Well, good morning. Good to see you all. People have asked me several times while I've been here at the conference that, isn't retirement antithetical for a pastor? How does that work? And all I can say is that after many years of laboring in the pulpit ministry, God gave me a long list of different projects that I really wanted to do in my later years.

And specifically, those had to do with further researching different topics and doctrines and so forth that are part of our Reformation heritage. And then also teaching and writing on some of the Reformation personalities. And So I've had the joy over this last year of being retired, of serving as a chaplain in a hospice, and teaching on Luther, and teaching on Calvin, and teaching on the Reformation, and writing a bunch of articles and things like that. So my wife looks at me and She says, is this really retirement? So at any rate, I guess I'll have to just say that ministers who retire still continue their ministry in many respects.

And so that's what I and God's strength intend to do. Now today, I want to deal with this topic of how does God repent and many of you are familiar with different texts in the Bible where that particular word is used in relation to our Lord. And it also seems a bit antithetical. How is it possible, if we think of repentance as having to do with sin, that our Lord could repent? How is that possible?

And that's led a lot of Christians to struggle with coming up with a reasonable solution, a biblical solution to that question. How does God repent? How does God, as it seems to suggest, change his mind in relation to certain individuals in the Scripture? And how do we even understand that in regard to the sovereignty of God, the immutability of God, the fact that he never changes, and the omniscience of God, that he knows all things and he plans all things. Let me just say to you that I'm going to attempt to show you by scripture today and also by some godly reasoning that I believe that God is fully sovereign and that he controls all the events and details of this world both the good and the bad and that God foresees all things and that this foresight that God has, His omniscience and His omnipotence are firmly connected together, so that God not only foresees, but God also foreordains all things that come to pass.

Now I'll readily admit that not all Christians hold to the same resolute conviction that I just laid out for you. There are many Christians who would beg to differ with me and who have come up with other alternatives. And so let me just state the two commonly held viewpoints that people have come to when they've wrestled with these passages about God repenting or God changing his mind. The two basic views are these. I'll say first off that most Christians through the centuries have affirmed that God not only knows all things, they hold to a divine foreknowledge, but that God also superintends all that happens, both the good and the bad, so that they would affirm the divine sovereignty of God.

Most Christians through the centuries have held to that viewpoint. And that represents certainly the teachings of our Lords. It represents the teachings of the apostles. We especially find this in the epistles of the Apostle Paul. And then also in the Church Fathers such as Augustine and Tertullian and then finally that's come to us through the Reformation and what we would know as a Reformation or Reformed theology.

That's been the most common view And so if you hold to that, you're in good company. Let me just let you know that. Don't think for a minute that there are more Christians who hold to the other view. In fact, I would say that there are less Christians. It's just that in the time that we live right now, most Christians will hold to the second view that I'm going to bring forward.

But in the whole scope of church history, it's more on the other side. They affirm the complete sovereignty of God and the complete omniscience of God. So some Christians, however, have come to believe that God's knowledge is limited and that might be referred to as a partial omniscience, that God only knows part of the story. He knows what happened in the past. He knows what's happening today, but the future for God in this viewpoint is somewhat murky.

It's looking through a mirror dimly, to use the analogy that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 11. Only Paul's using it in reference to us. He's not referring to God. But that's another whole sermon. So these Christians, and I believe they are Christians but just misguided and misunderstand Holy Scripture hold to a partial omniscience and that God decrees what happens in this world only to the extent that it preserves man's freedom.

That's really the key issue in handling this issue of God repenting, is people will back up into the whole question of man's freedom. And they want very much to preserve that and this idea that God decrees only what preserves God's are what preserves man's freedom might be called a a universal sovereignty in that God foreordains all the big things that happen in this world but all the little issues that involve you and me all the details of human history God leaves those matters free now where does that thinking even begin well it doesn't happen so much with a Christian man, but a man that I would label as a heretic. His name was Pelagius. He lived in the fourth century. He was the opponent of Augustine.

