Ask the Pastors S6 E8: “Why did Abraham have to negotiate with God if he is all-knowing?”
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Welcome to Ask the Pastors a segment of the West Hills Podcast where you have the opportunity to ask your questions and receive biblically grounded, pastorally sensitive answers from our pastoral staff. My name is Brian. I'm your host and one of the pastors on staff here. I'm joined by Pastor Austin. Hello. A lead pastor Will,
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What's up?
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And Pastor tha Hello folks. And we have a giveaway winner that he mentioned. I forget from air dates when that episode aired, but you had a mystery evangelism book. I did. I was going to be given away to a lucky listener who, what did they have to do? A question?
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They had to submit a question, dude, who's the winner? And so Callie Bran is our winner of that book. I
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Should have brought mine brought.
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And in case anyone is wondering what book she won, she won the book Telling a Better Story, how to Talk about God in a Skeptical Age. If you want to read along with her, you can. It'll be a really good book blessing to
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You. That's awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Thanks Kelly. If you're watching on Facebook Live, we have a TP behind us. Hopefully that's reversed. PT on your
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Perspective. The PTA board
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Could be PTA can't see on the flip. No one
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Knows, I'm not sure. Supposedly. Give us a thumbs up if you can see me on the video feed. I'm not sure you, no one's even watching. There are no
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Emojis. There are no thumbs. That's in direct sunlight. We're sitting here talking to ourselves. Yeah, the
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Video, it's all, yeah, if you're watching Facebook Live, let us know You're watching
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Jeremy Fee. I see you watching. I see that like on there. Is he
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Actually, you're making stuff up. No,
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You're like that televangelist doing. I see that. Did I ever tell y'all that story of
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Please tell us.
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FCA, my senior year of college, we had a guy come in and speak and do an altar call and he had been so bad. The whole message with, I have to tell it was FCA, so he assumed he was starting to athletes and some of us were. But anyway, so he was telling these stories I guess. I don't know. He was one of these had probably played D three basketball or something and then was, I don't know, assistant, assistant coach, something. Anyway, he had one story of when he ran into Michael Jordan in a hotel or something and he played it up. They were best buddies. Anyway, the whole thing was kind of like that, like him name dropping and trying to prove and it was just like, I don't know, I felt like I could see through the whole thing. So anyway, he gets to the end and he's like, does the whole every head bow, every eyes closed thing? And then he says, if you want to give your life to Jesus right now, would you just raise your hand? It is right where you are. Raise your hand. He does the whole thing. And I was upset enough at this point that I did not bow my head or close my eyes and he starts saying, thank you for that hand. I see you in the back row. I see you on the right side in the third row. And he's like saying that in real time and I'm looking around. No one has their hand
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Up. No,
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Not a hand in the room. Oh no. And oh my gosh, I got so mad. I just walked out. And then later, yeah, I was on the leadership team. So then later we had a whole thing about it and I was just went off on, okay, we need to clearly vet these people before we asked 'em to come speak. Who invited this person who knew this person and that we asked them to come speak Anyway, so yeah, that's what Thad's doing. Thad's
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Jeremy Fee liked our video. I see that blue hand.
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She's on Jeremy. Jeremy feeds that. An actual person. I've confirmed it.
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Jeremy Lewis.
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Are we sure that's not a Russian bot?
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Hard to know.
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I dunno, has his Facebook been hacked that he liking our video?
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I'm going to video,
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Yeah. Okay. Well will it sound like you're fairly angry at that FCA speaker and that transitions us well into our question
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In
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Atory prayers today.
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Good segue, Brian. Thank
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You. Thank you. From an anonymous listener, I don't know if they listen, but anonymous question asker, if God is all knowing, why did he get so angry at Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham had to talk him off the ledge to save those in the city that were righteous?
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We all
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Interesting question.
