Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Troy Edwards
It is a legitimate and necessary law of interpretation to understand words according to the facts of the case as known or viewed by the writer. This
God waits to hear whether His children will call upon Him in their distress; and if they call, He hears and helps them. If Jesus teaches anything, He teaches that prayer really influences the purpose and action of God.1 – Henry Van Dyke (1896) If the future is already settled
God’s people in Biblical history did not seem to embrace a settled future and they were willing to take chances. They had the confidence that their prayers just might have a positive impact on God’s actions: Tear your hearts, not your clothes.” Come back to the Lord your God. He is kind and merciful. He does not become angry quickly. He has great love. Maybe he will change his mind about the bad punishment he planned. Who knows, maybe he will change his mind and leave behind a blessing for you. Then you can give grain and drink offerings to the Lord your God. (Joel 2:14-15; Easy to Read
...more
This is the difference between a relationship with a living God and an inflexible deity of a fixed future. The
Changing God’s mind is not supposed to be the primary purpose of prayer. God’s people were never meant to consistently fall into situations where it was necessary to change God’s mind.
In Matthew 6:10 Jesus told His people to pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” Some understand this teaching as merely a “prayer of submission” to “God’s sovereign will.” This is a fatalistic view that believes that the teaching of this prayer is one in which one is to merely to acknowledge submission to the “sovereign will” of God is in our lives (and often it is something negative such as a sickness, a tragedy, a financial crisis) To them, this prayer is nothing more than a statement of passive resignation. Most of us reject such a horrid inditement on the
...more
Heaven’s will for the earth is not accomplished apart from God’s people partnering with God to bring it about:
When God gave man dominion over the works of His hands He could not revoke this. God goes by the same adage that He has placed upon men. God is, “The one who makes a promise and does not break it, even though he is hurt by it” (Psalm 15:4).
God, due to His integrity, must rely upon men. An example of how reliant God is upon our cooperation is seen when Moses was interceding for Israel during the battle with Amalek. We are told, “And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.” (Exodus 17:11). Explaining this passage, the late Chinese preacher, Watchman Nee, said: Here we see the principle of God’s working, the secret of His action: whatever He wills to do, if man does not will it, He will not do it. We cannot make God do what He does not want to do, but
...more
God’s people must pray in order for them to see the future that God desires for them.
It is the will of God to fill our mouths, and to fill them with good things. However, the decision is ours as to whether or not we will open our mouths. God may have the omnipotent power to pry them open, but He does not force His will on us and He will not shove good things through a closed mouth and clenched teeth. Sadly, Israel’s failure to open their mouths kept them from the future that God desired for them:
But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me. So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust: and they walked in their own counsels. Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries. The haters of the LORD should have submitted themselves unto him: but their time should have endured for ever. He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee (Psalm 81:11-16)
The negative circumstances that many find themselves in are not necessarily the will of God, but are due to a lack of willingness to submit to His wonderful will (2 Kings 13:14-19; Isa. 48:18-19) through prayer and obedience. Note God’s pained response to Israel’s failure to ask Him for help during their time of trouble: Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin: That walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of
...more
(Ezekiel 22:30-31; New International Reader’s Version)
When we fail to stand in the gap – fail to pray for the nation – then we are responsible for its destruction.
Some claim that God wasn’t really going to destroy Israel but was testing Moses. They claim that God knew all along that Moses would pray.” Psalm 106:23 refutes that. Moses’ prayer determined the future. The future is unsettled and depends much on our praying.
All Scripture is meant to give us different insights into the character of God and bring that understanding into a unified cohesiveness.
God will change His mind when threatening an impending judgment if He sees true prayer, repentance, and humility (Gen. 18:20-33; Exod. 32:14; Num. 14:12-20; Deut. 9:13-14, 18-20, 25; 1 Sam. 2:27-36; 2 Kings 20:1-7; 1 Chron. 21:15; 2 Chron. 7:14; Jer. 18:7-11; 26:2-3, 19; Ezek. 20:5-22; 22:30; 33:13-15; Amos 7:1-6; Jon. 1:2; 3:2, 4-10; 4:2; Joel 2:13-14). In this we should rejoice that we have the privilege and power as God’s servants to have Him change His mind about bringing judgment, even when it is deserved.
(Deuteronomy 28:47-48)
This is just one example of how we must never read faith-building passages such as Numbers 23:19 without remembering other passages which teach us that much of what God does is dependent on our own actions.
Once God made this promise this should have given Israel enough confidence to take the land as the Lord directed.
Deuteronomy 1:20-22)
In Scripture God is said to do and even command that which He merely permitted. Theodore Epp, in his excellent two volume commentary on the life of Moses, further explains: This reveals the distinction between God’s direct will and His permissive will. This distinction is frequently found in the Scriptures. God permits some things simply because of the hardness of people’s hearts. Because of Israel’s unbelief, God was longsuffering with them along the way. That is why God permitted them to send spies into the land, even though He did not want them to do so.1
God patiently tries to work with people at the level that they are at. He expects that in due time they will fully understand.