He argued that man was totally free and that man did not receive the guilt of Adam, nor did he receive the sin nature of Adam. And that root of heresy then develops, once it's planted, develops a certain flower over time that leads to a way of thinking that's opposed to the truth of Scripture and I believe this becomes known in time as a more Arminian approach. Many well-meaning Christians have fallen into this. It's all they've ever known, all they've ever been taught. And then it's also led in these particular days that we live right now to a heretical position which some Christian writers have fallen into, others have pursued by their own accord in pursuing after their heresy called the openness of God theology.

And so I want to explain just a little bit of the openness God theology by reading to you a quote from one of the main proponents, and that is a man by the name of Clark Pinak. Clark Pinak at one time held to reform theology and the doctrines of grace. He also held to the inerrancy of scripture. And you have to wonder what happened in this man's life So that he rejected the sovereignty of God, he rejected the fallenness and brokenness of the will of man, and he rejected the authority and the inerrancy of scripture. But nonetheless, this is where he ends up in this openness of God theology.

So let me read you his quote here just to explain how far people can get off the mark. He writes, the open view of God is this, Our understanding of the scriptures leads us to depict God, the sovereign creator, as voluntarily bringing into existence a world with significantly free personal agents in it. Agents who can respond positively to God or reject his plans for them. In line with the decision to make this kind of world, God rules in such a way as to uphold the created structures and because he gives liberty to his creatures, is happy to accept the future as open, not closed, and a relationship with the world that is dynamic and not static. We believe that the Bible presents an open view of God as living and active, involved in history, relating to us and changing in relation to us.

Do you hear that last phrase? God changing in relation to us. So a denial of immutability of God, that somehow God changes his plan as men and women make decisions according to their own wisdom. He says further, we see the universe as a context in which there are real choices, alternatives, and surprises. God's openness means that God is open to the changing realities of history, that God cares about us and lets what we do impact him.

Our lives make a difference to God, they are truly significant And God is delighted when we trust him and saddened when we rebel against him. God has made us significant creatures and treats us as such." So what you see in the idea of a openness of God's theology is a rejection of God's omniscience, That God knows only the past and the present but not the future because that is all up for grabs. That's all something that you determine according to this particular heretical viewpoint, and that God just merely responds to your choices. That's where the evil fruit of Pelagianism has ended us and brought us that kind of rejection of the sovereignty of God over all aspects of life. Now let me just say in rebuttal to all of that that there's much in Scripture that shows that God is in control of all things and we'll get to those passages and lay them forward and set them out for you to wrestle with and think about, but also I would affirm that man does have a will.

I decided today to wear my stripe tie and not the tie with little paisleys on it. I decided to get up at a certain hour. I decided several years ago to buy a Ford truck instead of a Chevy truck and all those kinds of decisions that we make. We have a will. But that will is corrupted by sin, just like every other part of human existence.

The Bible teaches that we are totally depraved, that every part of our human experience and being has been corrupted by sin so that apart from the grace of God we cannot choose God freely we need God's divine assistance in giving us the gift of faith to believe and trust in him. That's what I would affirm. Now there are those who have said that the devil is in the details of life And I'll just make another affirmation. I totally reject that way of thinking. No, I would say to you that God is in the details of life.

That God isn't the one who controls and superintends and administers all of these things, yet giving us a will that is responsible to him and to his law. And God superintends all of those matters and he brings out of things that seem to us terrible and wretched and awful, he brings good things into our life so that we can be confident that God is overruling all the difficulties of this world and promises us that at the time of his return and the beginning of our time with the Lord in heaven, that we shall see the end of all sin and we shall see the end of all suffering and we shall see the end of all sickness and we can glorify in God that all of those wretched details, although they've been painful to us, have worked for God's purposes to accomplish his holy will. That's what I would affirm on the basis of Scripture. I don't want there to be any ambiguity here, but for you to understand clearly what the Bible teaches and what as a minister of the Church of Jesus Christ I would affirm. Let's go now to a number of texts in the Bible you can follow along in your Bible I encourage you to do that.

The first that I want to look at is Genesis chapter 6 verses 5 through 8 and this will be a bit of a survey so just be patient as we go through this and then we'll draw a number of these issues to an end at the conclusion of this particular talk. Starting in Genesis 6, verse 5. And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually and the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart so the Lord said I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land man and animals in creeping things and birds of the heavens for I am sorry that I have made them but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord Now I'm reading from the English Standard Version. Many of you may have the New King James or the King James version, which would use the word repented. God repented of the fact that he had made man and that man had become so wicked and evil.