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Kind of talked just a minute ago before we started recording on this and all kind of agree, we're a little unclear on exactly the nature of the question. So to me, I guess it seems like there's a number of ways we could go in answering this. And I don't know. I mean y'all tell me how you interpret it and I don't know, maybe we're on different wavelengths even and that's fine. But we could spend our time mostly on, I guess just the Sodom and Gamora story itself. I mean if that is really the heart of the question here that maybe this person has questions about how we're supposed to interpret that story, which it's a fascinating story. Lots of lessons for us. And I'll say this, I'm not sure that this person's, this NCE summary of it is completely accurate. I don't personally like the phrase talk God off the ledge.
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I think it gives the connotation that God is about to make a bad rash decision, which God doesn't do. And also at the end of the day, it bears mentioning, tries to intercede but doesn't actually talk God out of anything. I mean God still destroys Sodom because there weren't even 10 righteous people there. Maybe we should give more context or if you're listening to this, go pause, read Genesis 18 and 19, mainly 18, the end of Genesis 18. But yeah, it says God had made up his mind he was going to destroy Sodom and Gamora for their wickedness. And then he says, well, we should probably talk to Abraham about that. Let him know he's got some loved ones there a lot. And then he does. And then there's that whole negotiation, if you will, at the end of Genesis 18 where Abraham says, forgive me for even asking, but if there's 50 righteous people there, wouldn't you spare for the sake of 50 and then 45 and then 40.
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And then he eventually jumps to tens like 30, 20. And anyway, Abraham keeps apologizing just one more time, I promise. But if there's even 10 righteous people there, wouldn't you spare this whole city for the sake of 10 righteous people and eventually he gets down to 10 righteous people. So anyway, but I bring it up because it doesn't ultimately really, I mean it matters in the sense that it tells us something about God and how he works in his heart and whatever. So it matters that the story is there. I'm just saying that Abraham's whole thing does an ultimately save Sodom and Gamora because there weren't 10 righteous people there. So anyway, I just say that the way they've characterized this story might be a little off. So other couple ways though that we could interpret the question is maybe less about the story. We could hear this question as using the example and the story of Son Auraura as a just one case in point for a bigger, more theological overarching theological question.
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And that question could be one of two. So they actually specifically reference God's omniscience, God being all knowing that's the way the question is phrased. If God is all knowing, why did he get so angry at som Andorra and why did Abraham have to talk 'em off the ledge? And so that again, maybe that's the direction we need to go because that again is the question God's omniscience to me, if that's the question, I feel like the answers are maybe kind of easy in my opinion. Why would God get angry about sin in these cities if God is omniscient and he already knew they were going to be sinful before these cities were even founded, right before people were even created. God knew there was going to be such a thing as a city called Sodom and it was going to be full of sin. So why would God still be angry in spite of that? And again, I mean to me the answer to that is easy is like, well, God still gets angry at sin. I mean regardless of whether he knows we're going to sin or not, he still hates sin and gets angry at sin.
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There's better questions we can ask related to God's omniscience I think than that. And then the second part of the story that they point out, why would Abraham have to talk him off the ledge to save the righteous in the city? So maybe their bigger question is really about God's omniscience and how it relates to this whole interesting story of the negotiation with Abraham. If God already knew that he would change his mind, so to speak, on bringing disaster and negotiate and agree to Abraham's terms. And also if God knew that ultimately that whole negotiation would be irrelevant because there weren't even 10 righteous people there to begin with, then why include the story? And to me, the answer there again is like I already said, I think that whole part of the story of Abraham in trying to intercede on behalf of lot and save the city, I think is a picture of Christ.
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I mean it's the same reason that all of the Old Testament exists and all the Bible exists as the point to Jesus. And so I think we learn a lot there about God's nature and character, his slowness to anger, his patience. I mean God bending over backwards to give, I mean how long had Sodom been around as a city sort of declining devolving into this sinful state and yet God just gives 10th, hundredth thousandth chances? I mean, you can ask the same thing about why did God, we know in Genesis, what is it, 40 whatever about where God lets Jacob know. No, it is earlier. It's with Abraham again. It's with Abraham. It's right around the same Genesis 21 ish, I don't know, 19 where God says 16. I don't know. I got to look it up now. Somebody knows where God says I am making these promises to you. It's right around when God's making the covenant with Abraham. And he says, but just so you know, your descendants are going to have to go be in a foreign land for 400 years before eventually they'll come back because the iniquity of the Amorites will be filled at that time or complete or whatever.
