“The godly man does not arrive at spiritual maturity instantaneously. It is a lifelong process, but every stage of that growth must come from the Word.” Dr. MorrisAt the church we attend, the Pastor has been talking about the immutability of God’s precepts, meaning that God does not change in what He commands. He has been going through the Psalms to demonstrate this very fact. Last week, he stressed that if we would follow these precepts that God would give us Victory (Psalm 119:87), preserve us for His purpose (119:93), give us increased wisdom (119:104), and guarantees us that we will have enemies and that we will be despised (119:141).
It was a challenging sermon to say the least, and very convicting in what was presented by Pastor Jayakumar through the Scriptures. A day later, I get a phone call and find out that I am to preach on May 3rd, tomorrow for me, and that I am to continue with the theme he has started. Now, I had asked for May 10th, as then I could choose what I wanted to preach, as my friend who is preaching on the 17th is able to do. He gave me a section of Psalm to look at:
Psalm 119:33-40, “Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes, And I shall keep it to the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keepYour law; Indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart. Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, For I delight in it. Incline my heart toYour testimonies, And not to covetousness. Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, And revive me in Your way. Establish Your word to Your servant, Who is devoted to fearing You. Turn away my reproach which I dread, For Your judgments are good. Behold, I long forYour precepts; Revive me in Your righteousness.”
My prayers and studying were focused on how to tie this verse into the immutability of God and His precepts. If you are a regular reader of my blogs, then you know I have written on the immutability of God already and given that defense, so I will not do that here, nor am I going to in my sermon. Taking that out, I started to think upon and asked God what can He say through me in this Sunday. This is what God gave me to preach.
Psalm 119:33-35 tells us that we should observe His Precepts/Word until the end, then, says “Make me,” which indicates a battle going on within David, not unlike the battle we all struggle with today. What can be called the Old Man (sinful nature) battling the New Man (Salvation), as we see Paul talk about in Romans 7. We need God to do it, as we cannot do it on our own.
1 Samuel 15:29 says, “Furthermore, the Eternal One of Israel does not lie or change His mind, for He is not man who changes his mind.” Malachi 3:6, “For I am the Lord, I do not change.” You can think of precepts like boundaries for our life. We all should have healthy boundaries in our relationships that are aligned with God’s Word.
A boundary is like a fence with a gate. The gate allows good to come into your yard, or boundary, and it also keeps out and helps you get rid of the bad. Whether that is sin in your own life, or allowing sin of other people to effect you as well. Precepts/boundaries protect us and keep us safe. They are for our own good and we can know that since God made these precepts that they are good and pure. We can rely on these boundaries if they are in tune with the immutable precepts of God.
Psalm 36-38 tells us that we are to direct our eyes straight on the path. Again, realizing that we cannot do it on our own and need God to direct our eyes, but have to do it through God. If God is pointing us in a direction that He desires we can know it is the right direction, because God does not change and if He tells us it is good or bad then we can rest assured that it is. All we have to do is obey. James 1:17, “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.”
Lastly, Psalm 39-40 requests God to keep me on that path and protect me from the wrong direction. Knowing we cannot do it on our own, we must ask God to keep us on the path and to guide our ways, because as anyone knows who has tried to make it on their own, we tend to move toward sin or against His precepts. God will not take us in a deceitful direction, and we can rest assured that if He tells us to move in a certain direction we can be sure it is for our own good. Numbers 23:19, “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?”
Taking all this together there are some comforts that we can take away in the fact that God is changeless. For us there are many times that it is good to change. We change from evil ways to righteous ways. Those who are believers changed from condemnation to eternal salvation in regards to eternity. We change our attitudes for the better, and at times for the worst.
As humans with a beginning, which means we are finite, we change. We get older, we think differently at different times, changing our thoughts. We change the way we dress to keep up with the latest fashions. We change the music we listen to. We are a people that change. God is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega, and even the name He gave Moses also says that He is infinite, which is “I AM.” Being eternal means He cannot change because He is without end or beginning.
We can rely on what we read within the Scriptures as being what God said with confidence and that certain aspects are not going to change. If God could change His mind then maybe He will one day change His mind on the requirement for Salvation. If God can change His mind then it is possible that He could change His mind about salvation, right? But if He cannot change then we have security in our salvation. For the Muslim they cannot have this confidence, because God can lie and deceive, which is why they live in fear, the wrong kind of fear, because they are hoping their “good” works to out weigh the bad. They have to live like this because their God can change.