Now the interesting thing is that this particular word, however you translate it, is used uniformly in all the various texts that I'm going to quote for you, and it is the Hebrew word nakam, nakam, and it means to sigh, to breathe heavily, that's the literal meaning, but its figurative meaning is to have pity, to have an attitude of consolation, or to repent, to relent, to be sorry, to be translated in all those different ways. But it's the same basic word that's used in all these different texts and so any attempt to find some sort of distinction between interpretations can only be done in terms of context but it's the same basic word, nakam in Hebrew. Now this text affirms that God has imputed the guilt of Adam and the sin nature of Adam, because Adam is our representative head to all of his progeny, to every human being. And because of that, throughout all the generations of mankind, we see this fallen will perpetuated from one generation to the next, to the next, to the next. It's the imputation of Adam's guilt and sin nature on the basis of his representative headship.

We see that taught not only here, but we see it also taught in the New Testament Romans 3 23 for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God it doesn't read that some have sinned but all have sinned or in 1st Corinthians 15 22 for as an Adam all die so also in Christ all shall be made alive. It makes it very clear there of the imputation of Adam's sin. Now when God saw man's wickedness, he was sorry, he grieved, he repented. What does that mean? It means the sigh, as it were, of a loving father who sees his creation fall into a place that he decreed it would happen yet he grieves in a sorrowful over it nonetheless he sees the consequences of sin He sees the brutality of it all.

He sees men fall into great wickedness and he grieves over that. And he resolves at this point to blot out man. Now you might think, well if he's going to blot out man that he would blot out all of them. But note what it says in the text, verse 8, But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. This shows us that the intention of God was to preserve a remnant.

And we'll find that that happens throughout the Old and the New Testament. The God is always preserving his people, a dedicated minority you might say, or a remnant of his people who will be faithful to him. It was God's design to bring forth into this world a people. It was God's decree that they would fall into sin. It was God's decree also in the covenant of redemption to save a people for himself.

We see that in Ephesians 1 and various other places in Scripture that God intended from the very beginning to save a people for himself, his covenant people. And in so doing, what we find is that God preserves this remnant, Noah and his family, so that God will always have a faithful remnant here on the earth. This, I would submit to you, was God's plan all along. This was God's divine decree that these matters would happen. It wasn't as if that God had somehow created man not knowing that they would fall or that God had created man not knowing that they would fall into wickedness and that that wicked seed would be carried on through the generations God knew all of that and so ordered all of that but he also so ordered that there would be a people saved for himself.

Those who came to trust the Messiah. Those who in our time would put their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's those people who will be with the Lord in heaven, and that is all part of God's design. Now, what have some of the interpreters of the Bible said about these passages beyond my interpretation or my exegetical thoughts on this. Here's John Calvin in his remarks on this very passage.

He says, the repentance which is here ascribed to God does not properly belong to him, but has a reference to our understanding of him. For since we cannot comprehend him as he is, it is necessary that for our sake he should in a certain sense transform himself. What Calvin is doing here is holding to what might be called the creator-creature distinction. That term was made popular by Cornelius Van Til earlier in the last century. But it's the same basic idea of affirming what Luther did that God is God and we are but mere pygmies in relation to him.

That God is holy, omnipotent, sovereign, righteous and full of his glory altogether. And we are our finite, fallen, fickle creatures who go our own way in rebellion to God. But God has understood all of that, and God has foreordained all of that, so that in his plan of redemption he might bring his people to himself. And they would happily come, because they know that their Lord has loved them and so reached out and rescued them in the midst of their affliction." Calvin goes on here he says, that repentance cannot take place in God or that repentance cannot take place in God easily appears from the single consideration that nothing happens which is by him unexpected or unforeseen. The same reasoning and remark applies to what follows, that God was affected with grief.