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15.
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Yeah, yeah. Genesis 15. Thank you. So it's again, God's patience. Why did God let his own people suffer for that long? I mean, at least one reason is because giving the the Canaanites every possible opportunity to repent. And so I think that's part of what we're supposed to see as God's patience in all of that
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And God's righteousness on display
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And God's righteousness.
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I think it's the same inner logic that Paul points to in Romans three and Romans five, Romans 3, 21, 26, where God's righteousness is pretty much up on the courtroom, so to speak. And then in Romans five, is the righteousness of one man enough to say humanity and truth. Yes, that's the inner logic that's present, but the Christ event helps illuminate the mystery that's being revealed back in Genesis. So sorry, go ahead.
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No, that's right. Yeah. So anyway, to me it seems like there's somewhat straightforward answers if the question is about the story, if the question is about God's omniscience, to me, the maybe more interesting dynamic and question that isn't referenced specifically here, but again maybe I don't know if we want to discuss it or not, is more about God's immutability, God's unchange, unchanging nature and how it relates to human agency. Because you don't get that again, our congregate asked about Abraham talking God off the ledge and changing God's mind. There's sort of an implication of that question here, but you don't get that language specifically that I could find in Genesis 1819 about God changing his mind. But you do elsewhere in scripture. And so there's other stories we could look even more specifically at, but I think to me that's the most probably interesting angle to take here.
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I don't know if that's just answering a question the person's not asking or not, but did God change his mind On the surface of it, it seems like, it seems like, again, you do hear that God set his mind on destroying Sodom, but then Abraham seemingly talks him out of it, at least hypothetically. So conditionally so and so I guess you could answer well, yeah, does God really change his mind at all? If God knew all along I, I'm going to destroy it, conditions are a moot point. But again, there are other texts and so maybe, I don't know, maybe we need to just wait until somebody asks that question. Like from a Jeremiah 26 where it's much more explicit where we hear in the beginning of the rain of Je Hoya Kim, this word came from the Lord, thus says the Lord stand in the court of the Lord's house and speak to all the cities of Judah that come to worship in the house of the Lord.
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All the words I command you to speak to them. It may be that they will listen and everyone turn from his evil way that I may relent of the disaster that I intend to do to them because they're evil deeds. And then Jeremiah does, he goes to the king, he goes to Joy Kim in his court and gathers everybody together and says, Hey, y'all need to listen. Start listening to the Lord. Who knows, it may be that if you listen, God will relent of the disaster that he plans to bring upon us. And the context there is God's planning to send Babylon to destroy Judah. And the King James version in that passage even goes so far as use the word repent. It may be that God will repent of the
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Disaster
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Or the evil that he planned to bring on his people.
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It's the same word that's used in Jonah. In fact, when it says evil will repent repentant
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The Assyrians repenting
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And in Jonah it surrounded the word God. So that verb naham is that word, and then God and then the verb Shu, which is the same word that we get for turning repent elsewhere in scripture. So it almost reads as if God does this act of turning, God turning. So at initial read, what do we do with that? Because the verb is there, the word does have the sense of even in looking in the lexicon, be sorry, rue suffer grief, repent of one's own doings.
