three years, but they mostly mocked and ignored Him (He knew they would ultimately crucify Him). Israel did not want anything to do with Him. Again, He could have wiped them all out with one quick spoken word, but, again, His grace and mercy delayed His wrath….
333 Words of Grace 
If God knew that they would not repent after 400 years… and He knew that they would crucify Him… and He “knew” all the future misery, woes, etc, etc. Why do it? If I know that something is going to end in failure, I do not continue in it… how about you?
What about my question? If God always “knew,” then what “is” free will? Why does God (the Angel of the Lord) say to Abraham on Mt. Moriah, “…now I KNOW that thou fearest God…”?
Hello again Bob. Sorry for the delay in my other answer; my schedule is very busy, so I can’t always respond within a few days (sometimes it can be a few weeks, actually). While much could be written in response to your most recent question, I’ll give a few brief comments here.
The best example of God’s foreknowledge and man’s free will operating together is how Israel responded to Jesus Christ when He offered Himself as King/Messiah.
“Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:” (Acts 2:23). God foreknew Jesus Christ’s rejection, betrayal, and crucifixion. Before creation, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit had already agreed that God the Son Jesus Christ would die for man’s sins. On the other hand, all three Persons foreknew of man’s rebellion, how Israel would conspire with Rome to kill Jesus Christ (Psalm 2). So, there is God’s foreknowledge and man’s free will operating together. Man wanted to rid himself of Jesus Christ and thus he murdered Jesus Christ. But then, after Calvary, and especially through the writings of the Apostle Paul (Romans through Philemon), God revealed the benefits of Calvary (see 1Cor. 2:6-14), how it was the means whereby man’s sin debt could be paid. God did not force Jesus Christ on those who rejected Him (free will), and yet, He used the results of man’s free will–the rejected Messiah’s blood–to pay for our sins. That’s the wisdom of God. He took all of that information into account, and actually outsmarted Satan (who thought Christ’s death would hinder God’s program and plan for creation!).
Luke 7:29-30 are two of the best verses that describe free will: “29 And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John. 30 But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him.” According to the Holy Bible, God’s will can be rejected and the Pharisees and lawyers did reject God’s will (this is free will). They did not want to be water baptized, they did not want to repent, they did not want to confess their sins like Moses instructed Israel in Lev. 26:40-41 when under God’s fifth course of chastisement, and they did not want to be a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:5,6), so God did not force them. If they wanted to die in their sins and go to hell, God valued freedom to the extent that He let them make their choice.
Another clear passage about free will is 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12:
“10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
The Bible says these people did not want God’s love, they did not want anything to do with Him, they wanted to stay lost and on their way to everlasting hellfire, so He gave them over to the lie of the devil (the context is the antichrist, future events, the seven-year Tribulation). Again, the God of the Bible loves freedom, and if we do not agree with Him, we can disagree with Him (there will be eternal consequences either way).
Regarding your question about Gen. 22:12, “…now I KNOW that thou fearest God….” The Oxford American Dictionary gives the following primary definition of the word “KNOW:” “be aware of through observation, inquiry, or information.” The word “know” in this verse is being used in the sense of understanding something through watching it–the angel of the LORD SAW what Abraham did (about to offer Isaac), and it was through WATCHING God was AWARE. God foreknew it, but it grabbed His attention when it actually came to pass, and He watched it.
Hope that helps!
Hello Bob, and sorry for the delay. Those are excellent questions, and from the human perspective, they’re difficult to fathom, but, we’ve got to look at them from God’s perspective. In the end, these events really didn’t end in failure. Yes, God knew how those events would turn out, and YET, He still used those events to accomplish His will (they weren’t so awful, they weren’t a failure, when considered in light of the overall scheme of things). Despite giving man free will, and letting man do just about anything he wanted, God still accomplished what He wanted–that’s the amazing part! That’s the wisdom of God outsmarting Satan’s “wisdom!” 1Corinthians 3:19: “He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.”
Notice:
1. The 400 Years and the Amorites
You have to remember that, when God spoke to Abraham in Genesis 15:16, the nation Israel had not even been born yet. It was a few years from Isaac’s birth, and many years before Jacob and his 12 sons’ births (12 tribes of Israel). God gave the nation Israel a 400-year-long opportunity to grow down in Egypt, while He let the Amorites reach their “sin limit” up in the land of Canaan. Israel started out with Jacob and about 70 other people (by the time Israel went into Egypt; Exodus 1:5), but Israel was some two million strong when she left Egypt (400 years later). By allowing that 400-year period, God proved, to the Israelites and the Amorites, and other nations, He was justified in evicting the Amorites (400 additional years of their wickedness), and He gave Israel four centuries to grow so they could be greater in number to take over the land of the Amorites. That’s why God put up with the Amorites for so long: they hadn’t reached their sin limit (Genesis 15:16), and Israel hadn’t reached her population increase yet.
2. Jesus Christ and His Foreknowledge of Calvary
The Apostle Peter said Jesus Christ was “delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). Before creation even existed, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost (all three Persons of the Godhead) agreed that it would be God the Son Jesus Christ who who come to Earth and to die for man’s sins. God revealed to the Old Testament prophets the information that was already determined in eternity past.
“But those things, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled” (Acts 3:18). The Old Testament prophets wrote about a suffering Messiah, centuries before Calvary (Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 are two of the clearest examples).
The Old Testament prophets also talked about the healing and teaching ministry of Jesus Christ (Isaiah 35:4-6). Jesus Christ had to come to earth to fulfill those verses by performing miracles, and teaching the doctrine that those miracles communicated. Had Jesus Christ not come, He wouldn’t have fulfilled the verses that needed to be fulfilled in order to validate God’s Word.
Ultimately, however, Jesus Christ had to die. There was no other way to pay for Israel’s sins, and there was no other way to pay for our sins. Jesus Christ had to die, and God simply used the wickedness of man to bring it to pass (see Psalm 2). This is evident in NT passages such as Hebrews 10:4-14 (quoting Isaiah 40:6-8):
“4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
5 Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:
6 In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.
7 Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.
8 Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law;
9 Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.
10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
The only way that man’s sin debt could be paid, is if God Himself would die (only He was sinless). God’s righteousness had been offended, and God’s righteousness could only be offered to compensate (make up) for that sin debt. That’s why God became a man: He needed blood to offer and make atonement for the sins of man. Man wanted to kill righteous Jesus Christ, and so God used man’s ill intentions to bring about His will after all. Now, Jesus’ shed blood is the means whereby God will one day reconcile all of heaven and earth to Himself (Col. 1:20)–today, Satan has corrupted heaven and earth (2Cor. 4:3,4; Eph. 6:12).
The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 3:23-28, how God in His foreknowledge gave up Jesus Christ to go Calvary’s cross to shed His sinless blood to pay for our sins:
“23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.
28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.”
When we come by faith ALONE in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as sufficient payment for our sins, we can receive the righteousness of God Himself (2 Corinthians 5:21). We can be accepted of God, have a home in heaven, play a role in God’s restoration of creation to Himself, and many other benefits. God saw these, the end results of Calvary, and that’s why He let it fall out like that. See, in the overall scheme of things, neither the Amorites extended stay nor Calvary’s crosswork were failures.
Hope that helps!