We know that He loves us continually and is passionate about us, as is proclaimed all through out Scripture. If He could change then He could change His mind about the way He feels about His creation. Yes, He hates sin, but He longs for relationship with His people. 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord does not delay His promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” A Muslim cannot ever rely on this, because Allah according to their Koran can change and lie and deceive. Of the 99 names they have for their God, the only one that comes close to a relationship is that God is close to your jugular, which is not love at all. It actually means that God can kill you at any moment.
He would not be God at all if He could change. Only something that has a beginning can change from one aspect to another. If you could literally change God’s mind that would mean that you in some way gave a defense that showed God He was wrong in some fashion, whether it is emotionally or logically. He is wrong in the way He is being merciful or wrong in the way He decided to perform an action. Either way that would make you smarter than God. What kind of God would that be? 1 Corinthians 1:25, “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” If God could change that also means that He had a beginning, and a starting point somewhere, which means that someone then had to create Him as well.
Lastly, this change means that we can rest assured that the Word of God that has the precepts of God can be trusted as reliable and preserved throughout the ages. God said His word would not change, that not one jot or tittle would be eliminated from His word. Matthew 5:18, “For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.” Luke 16:17, “And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail.”
Through Him we can rest assured that as 2 Timothy 3:16 says, that this book is God breathed and everything in it is true. If God wrote it and cannot change then we can rest assured that if we live by what it tells us then we are pleasing Him. If He can change then we can never know for sure. We know that He is not going to change the way of Salvation through Christ, because He does not change.
Precepts of God are good and will not change, but they will change you and me if we follow them. We are the ones that need to change, and not God. We always want God to do things our way, but in reality life would be so much easier if we did things His way by following the precepts He laid down before us in the Bible.
Psalm 119:38-40, “Establish Your word to Your servant, Who is devoted to fearing You. Turn away my reproach which I dread, For Your judgments are good. Behold, I long for Your precepts; Revive me in Your righteousness.”
8 comments:
Regarding the following quote:
“He would not be God at all if He could change. Only something that has a beginning can change from one aspect to another. If you could literally change God’s mind that would mean that you in some way gave a defense that showed God He was wrong in some fashion, whether it is emotionally or logically. He is wrong in the way He is being merciful or wrong in the way He decided to perform an action. Either way that would make you smarter than God. What kind of God would that be?”
The difficulty in discussing the immutability of God is articulating the fact that God does not “lie or change his mind” in a way that a.) squares with texts in which God most certainly DOES change his mind (i.e., the movement from 1 Samuel 15 to 16 in which Saul [God’s choice] is exCHANGED for David [also God’s choice]) and b.) more broadly can speak of one being “unchanging” and in relationship since relationships are fundamentally characterized by a dynamic of give-and-take.
I would suggest finding a different way of talking about God’s “immutability” in light of these points without appealing to anthropomorphismm as this is tenuous exegetically and carries the faint whiff of Platonic embarrassment at the material and incarnate.
I would argue that God is unchanging in the way that he has determined himself to be. That his he is committed to “be who he will be.” You grazed this point in your sermon when you talked about the things God “can’t” do and noted that he can’t do things against “his nature.” I would simply go one step further and assert that he has determined his own nature (that he is Lord of his Lordship). And having determined himself to be in relationship with humans and not only “with” but free then to be graciously “for” them, he can in fact “change his mind” without the usual overtones of ignorance, capriciousness, and selfishness that usually accompany “changed minds” in humans (note the qualification in 1 Sam. 15.29 “he is not man”).
Also relationships are not binary things in which there is only one “right” action. God’s decision in Exodus 32 to heed Moses’s plea not to destroy the Israelites and start over with him was not a choice between a more or less “right” or “wrong” way of being merciful or holy. Both were valid actions and Moses’s appeal to God and God’s responsive action doesn’t invalidate God’s changeless commitment to be who he is and be who he is in grace towards humanity.
God is still God in all this because he is sovereign over even his own “nature.” He doesn’t obtain that “nature” from some place outside himself. He determines it himself in eternity. Having thus determined himself he is “unchanging” in his commitment to that determination. But that determination includes the ability to relate variously, to change his mind in the face of changed circumstances (Moses’s plea, Hezekiah’s plea, our plea ostensibly, etc., etc.). Saying that “He would not be God at all if He could change” binds God to a particular way of being God external to God himself (or rather it is exceptionally easy to bind God in this way having phrased it thus).