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Or you have also in Genesis six, right before the flood of it says that God regretted that I have made mankind because of their sinfulness that you have all of these. Is God making a mistake? Is he changing his mind? Are there errors in this? And it gets back to the immutability aspect of it, which for me, my take on the question is how do we interpret these kind of difficult passages that all relate to God changing his mind or God changing his desires or his actions and that as well as included if we have time for bonus content, does prayer change God's mind related to it if we get there? But anyways,
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So I don't know. I mean is that maybe not the exact question and maybe we're reading too much in, but I do think that mean one to me seems like a bigger, more difficult question potentially to really feel the way to wrestle through. Again, I think to me, there's other texts and things we could look at if we wanted to talk about God's omniscience and how it relates to things. But I think the immutability and God's changing his mind really is a big focus. Even if you don't have
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That
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Specific wording of God repented, God relented, God regretted some of these difficult words to deal with in that passage. I mean you have God saying, I'm going to destroy him. And then saying, well, okay, maybe not. And so what do we do with that theologically?
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And so for someone that's listening that hasn't heard the term immutability before, what does the word immutability mean? And then why is it important that God is immutable? I'm throwing that out. Yeah.
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Oh, I thought you were posing the question that answered.
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I'm posing the question to Let's get it on the table then. Yeah, no, good. Our terms straightened out. You want to answer?
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Immutable literally means
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Unchanging,
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Unchanging. And I think if we want to get real technical theological about it when it comes to God's immutability, we would say it's not just that God does not change, it's that he cannot change. Which again, we can go to philosophical stuff, but we Christians would say that because some people would hear something like that like, whoa, well that's different. And would say that, well, that seems to put a limit on God. And anytime you use words like cannot, God cannot do something, go back to God's omnipotence. God is all powerful. God can do anything. And we had, I'm sure a whole episode on this. Maybe it was the can God microwave or burrito. So Heidi can't eat it.
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Bonus unreleased episode.
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It might've been that. But at some point we did an episode on, and we've certainly touched on many episodes about this, and the idea of omnipotence itself, redefining that not as, not if you want to be really technical and specific, it's not that God can do all things so much as God can do anything that can be done. And so when it comes to something like God's omnipotence and yeah, can God create a rock? So biggie can't lift it. I think one way of answering those kinds of questions is to say that God cannot do logical contradictions. God cannot do things. And yet that's not a limitation on God's power because actually for God to defy logic or would be in violation of his own revealed character to us, because God created the boundaries of logic by which everything exists and plays by that rule.
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So similar thing with something like sin to say that God cannot, sin is not a limitation on God. It would actually be limiting to God and violating to God's nature and character if God could sin. And maybe the same thing here with God changing his mind, God's immutability, can God change his mind again? And maybe I'm wrong, you could correct me, but I think a real strict kind of definition of immutability would say not just that God does not change his mind, God cannot change his mind because for God to change would make him less than God. And I think we see that in a lot of different passages of scripture too. Numbers 23 verse 19, God is not man that he should lie or son of man, that he should change his mind as he said, and will he not do it or has he spoken and will he not fulfill it? So again, this is in numbers where we get to in a couple weeks here, but the way God is portrayed himself and his word is such that if he's really God again, not just that he doesn't sin, that he doesn't change his mind, he cannot sin, he's so far above that and holy, he cannot change his mind. He's so far above that in his unchanging nature.
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And again, you just see that like Malachi three six, I, the Lord do not change. One Samuel 1529, the glory of Israel will not lie or change his mind. He's not a human being that he should change his mind. So this is something that we humans do, not something that God does. But again, that all brings us back to the question from the story Genesis 18 and Jeremiah 26 and Genesis six and the flood and everything else. Well then why do we have this language of God regretting what he did of God repenting of the disaster he was going to bring through Babylon, or at least hypothetically, and again, maybe the context there is important. Jeremiah went to the king and said, Hey, maybe God will repent. And yet Je hoan didn't turn from his evil ways. Judah didn't turn from her evil ways. And just like the Sodom and Gamora story, God ended up bringing the, so it was another hypothetical one where there are seemingly some other examples in scripture where God, we see that same language first Chronicles 21 verse 15 where David takes an unlawful census and God sends an angel and destroy 70,000 Israelites because of it.