Apparently God did not fully know how these people would react since He became very frustrated with their behavior. This is why God asks Moses these particular questions. If the future is set in stone as some claim then it would have been ridiculous for God to ask such questions. It would also make God negligent and irresponsible to even permit an action when He had exhaustive foreknowledge of its disastrous results.
Here we see that God, who never changes His mind about His promises, actually does change His mind, or, at the least, makes adjustments to His plans, when He is met with the extent of unbelief shown to Him by these people.
In summary, the Psalmist writes, “Again and again they limited God, preventing him from blessing them” (Psalm 78:41a; The Passion Translation).
Samuel D. Gordon, summarizes very well, how God can have plans for us that can fail: But the practical thing to burn in deep just now is this, that we can hinder God’s plan. His plans have been hindered, and delayed, and made to fail, because we wouldn’t work with Him. And God lets His plan fail. It is a bit of His greatness. He will let a plan fail before He will be untrue to man’s utter freedom of action.3
He cannot bless us if we persist in sin and unbelief (Isa. 59:1, 2; Jer. 5:25). If we want God’s blessings then we must keep His conditions for those blessings.
God is said in scripture to repent, i.e., to be, as we should say, moved or grieved on account of certain things or events having turned out contrary to what he might reasonably have expected. It is not that any thing which he has done is as if it had been done wrong, or not so well as it might have been performed. God does every thing well. God does every thing in what must, in the end, turn out and appear to be the very best possible way. It is not that he repents, as if he had committed any error, or made any false step, which, when men have done, they immediately or in time perceive their
...more
for, or vexed at, the results of their imprudence. It is not in any of these ways that God repents.1
…. In modern times, we have completely distorted the word “prophecy” much like we have mutilated the word “foreknowledge.” We have reduced the great prophets into a pack of fortune tellers, soothsayers, and crystal ball astrologers and have missed the fundamental purpose of their message.1 – H. Roy Elseth
Scripture gives us four reasons for prophecy of the future God’s plans for the future. Warning of the natural consequences of unholy behavior God’s ability to know what is in the heart of men and how their present character and behavior will bring about certain future outcomes. Sometimes a present event runs parallel to a past event mentioned in earlier portions of Scripture. The Jewish expression for this is “it was fulfilled.”
God declared future events through His servants because it was His intention to do them. God is able to know the future based on His plans or what He intends to do in the future. Even
The Unlocked Dynamic Bible says, “I have done these things, and I have made my people know about them since long ago.” God knows the future, not because He is “outside of time” and the future is settled, but because He has planned to do certain things in the future.
Old Testament scholar Walter C. Kaiser well said that, “Every forecast or prophecy of doom, like any prophetic word about the future…. Had a suppressed ‘unless’ attached to them.”4 In Scripture we learn that prophecies, especially those of impending punishment, can be changed based upon the actions of the people.
Again, when I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right; If the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto him: he hath done that which is lawful and right; he shall surely live. (Ezekiel 33:14-16)
Here we see that God does not send prophets to declare a “set in stone” future but to declare how a negative future can be changed by turning from evil.
(Daniel 9:2-3) Hence, the fulfillment of prophecy for future good is dependent upon prayer.
(Eze. 36:37)
Some believe that prophesies automatically come to pass and are disappointed when they don’t. If
Divine prophecy is not necessarily a revelation of the divine will; it is often a foretelling of what God (in His foreknowledge) sees will be the inevitable result of evil systems. Therefore, we may be in perfect harmony with God’s will in praying against those things coming to pass.1 – Charles Usher
In the New Testament Paul would later write, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. 6:7). God does not have to live outside of time and look into a supposedly settled future future to see what will happen as the result of sin.
God knows what is already going on in the heart of the people at present. Based on this present knowledge, God can, with certainty, tell what will become of the people in the future, though He would prefer that such a future does not come to pass. Therefore, God commanded Moses to compose a song to testify against them (vv. 22-30) so that, as Adam Clarke writes, they might avoid the evil and the consequences of such: Because in it their general defection is predicted, but in such a way as to show them how to avoid the evil; and if they did not avoid the evil, and the threatened punishment
...more
God is able to accurately predict what people will do because He knows with one hundred percent accuracy what is in their hearts.
God knew that He would be able to fulfill His prophetic Word in the life of Abraham because He knew what kind of man Abraham was: And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. (Genesis 18:17-19)
In most cases, it is usually an author accommodating an Old Testament passage to an event occurring in his time. The
(Matt. 2:14-15) This was spoken by Hosea the prophet. But when we read what Hosea wrote with an unbiased mind we find that he is not making any reference whatsoever to Jesus but, rather, to God’s rescue of Israel from Egypt:
Matthew was simply following the common Jewish Rabbi method of taking an Old Testament passage and applying it to a present day event and showing how it parallels. As John Hewett notes: St. Matthew does not quote this as a prophecy relating to the Messiah; for Hosea certainly speaks of the departure of the Israelites from the land of Egypt. It is cited, therefore, by way of accommodation, and as affording a suitable illustration of the event.3
(Jeremiah 31:15-17)
Actually Referring to they fact that they were judged and carried into exile.