Certainly God is not sorrowful or sad, but remains forever like himself in his celestial unhappy repose, yet because it could not otherwise be known how great is God's hatred and detestation for sin. Therefore, the spirit accommodates himself to our capacity. Wherefore, there is no need for us to involve ourselves in thorny and difficult questions, when it is obvious to what end these words of repentance and grief are applied, namely, to teach us that from the time when man was so greatly corrupted, God would not reckon him among his creatures. This figure represents God as transferring to himself what is peculiar to human nature is called accommodation. Now Calvin brings up this term to try to explain some of these passages that we're coming across today by simply showing that God accommodates himself to human reason, to human thinking, to human experience by using the terms that we would be familiar with.

It's an accommodation. Let's just think for a minute that the greatest accommodation of all is that God sends forth his Son, the Son of God, the second member of the Trinity, the righteous King over all things. He sends him forth and Jesus takes on flesh and lives amongst us. It's an accommodation so that we understand Him. That's why Jesus will say numerous times, if you've known Me, then you've known the Father, because of that accommodation, the incarnation of bringing flesh onto himself.

And so Calvin sought to understand these passages with that type of structure that it is a accommodation. Another commentator, Matthew Henry, whom you'd all be familiar with in the 17th century, said this, These are expressions after the manner of men, and must be understood so as not to reflect upon the honor of God's immutability or felicity. The change was in man, not in God. God took up this resolution concerning man after his spirit had long been striving with him in vain. None are ruined by the justice of God, but those who hate to be reformed by the grace of God.

And so what we see in these two commentators from the time of the Reformation or the time of the Puritan era is this understanding that the passages that refer to God's repentance is an accommodation to human understanding so that we can understand fully what God has done. God sovereignly decreed all things. God is in the details. God is in the details of our fall. God is in the details of our coming to faith in Him and our redemption.

And God is in the details of our living with Him forever in the divine heavens. And that's the picture, I believe, that Scripture gives forth. Let's go to another passage, Exodus chapter 32. In Exodus 32, just to set the context, Moses has gone up upon the mountain of God and he's receiving the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments. And then Ten commandments are given for our benefit.

The uses of the law are threefold. The first use of the law is to show us our sin and our need for a savior. The second use of the law is a controlling influence over all the different affairs of men and the governments of this world so that the law gives us a divine framework for all of our human laws. It's a restraint to wickedness. The third use of the law is for believers and that is that it gives us a rule of righteousness or a way of living so that we as Christians will not offend God or violate his law.

So Moses is receiving God's law at this time and he's told by the Lord that the people are in rebellion in the valley below. In verse 7, the Lord says to Moses, go down for your people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshipped it and sacrificed it and said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And so we see there's this terrible calamity going on down below in the valley. Moses goes down, Joshua with him, and they confront the people in their wickedness as this passage goes along. But before that happens, we see in verse 9, the Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people, which also translates a rebellious people, a people who are given to the nature of the fallen Adam, a people who are given to following after their own designs and violating not only the first but also the second and the third commandments in this particular action.

They are stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation of you." This is a rather shocking statement to Moses And it's a shocking statement to us because God has already said that he's going to take the seed of Abraham and he's going to make them so numerous and great that they're going to be more than the stars of the heavens, but yet here's God saying he's going to destroy all of these people and their seed and start completely over with Moses. Now if Moses was a prideful man, then he probably would have gone along with this plan and said, all right, Lord, just destroy them all. And let's start over with someone like me. But he was not a prideful man.

He was a humble man. And he intercedes on behalf of the people that are below. And he implores God to not destroy them. And he gives three basic statements, asking, as it were, God to not go forward with this intent to destroy. The actions are these.

He brings up the way that God rescued his people out of Egypt and preserved them from the Egyptians and through the flood and many other calamities to bring them to this spot. And so he appeals to that. Secondly, he appeals to God's reputation. And that he says, if you destroy the people here, then all the Egyptians who remain in the land, they're going to think, well, how crazy was this? That God would preserve his people and rescue his people, but then he would go and destroy them in the wilderness.

And then he appeals to God's covenantal promises, and he refers to how God is indeed the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self and said to them, I will multiply your offspring as stars of heaven and all this land that I have promised I will give you to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever." And So Moses is appealing back to all those covenantal promises that God has made to preserve the people and to grow them so that they would fill the earth at some point and they would love him and serve him. And then we see verse 14 at the end of this prayer that Moses makes, and the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. The word relented in the English standard in the King James is certainly translated, repented. It's the same basic word I've referred to before the Hebrew word, nakam, which means to grieve or to sigh, literally, or figuratively, to repent. So how do we understand this passage?