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And then it says, and God was going to just destroy him all. But then God, again, same word, repented or relented, however you want to translate it, of the disaster that he had planned and he stopped. So in a case like that, that seems like okay, at one point God had made up his mind, I'm just going to destroy him all here. But then he repented or relented and maybe some of this can get resolved with the Hebrew. If you want to get real technical, I mean can that same word that's used there have fairly the connotation of relented rather than repent it? Those really are two very different things. And if God relented of the disaster, like, yeah, I'm so mad, I'm going to just really hit him hard. And then God gets to a point where he is like, again, his mercy is Trumps his justice.
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And that's the case in Joan, his moments before the Assyrian say, perhaps if he will turn, he will relent from this thing that he's going to do for us. And then it turns, and God relents from the thing, just like he said that he was going to do because Jonah was called to go down there and to tell the people to repent from their wicked ways.
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And
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So most of all these instances are necessarily contextualize, say for a couple of points, philosophically, God cannot change because for him to change apart from his creation, that would mean that he could either be improved upon or he could deteriorate in some way. And that we have a logical, to your point on logic, that's logically problematic
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Because you can't change perfection and it still be
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Perfection. There's
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Only one perfect
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Change if he's self existing by
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Definition imperfect.
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If he's self existing imperfect, he cannot change. And yet we see all these moments in scripture where it feels it's like he's doing things like that, or for example, his omnipresence. We see Yahweh coming and going all the time, and yet somehow we have to square that with the fact that God is at the same time omnipresent.
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And one of the ways or the terms that theologian use to talk about this is the way that God condescends and accommodates by act of his revelation. So the Bible is his condescending, his coming down to us, number one, and then his accommodation number two, meaning whatever Trinitarian language the Trinity has apart from creation, we would not understand it as such. God communicates to us in ways that we can understand. And in a moment like this one we're talking about, for example, his coming, ands going or his relenting and so forth. I think this falls in the bucket of called anthropomorphism, which is a $12 word.
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Can you spell it for us?
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I can't do it, but is the way that the biblical authors often describe ways that it's in human terms so that we can understand it. So I'm looking here in Bob Inc's reformed Dogmatics volume two, where he works on the doctrine of God and creation. So just reading from Bob Ink here, he says, speaking of these anthropomorphism in scripture, God has said to have a soul, Leviticus 26 and a spirit, and this is one in Matthew 12, though there is never any reference to God's body in Christ. God also assumes a real body. There is mention of his face, Exodus 33, Isaiah 63, Psalm 16, Matthew 18, revelation 22, his eyes, Psalm 11, his eyelids, Psalm 11, the apple of his eye, Deuteronomy 32, I'll skip the references, but his ears, his nose, his mouse, his lips, his tongues, his neck, his arms, his hand, his right hand, his finger, his heart, his intestines, his bosom and his feet. And yet we know that God is not actually apart from creation, one like gigantic human being. God is a trium being three persons in one being. So when the Bible uses language of him coming and him going and him relenting and him having intestines or him having a hand and so forth, those are his gracious accommodations so that we can understand his nature and his character
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And other examples away from his physical body that's being described as an accommodation to us. You have a, in Genesis or not Genesis, Psalm 50, he owns the cattle on a thousand hills. It's not a literal God is a cosmic cowboy with a cattle on a thousand hills, but it is a metaphor to help us understand how in fact deep and rich God really is and owning all of things in creation with that. And so I think that's helpful though the anthropomorphism, I got to slow down. As I
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Say, it's a hard word to get out man,
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But as a way to think about how would I respond in those moments that it's giving us some certain language to use. And I think another key interpretive tool for us to think about along with that is interpreting, if we want to call it difficult or less clear passages of scripture with more clear passages of scripture. So we have a lot more scripture as we've already referenced, talking about God's unchanging character, his unchanging mind, his unchanging words. We have a lot more of that versus the language of his relenting, his changing his mind sort of language. So we take what seems a little unclear
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And
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More difficult, and we interpret it in light of what is more clear in other passages of scripture that predominantly the language is God is unchanging in his nature. And so we use that as a filter to interpret these particular difficult, more difficult passages.