Those are my two cents. Also--nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah--I get to preach whatever I want. Ha!
Yeah. That’s godly.
Let me say, that I enjoyed your comments and am glad you put it out there for my other readers to read and think about, as I always challenge them, so maybe they will read yours and think through this.
To set up a discussion by saying: “appealing to anthropomorphism as this is tenuous exegetically and carries the faint whiff of Platonic embarrassment at the material and incarnate,” is trying to down the use because you don’t like it. This does not mean it is not so, because you think it is simplistic or does not fit into your thinking pattern. That is why we change and not God. Below are three more logic based arguments for the immutability of God and you have to negate another attribute as well if you want to get rid of the immutability of God.
It is more tenuous to build into God a metaphysical quality that cannot be shown logically or otherwise, in the sense He built change into Himself, again that does not fit into what God has shown Himself to be. You have to interpret Scripture with Scripture. Whether He changes out of ignorance or not, even if it would be good, it is still change, and would result in still changing His mind. You are skipping a step to find out whether it is logically possible through Scripture that God can change in the first place.
3 Theological arguments for the immutability of God that are from Thomas Aquinas that fit really well:
God is a God of Pure Actuality (His I Am-ness), and has no potentiality, which means that God cannot change because there is no potential in God (Exodus 3:14). If something is to change then it has to have the potential to change, but Pure Actuality has no logical potential to change, thus God cannot change.
The second one Thomas Aquinas uses that I like is because of God’s simplicity. Everything that can change is composed of things that can change and things that do not change. God being simple cannot change because He has no composition to change. If something changed and everything about it changed then you have a complete new being, which is also basically annihilating the old and having a new. If there is change where some changes and some remains the same then there must be two elements to the being. Meaning, an absolute simple being cannot change, because something with no composition cannot change.
Lastly, God is absolutely perfect. If God changes then He is acquiring something new, and God cannot acquire anything new because He is perfect and complete within Himself. If He did change, then again, it showed that He lacked something and needed to change and is not perfect, then nor is He God.
Saul exercised his free will, which God already knew he was going to do from the beginning. The argument you have given is an Open Theist argument, who believes that God has put Himself within time and thus can be influenced by humans, but the mass of Scripture does not give us this view: (Eph. 1:11; Lm 3:37-38; Rom. 8:28, 11:36). God cannot fail at anything He sets out to do, because then He would not be perfect: (Ps. 33:11, 115:3, 135:6; Prov. 21:30; Isa. 14:27, 43:13, 46:10, 55:11; Dan. 4:35; Rev. 3:7).
God is a transcendent being, and beyond even our experiences, but at the same time involved in our experience. He did this through the tabernacle, the temple and of course through Christ. He appears to change, but in reality it is just the outworking of His eternal plan, which does not change.
To say that with the Moses situation that both situations were equally ‘right’ or ‘good’, or that neither one was more or less right or wrong, assumes a lot in our finite human knowledge. Even if two paths are placed before us, do we honestly, as finite beings placed in time, know the total future outcome of both? No, we don’t. They may look equally good at the time, but we do not know the ultimate outcome, however God does. And so, again, we simply take part in God’s plan, His will, He does not change to ‘heed’ us. He knows the outcome of all scenarios and we do not.
How is God sovereign over His own nature, this makes it sound as if His nature is some outside force that He controls. His nature is who He is, not what He is or what He controls, this almost creates something else outside of God. To say He is sovereign over His own nature implies He created His own nature, and this is not logical. He is God, He is not created, nor is His nature, His nature only refers to who God is.
God sees from end to beginning at once, not in succession of time. The example I always use a cave analogy, as I want to use some Plato (hahahah). Picture yourself sitting in a cave looking out and right outside the cave is a set of railroad tracks. Each time a train comes by all we can see is the car that is passing. We cannot see the car after it goes by, nor its destination, nor the car coming after if one at all. All we see is what is right in front of the cave. God on the other hand, is on top of the cave and sees the beginning of the train to the end all at once. He sees it all at once, just like time. God is not within time, and sees the end from the beginning.
Do we make free choices? Yes, but God’s knows what those choices are going to be, and knew from eternity, because He is all knowing, and eternal. In our relationship with God it is binary in the fact that we change and God does not change. He cannot love more, as He loves eternally. We just are in that love more or less depending on the choices we make, thus we change in the relationship and God does not change in the relationship.
How can there not be one “right” answer when it comes to many things: 2+2=4 whether you want it to be or not. There is no other correct answer. The only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ and is the only “right” answer. There are “right” answers.
