DAILY TRUTH - Does God Change His Mind？
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Summary
Pastor Joel Webin explains why God is not a man that should repent or change his mind, and why God does not fluctuate in his emotions. God is the infinite one, the immortal one, and the unchanging one. He has decreed the end from the beginning, and he is the omniscient one that never changes.
Transcript
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Jesus said, man cannot live on bread alone, but from every word that proceeds from the
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God is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said,
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and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? So did God repent
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or regret making man? No. No. But this is what I love about Numbers chapter 23 verse 19.
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did God lie? See, Numbers 23 verse 19 is perfect because it says, it protects us on both sides. It
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says, God's not a man that he should change his mind, that he should repent of something. He has
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decreed the end from the beginning. He knows all things. He's the omniscient one, the immutable one.
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He never changes. But look at what it also says in Numbers. It says, he's not a man that he should
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change his mind. He's also not a man that he should lie. So this is what we have. Verse six of our
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text. It feels as though we only have two options. It's either a literally true one-to-one ratio
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statement, or it's a false statement. But Numbers chapter 23 verse 19 protects us because it says
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God's not a man that he should lie. So we can exile a false statement. Verse six of our text
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can't be false. But God's also not a man that he should change his mind or repent. So we know it
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can't be a literally true statement. So what other option do we have? Well, the option is that you can
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make a statement that is true without it being literally true. So it's neither a false statement,
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but it's also not a literally true statement. So there is a sense in which, as it were,
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God regretted making man. As it were, God repented. In a sense, these things are true. In a literal
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sense, no, because God's omniscient. How can you repent? How can you change your mind when you have
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decreed all things from the very beginning and you knew exactly what would happen, right? God is not
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in process. God's not surprised. And God is not emoting. We need to understand that God is not
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a teenage girl. So he doesn't see things happen. And then he emotes and says, that made me sad.
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And that made me mad. And God is not flying by the seat of his pants. He's God. He is the infinite
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one, the immortal one, the immutable, unchanging one. And for God to fluctuate in emotions
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constitutes change. God does not change. He does not change. And I believe that it's most faithful
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in Orthodox Christianity, especially in the Reformed tradition, not just to say that he
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does not fluctuate in his emotions, but it's safer just to say he doesn't have them.
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He is God without passions. That's the doctrine of impassibility. Sam Rinehan has a great book,
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God Without Passions, The Doctrine of Divine Impassibility. If you'd like to do more study,
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I recommend that to you for your personal study. God is not fluctuating. God is not emoting.
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God is not showing his hand that, hey, you know how I say I'm omniscient? I actually am not. You
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know how I say, I do not change. I actually do. Then you know how, you know how I, I, I, I decreed
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the end from the beginning. Well, I actually, this caught me off guard. I was surprised. I'm this
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God, God is not showing his hand. There is no weakness in God. He's God. So then, all right.
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So we can, we can chop off. We can write off literal true statement, but, but God cannot lie.
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So we can't say it's a false statement. So what should we glean? All right. Almost done. What should
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we glean? What is the truth? God is communicating to us in his word, because it's his word. He's
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saying something that we need to know. So what truth is God giving to us in verse six and verse
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seven of our text? I think in a small sense, he's given us a truth about himself. Let's look at
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Ezekiel chapter 33, verse 11 says, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather
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that the wicked turn from his way and live, turn back, turn back from your evil ways. Why then will
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you die? Oh, house of Israel. So in a small sense, I think verse six and verse seven of our text is
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telling us a truth about God, that God grieves, as it were, in regards to sin. That God does not
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take delight or pleasure that the wicked choose their own demise and peril rather than repenting
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and obeying him. That's the thing that I think it says about God in a small sense. In a large sense,
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I believe that verse six and seven of our text says a lot about man. I don't think primarily
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that what's being communicated here is something that we can understand about the nature of God.
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I think it's the exclamation point. This is my theory. Verse six is the exclamation point to
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verse five, which is a statement about man. So verse five says, man's really, really bad. Every
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intention, every thought, all the time, only continue it. Man's really, really bad. Verse six
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says, yeah. Verse six is the confirmation. It's the exclamation point to verse five. Think about
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this. It would be sinful for a man to do this in his finite self. He would probably be doing this
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motivated out of sin at some level. But if a man was married and he found out that his wife had
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betrayed him in adultery, and upon finding this out, he speaks to his wife and he says, I regret
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ever marrying you. Now, again, the analogy falls apart because he's a man. And so it's very likely
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that there's sin involved in that statement, right? That he's just trying to hurt her because
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she hurt him. Or he's saying that infidelity, I won't continue my covenant vows with you.
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But there's something else he's trying to do. What he's trying to do is he's trying to help
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her see how severe her betrayal really was. He's trying to say by saying, he's in a sense, he's
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saying, this was so grievous that despite all the good moments that we had together, despite
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I don't think are primarily telling us something
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every thought, only, ever, wickedness, continually. Really? That bad God? Yeah, so bad.
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I wish I never even made him. I don't think the truth is, oh, so God is like, what we should be
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gleaned from this verse is God's not omniscient or God's not immutable and he changes, he fluctuates
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and God repents and God regrets and God grits. You're missing the point. The statement, God is
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using human language under the banner of analogy because we're human beings and we need to
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understand. So he's using, he's condescending and using our language to, to confirm what he just
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said in verse five, because verse five is so bad that our natural default when we read it is like,
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nah, really that bad. So then we have verse six and verse seven to say, yeah, really that bad.
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