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And I think this is important to bring up, and Will's kind of glad that you took it in this direction of his God's immutability in part because there's a growing, I mean, there's been a growing stream of thought in evangelicalism for a long time that God changes his mind or whatever, but I think especially in the past year with Richard Hayes and Christopher Hayes in their book, the Widening of God's Mercy or something expanding of God's mercy or something, it's along those same lines where Richard Hayes, a longtime New Testament scholar I think at Duke and his son Christopher out of Fuller in California, wrote a book that is basically trying to make the argument that the biblical story shows a case in which God's mercy towards sinners continues to get wider and wider, such that more sins essentially kind of make their way into the circle. And it's sort of allowing an opening and affirming door for all this sort of L-G-G-B-T-Q, whatever letter combination that's out there.
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And they're looking at texts kind of like these and along these lines and say, see, the story is pointing towards one that God, he calls people towards repenting and then eventually he relents from that kind of repentance. And as such, that circle keeps growing and growing and growing. There's enough work that's already been out there that's kind of critiqued it. So you can go online and find it for some reasonable sources, but in part it kind of assumes the argument. They don't deal with the passages that show that in fact things like where Jesus says, you have heard it said, but I say to you, the strictness in a lot of ways of the wall moves from the floor to the ceiling in the light of Christ. So that is, I still think important because a lot of folks would come to the text still and think, well, maybe not. Maybe God really does in fact widen that circle of mercy.
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Yeah, I like that you brought up both those words, concepts of anthropomorphism as well as God's accommodation. And I think they're related. I think it's also, we should say too, in the context of this conversation, there's a relationship too between those two options of interpretation. I started with if are we going to focus on God's immutability and God possibly changing his mind in this story seemingly or on God's omniscience and god's that the person specifically referenced? If God is all knowing, then why would he dah, dah, dah? Those two things, attributes of God are related to read an article on Ligonier from a guy named James Dal who makes another, you made the kind of philosophical argument for why God must be immutable if he's perfect and he changes, he's no longer perfect or he is no longer God.
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But you can also, there's many logical deductions that we can make for why God is immutable beyond just the biblical case of he says so and other, like you said, that more clear passages of his word. I'm not a man, I don't change like y'all do. But another one is to recognize again, with the omniscience is do Z points out a change of mind is invariably due to the acquisition of new or a new judgment about reality. But God is perfect in knowledge. That's a direct quote from God himself in Job 37 16, I'm perfect in knowledge knowing all things. That's one John three 20 says, God knows everything. So if God knows everything, if God is perfect in knowledge, then again if he is omniscient, and therefore if he's omniscient, he could never get new information. Oh, I hadn't considered that, now I better change my mind.
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So I think at least his immutability as it relates to his changing his mind about decisions, determination that is covered in implicit inherent within a full fledged understanding of his omniscience as well. And again, maybe that given credit, maybe that is what this person who asked this question about Sodom and Gamora was thinking about too, and they were making that implicit connection between, okay, if he's omniscient, then he must be unchanging, and yet he seems to change his mind. And when Abraham talks him off the ledge, how do we square those two things? So anyway, I don't know if there's anything more we need to say about this. I think, yeah, we've covered most of the big stuff I got questions.org is always a helpful
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Resource
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For me and just really succinctly, but also clearly on a level that even not particularly brilliant people like me can understand communicating things. So they point to the anthropomorphism and says, of course, God knows all along what he will and will not do. He never changes his mind. He never gets new information. That's what I just mentioned. However, and this gets to the accommodation, however, as he interacts with people, he interacts in real time. So on the eternal level, God never changes his mind, but on the level of interaction with humans, from our perspective, he seems to, although he knows what will happen before it does, he reacts to us in real time when the situation changes, he changes his actions and his responses to us. So I don't know again if that's helpful for people in thinking through again a story like one Chronicles 21 with David's census and it's saying God relented of, he seemed like he was going full bore.