To say God can change His mind in the face of changed circumstances implies that God can be ‘surprised’ or ‘taken off guard’ by the outcome of events, as if He says ‘oh, no, this should not be, how did this happen? I must change my mind on this to make it right’, this is a slippery slope as we now not only take away his immutability as above, but now his omniscience. This slope only continues to cut down all of the attributes of God, and He is no longer God.
Well, it certainly wasn’t my intention to stack the deck in my favor rhetorically by simply dismissing those things I don’t like. I do believe an appeal to “anthropomorphism” in the context of the “divine repentance” texts is a strain. We have texts which are clearly anthropomorphisms (i.e., God’s right “arm” etc. etc.) but they always reveal something about who God is in a clearly metaphorical context. To extrapolate from a genre of text to a description of an act (defining the latter in terms of the former) is a leap. And I’m comfortable asserting that the burden of proof is on those appealing to anthropomorphism in those contexts rather than those who are going to read the text “on the face.” Hence my dismissal. I don’t really care about Plato although everything I’ve encountered in him, applied to Christianity has produced (IMHO) sub-Christian formulations (our formulation of immutability being one of them).
It is somewhat misleading to say that God “built into himself” a metaphysical quality. We are trying to relate time and eternity, creator and creature. And that isn't easy. I’m not implying that there is a time when God “was not” or “not as he is now,” rather we are logically (!) trying to explicate who God is in light of Scripture. This activity is entirely a posteriori on our part (i.e., reflection after the fact or in light of experience—I know YOU know what “a posteriori” means I’m just adding this for the benefit of others who may be observing, you know, the kids).
So God’s “self-determination” is an eternal “act,” a logical one. That is, the most logically basic thing we can say about God (I propose) is that he is utterly free. In that freedom he has determined himself to be the way he has revealed himself to us that is, "for" us. The clearest example of this is Jesus. Could God have (in freedom) possibly determined himself to be otherwise? The question doesn’t interest me. As it is difficult enough to figure out what THIS God is like, there seems little point in trying to explicate “possible Gods’” natures. Also I have a nascent theory that logical possibilities are in no way determinative of God but as that theory’s nascent I won’t push the point. Regardless I’m not sure it’s “tenuous” to say that God is self-determinative. We’re both working with bastardized ontological arguments in which God is essentially self authenticating. (Well, mine’s bastardized I won’t presume on yours . . .) The point is which of our explications of God’s self-authenticated nature best match Scripture (interpreted via Scripture)?
I don’t think that Exodus 3.14 proves a lack of “potentiality” in God. Especially since the name given (YHWH) can also be translated “I WILL be what I WILL be.” The more important point is that God’s seems intent on controlling the description of himself. Deciding what is ok for God to be and not be (lack of potentiality- ok, potentiality- not ok) already puts us in a problematic place. Hence my assertion that the most basic thing we can say about him is that he is SELF-determining. At this point I haven’t said what it means to be “God’s self” other than whatever it is it is self-determining. Tautalogy is unavoidable at this point (and make no mistake “I AM” is nothing if not tautalogous). If we can avoid the tautalogy, I’m not sure it’s God we’re talking about. We don’t worship the law of non-contradiction we worship the Lord of the law of non-contradiction.
Furthermore, your definitions of simplicity and perfection are systematic categories largely derivative of Aristotle and dependent on a substance metaphysic that isn’t necessarily assumed anymore (and from the Protestant perspective has got the Roman Catholics locked into an embarrassing theology of the Eucharist). This is of course not a sin but one doesn’t get to simply posit them as if they are uncontended. Regardless, any scripture you posit asserting “immutability” I’m simply going to insist that we also account for texts that don’t fit the mold for these categories (understood in Thomist or Aristotelian terms) without (as best we can) ad hoc appeals to speech conventions as explanations (i.e., anthropomorphisms). If substance metaphysics doesn't give us a good explanation (which it doesn't we have to bring in the literary theorists to give us--ta da!--anthropomorphism), well nuts to substance metaphysics, I say.
All I’m asserting is that we might be able to find a better way to talk about God's nature that creates space for substantive accountings of both 1 Samuel 15.29 and Exodus 32. God certainly does “heed” us (or every injunction to prayer and obedience becomes so distorted as to be illegible or perhaps better it starts to look more Hindu or Muslim). And the fact that he does heed us is only a problem if you’ve already decided that “heeding” is a thing God shouldn’t do. At which point you’ve just sort of tossed scripture aside or more likely cowed it into the corner with some very stern looks. The problem becomes clear quickly. Scripture interpreting scripture is a notoriously circular standard. Who gets to decide which scripture is determinative?