I would submit to you that it was God's plan all along to work with the people whom he had brought out of Egypt. That he had rescued them through the Exodus, that it was his plan after the generation had wandered in the wilderness for many years, that rebellious generation, to bring their children and their grandchildren, fulfilling covenant promises, into the Promised Land. And God is not deterred from that plan. But what he does here is that he prepares the leader, Moses, and later Joshua, to be the kind of leaders and men who humble themselves before God. And what we see here is, as it were, a school of discipleship for Moses and Joshua to prepare them to lead the people through some very difficult, tumultuous, troublesome circumstances that are going to be theirs.

As they go up the Jordan River Valley, as they prepare to come into the promised land, and then as they seek to fulfill the commission that God has given them to take the land for themselves. And so God is preparing the leadership of his people to do that and he does that through this statement that he's going to consume them and then through them later saying in answer as it were to Moses' prayer, that he relented or repented from the disaster. God intended to bring his people all the time into those different areas, in the fulfillment of all that he had said previously. But God uses the circumstances here to hammer out the leadership abilities and also the humility of those who would lead his people. Again, listen to Calvin on the subject.

When therefore it is said a little further on that the Lord repentest of the evil, it is tantamount to saying that he was appeased, Not because he retracts in himself what he has once decreed, but because he does not execute the sentence that he had pronounced. This really brings up another point to just lay out before you. In the Westminster Confession of Faith, also in the Second London Confession of 1689, you'll see that the reformers were careful to make a distinction between the first cause and the second cause. And that there were the divine decrees of God, those events that he had foreordained and that he had foreseen by his divine foreknowledge, and he had decreed that they would happen. But God is also involved in the secondary causes.

God is also involved in the prayers of Moses, and he hears the prayers of Moses as he had already foreordained, and he then acts accordingly in saying that he will not bring forth this disaster but it's all part of the same primary cause and then the use of secondary causes or means a similar idea might be in the sense that God has chosen you to be his not because he thought you were a good person and you looked down through the quarters or the times of history and saw that you were a good person and decided to select you through ordination or excuse me through as is for ordination and election but the God so or foreordained and put his love upon you and then brought you to himself and use all the secondary decisions that were made your response to the gospel your walk of obedience but in all of that God supremely gets the glory, solo Deo gloria, because he is the one who has foreordained all things using not only the first causes but secondary causes. So if you want to think more about that notion, go to the Westminster Confession in chapter 3 or the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 And you'll see the same basic teaching there in those documents.

Matthew Henry says this, Moses was standing in the gap to turn away the wrath of God. But God graciously abated the rigor of the sentence and repented of the evil he thought to do, though he signed to punish them, yet he would not ruin them." Those are Matthew Henry's comments, that God is sovereign and omnipotent, but that God also works in the secondary causes, in the prayers of men and women, and still accomplishes his will. We'll go to another passage. Numbers 23, verse 19. Numbers 23, verse 19.

This is the text that has to do with Balaam. As the people of God, whom God preserved, he didn't destroy, make their way up past the Amalekites, they come to the Moabites. And they have destroyed the Amalekites and the king of the Moabites who is Balak the son of Zippor is worried and fretful that they're going to do the same thing to He and all of His people. And so, he seeks to hire Balaam, you know the story, to come and to curse the people of God. And Balaam rejects that offer several times over and says that he can only say exactly what the Lord gives to him.

And but finally a deal as it were is struck between the two men. God as it were gives permission for Balaam to go and We know the rest of the story that at one point God humbles Balaam by Causing his donkey to speak to him and to rebuke him Which is rather humorous antidote in scripture who would have ever dreamt up anything like that other than Than our holy God to have the donkey speak and to rebuke the Prophet And then we see here in a number of the oracles that Balak hears from Balaam, a number of statements that Balaam makes about what God is doing. First of all, we see that Balaam correctly states that these are God's people and that they are people of his favor and he's rescued them so that they can take possession of the land. That's God's intent and God is going to fulfill that. So Balaam speaks of that over and over again.