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I'm going to take 'em all out. And then God relented of disaster he had planned, maybe that is a David or whoever was relaying this to us there, speaking about that from a human perspective and just naming again what seems to be on the ground in real time human perspective of this reality and what God is doing here. God had in some way spoken and made it clear to David or whoever that I'm going to destroy. And maybe even that God's communication of what seemed to be the original plan is part of his desire and the means by which he accomplishes a change on the behalf of the Ninevites in the Jonah story, if God hadn't threatened utter destruction of the city and conveyed it that way through Jonah, would they truly have gotten the magnitude and the gravity of what's at stake here? And would they have repented? And so therefore it makes it look like God is repenting. But really, anyway, that was the plan all along. I mean, we could just go in circles with this, but I don't know if there's anything else that occurs to maybe helpful for people in thinking through some of these. And there's so, I mean, we could add a dozen more I'm sure from scripture where it seems like God said one thing, but then something different. I mean, I even think about Jesus.
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There's the one story in John's gospel, I forget it was chapter where Jesus talking with his brothers and they're like, why don't you go to the feast? And I think it's the feast of booze. And they were doing the big celebration in Jerusalem or whatever, and they're like, go tell people who you really are. Let's go public with this or whatever. And she's like, no, I'm not going to go. Y'all go on ahead without me. And then the very next line, it's like, but secretly, then Jesus went and it's like, well, okay, so did he just lie or did he change his mind or, so I think there's a lot of those kinds of stories where, I mean, I think we're supposed to feel a little bit of that tension of, again, I think I love those kinds of stories used to keep me up at night.
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And really, I mean, it was a big part of why not to get off the rails here, but for me, where I really started questioning everything in scripture. And you can really go down the wrong path with this, but I mean to me, we can do a whole episode on that. And did Jesus changes my did Jesus lie or whatever. But I just think that at the end of the day, you have to, for me anyway, you have to come back to, we can try and explain that story away. And frankly, the explanation that I would give now that we would give now would probably be not super sufficient for me. 20 years ago, I would be like, that seems like a lame excuse. It seems like you're reinterpreting this word that you are very comfortable using repent and regret in other places, but when it comes to God, you're going to kind get yourself off the hook here or with Jesus lying. If anybody else did that, it's a lie. You said you're not going to the festival and then literally two verses later, but you went to the festival, I you a line. And so it's not going to be a super convincing, watertight argument for everybody. But to me, I do think there just has to be some room in our, if nothing else, the Bible is fun and it
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Invites. It's very interesting. It is. It's full attention. There's just so much like that that we were talking about on the other podcast with Deuteronomy 15 and just even the deserving poor and the undeserving, and when do we help and when do we not? And just all kinds of, yeah, even God's view of poverty seems to, depending on the passage you read in Proverbs, it's like some places it's help the poor and then other places people need to quit being lazy and places where it's like, money isn't that important and Jesus treasure in heaven. That's all that matters in the other places in Proverbs where it's like, yeah, but also maybe it is a sign of God's favor and blessing and you should pray to be prosperous anyway, so it's a wonderful, complicated, complex book. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have jobs, you wouldn't need a pastor. I mean, everybody would just read it and Oh, okay, that's easy.
(40:49):
That makes sense. Pretty straightforward.
(40:51):
Yeah, that's good. Anyway, but thanks for the question
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And if you'd like any of those questions that will you just posed, answered a little more deeply, submit the question, submit
(41:05):
'em three or six questions, I just
(41:06):
Write 'em down, send them in. And you can do that at the info bar or by submitting them online through our website at www dot West Hills tl. And join us next week where we address the question that in Texas and Arizona, restaurant owners have been arrested for harboring employing aliens, undocumented immigrants, and as believers, we're to care for the needy and follow the laws of the land. If a Christian were faced a similar situation, what do they do? Do we turn away the needy on our doorstep because they broke the law?
(41:42):
Should be a fun one.
(41:43):
Yeah. And if you enjoyed this week's episode, hit that like button on this audio streaming service. And also if you're watching on Facebook Live, thanks for joining us. Hit that like button, subscribe and share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week.