I have not proposed an Open Theist argument as I haven’t said anything about the nature of God’s knowledge. Again, I (and in the end it isn’t really me, I’m following Barth via Bruce McCormack, blah blah blah, I don’t know who you’re relying on here . . .) am trying to reorganize our understanding of God around the notion of God’s self-determination to be for humanity to see if that gets us out of or moves us forward in the impasse or dialectic regarding God’s “immutability” and his relations in the world. My position would require an “actualistic” ontology which would allow God to be both hidden and revealed in any given moment thereby preserving his lordship in his self-revelation and his relations with creation. Given this ontology there would have to be some way in which we can talk about God as one who can change and yet “is” unchanging. Hence my proposal that statements in Scripture about God NOT changing are statements about his determination to be who he is and events in which he does change directions do not necessarily violate that determination.
I prefer to punt to mystery on the precise nature of God’s foreknowledge at least until we get a better descriptor of the “divine repentance” texts than “they are anthropomorphic.” I do not think Open Theism is without (terminal) problems but then again neither is classic Augustintinian-Calvinist-Reformed-um?-ism. And neither is the Molinist position (I assume?) you seem to be positing (we’re free but God knows what we’re going to do). Both of these latter proposals simply rearranges the problems and doesn’t get God “off the hook” on the problem of evil or necessarily make a whole lot of sense from the human side.
As I don’t think that understanding this doctrine is crucial to determining orthodoxy or preaching the gospel, we’re free to speculate. Talking about God “in” time is just as problematic as talking about God being “outside” time and there’s no point kicking each other in the nads over things we don’t understand (i.e., this is not a cardinal doctrine).
Also I should point out that in your last paragraph YOU have stacked the deck in YOUR favor rhetorically (HA!) as a change of mind does not necessarily mean God was surprised or mistaken. You’re assuming that it does. Yet I can conceive of two equally good choices of which I am free, having chosen one, to arbitrarily choose the other and this is not necessarily evidence of nor does it require surprise or a mistake on my part. If I can conceive of this for myself how much more so for God who's change (in Ex. 32 at least) is brought on via love for a human and the care to heed their plea?
Also I should point out that the slippery slope argument is a fallacy. We can’t start making arguments based on the slippery slope fallacy—who knows where it might lead us?
As I am working on a project for the seminary, here are some articles that I have read that I find worth reading. I have challenged some others to post on this and we will see if they will.
http://www.gotquestions.org/immutability-God.html
http://www.pbministries.org/books/pink/Attributes/attrib_07.htm
http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0001.htm
http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/religaffect/rapt3sec03.html
http://www.equip.org/articles/god-of-the-possible
http://www.givingananswer.org/articles/immutability.html
http://normangeisler.net/neotheism.htm
http://www.beginningwithmoses.org/articles/inerrancy.pdf
http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/02-03/01w/readings/plantinga.pdf
http://philofreligion.homestead.com/files/prayer.htm
Why is God unchangeable?
Yes, we see many instances in Scripture of what appears to be God changing His mind.
We see an example of this when the Israelites make the golden calf and worship it instead of the Lord.
“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘ I have seen this people and indeed it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore, let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against me and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.’ Then Moses pleaded with the Lord his God, and said: ‘Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, Your servants, to whom you wore by Your own self and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ So the Lord relented from the harm which He said he would do to His people.”
-Exodus 32:9-14
When God threatens to consume the Israelites and make a great nation through Moses, he is doing exactly that, threatening. A threat is not an action that will be carried out, thus God did not change His mind. What the anthropomorphic language does, however, is help us to understand God’s intention. The just threat inspired repentance in Moses and the people. According to MacArthur, “Intentions retain a conditional element and do not necessarily bind the speaker to a course of action.”
Part of the problem is our understanding of language – many other languages (such as Hebrew) have a conditional and subjunctive tense, which show that an action could occur but may or may not. The clue we have that this is in the Scripture is in verse 9, when God says that his anger “may” burn hot and He “may” consume them. This is the closest English gets to a subjunctive tense. It is not our God changing, but merely our finite language trying to express an infinite God.
Furthermore, what would be the point of a changeable deity?
If God could change His mind, He could choose to revoke my salvation on a whim. And if it’s something that can be taken or changed, I don’t want it. I could live a much happier life serving my whims, not those of some non-spatial celestial five-year-old. But because He is unchangeable, we know that the state of our salvation will not shift, and we have hope.
Kiki-
Thanks for jumping in here.
I don't think the "may" is carrying the connotations you (and perhaps MacArthur?) are attributing to it in this passage. The "may" is bound to the Lord commanding Moses to leave his presence SO THAT he "will be able to" ("may") carry out his intentions toward the rebellious people. This is not a hypothetical future in which God may or may not act as he has threatened to. The implication is that God doesn't want Moses to get in the way of his destruction of Israel. If Moses gets out of the way (he is an intercessor of sorts for Israel here and throughout his life), then God will be able ("will have given himself permission" might be a way of saying it to keep the sense of "may" here) to give full vent to his anger.
I fully appreciate the problem of finite human language trying to capture the infinity of God. I'm just not sure this is an example of it. The problem isn't that we CAN'T say what happened. The problem (in my view) is precisely that we CAN say what happened. And it bothers us. But I think it only bothers us because it doesn't fit what WE think God should be like. But it may very well be what God IS like.
To assert that God is simply threatening Israel here or that there is an implied conditional which muddies the force of the threat is simply to "beg the question" and assume it says (or means) something other than what it says (or means). The whole thrust of the passage (confirmed in the statement "the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people" v. 14) is that God intended to do one thing and, due to the intervention of Moses, changed course. On the face of it, it's a change wrought by the intervention of a human.
I don't think it necessarily follows that if God "changes" in the sense I've tried to describe above (using the painful finitude of language you've identified), we are in danger of "losing our salvation" at God's "whim." Rather, God has determined to be himself and he has revealed (in Christ) that Self to be a gracious, loving Self who is precisely NOT given to dropping people's salvation on a whim.
Alan-
"Project for the seminary"? What? You have a JOB now? Oh sure, make me look bad. *sigh*
As I re-read it, something struck me about the causal nature of the intended destruction of Israel. I thought something seemed missing. In Ex 32:8, the Lord explains, "They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them."
Perhaps this is a good starting point. To which time should we be referring when God commanded His people? Since Moses just returned from the mountain, it seems reasonable to assume that God commanded them in the presence of both themselves and their leaders. This would have to occur prior to Moses' encounter on the mountain, pointing us to the Mosaic covenant.
We see a parallel between 19:5-6 and 32:10 in the making of a nation for him/those who follow the Lord's commands. Clearly this people is violating the "no idolatry" commandment (20:4-6). Interestingly in the NASB, verse 6 is written as "but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments." Could this explanation, then, be the backstory for what's happening in Chapter 32? With the Mosaic Covenant as a background, Israel is on the bad side of an if-then covenant. The key verse to explaining what it might mean for God to "change His mind" would be the asterisk to the Mosaic Covenant - God showing lovingkindness to His people through the intercession of Moses (perhaps a stretch?). However, it's late and for now I cannot find that verse to say God is gracious and merciful and hears the prayer of the righteous, and for His name's sake will show mercy to His people (mixing a couple of verses out of context just isn't the same). Even without such a verse to site at the moment, hopefully this gives you something further to consider.
And then as I read in Jeremiah for my devotion time last night, I came across the passage of the potter and the clay. "The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 'Come, go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words.' So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it" (Jer. 18:1-8).
Although this passage clearly is not part of the Mosaic covenant itself, the nation of Israel was still under that bilateral covenant when this was spoken. This passage is fascinating to me because it explains a causal relationship resulting in God "chang[ing His] mind." However, what we understand as God potentially changing His mind, at least in this particular instance, is based on God honoring the covenant that He has made with the people. To me it seems like a Plan C. Plan A is that people obey the Lord. Plan B is that people disobey Him and are smited. Plan C is that people disobey Him, repent, and are reconciled (smiting averted). If I have a contingency plan in case it rains, have I changed my mind in terms of what I intend to do? I think to say so would be a concise approximation, but it's entirely based on what I have already decided to do given a set of circumstances.
In Exodus Chapter 32, Israel is unrepentant, so the Jeremiah passage shows us something similar but doesn't explain the result of Moses' intercession. When Moses comes down from the mountain and sees what's happening, he more or less carries out the wrath of God on the people anyway by forcing them to drink water of the dust of the idol and then having the idolaters slaughtered. Hm....
Post a Comment