But then we see in the second Oracle this statement in verse 18 and 19, and Balaam took up his discourse and said, Rise, Balak, and hear. Give ear to me, O son of Zippor. God is not man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said and will he not do it or has he spoken and will he not fulfill it? And so what we see in these statements here is this prophecy that God is giving to Balaam, affirming the immutability of God.

That God is not one who changes. That God in his essential being is the same today as he was yesterday and will be in the future. That God is that same being who has eternally decreed certain events to come to pass. And so Balaam is making that statement here. He also affirms in verse 21, he says, behold, I received a command to bless.

He is blessed and I cannot revoke it he has not beheld misfortune in Jacob nor has he seen trouble in Israel the Lord their God is with them those are the last words that Balak wanted to hear that the Lord God is with them. But all of those words are simply showing us here that whereas men want to lie and give themselves to deception and change in our mind a hundred times once we make a decision, God is not so in that same category. The God continues to move forward on His eternal plan. Here is Calvin again on this passage. He says, men are wont to lie because they are fickle and changeable in their plans.

Or because sometimes they are unable to accomplish what they have promised. But change of purpose arises either from levity or bad faith, or because we repent of what we have spoken foolishly and inconsiderately about. But to God, nothing of this sort occurs, for he is neither deceived nor does he deceitfully promise anything, nor as James says, is there any shadow of turning. Balak desired to have the people cursed whom God had adopted. Balaam declares that this is impossible, because God is unchangeable in what he has decreed." And so again, we see from this passage That God's plan to preserve a people is going forward and he is not going to be deterred from it Even those people are fickle and also at times bring great condemnation upon themselves.

God is using all of those circumstances to advance his program of redemption and also of the possession of the land. Another passage, in 1 Samuel 15. This particular passage has to do with an individual by the name of Saul. Saul, who became the king of Israel. And Saul is commanded by the Lord in verse 3 of 1 Samuel 15 to bring vengeance upon the people of Amalek.

And so he says, go now and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have and do not spare them, but kill both men and women, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." This is for the remaining peoples of the Amalekites who were not destroyed when Israel had gone through their territory before and who had attacked Israel, God then sends Saul, as it were, to complete the work of destruction upon them. Now Following the victory, because Saul is successful in bringing destruction to the Amalekites, Saul seizes their king, Agag, rather than putting him to death, captures him and brings him back to Israel. Also, Saul and the people spared the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fattened calves, the lambs, and all that was good, and they did not utterly destroy them. So the Lord speaks to Samuel and tells Samuel that all is going on that should not happen. We see in verse 10 these words.

The word of the Lord came to Samuel, I regret that I had made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments. And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the Lord all night and Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning and it was told Samuel Saul came to Carmel and behold he set up a monument for himself and he turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal And Samuel came to Saul and Saul said to him, Blessed be to you, blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord, says Saul. But Samuel knows otherwise." How does he know otherwise? Well, he's heard rumors of the monument.

There's Agag standing before him and then he also refers to the fact, what then is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear? Saul gives what I think is one of the more lame excuses for all of this. After all, he is the king and he could have ordered his people to do anything and they would have done it and Saul says they have brought them from the Amalekites for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen to sacrifice the Lord your God and the rest we have devoted to destruction well Saul here blames the people for his neglect in fulfilling what God has told him to do. And so, Saul in essence puts the culpability upon them, and then he makes the statement, well, they've just taken all of these so that they can sacrifice to the Lord your God that is a very pregnant statement I don't want to rush by that in the in the passage here we see that Samuel confronts Saul many times, but Saul consistently makes the statement that the people, and also he himself, will come before your God, Samuel.

He says that three times in verse 15, verse 21, and verse 30, showing that this God whom he served, he did not serve with his whole heart, and that he had always been that way before the Lord, even though he, in a perfunctory way, fulfilled God's commandment in attacking the Amalekites and destroying them, he did not fulfill all that God had called him to do. And then, Samuel confronts him in the midst of that and he makes it very clear that Saul is in rebellion to the Lord. Samuel in verse 16 says to Saul stop I will tell you what the Lord said to me this night and he said to him speak and Samuel said though you are little in your own eyes are you not the head of the tribes of Israel the Lord anointed you king over Israel and the Lord sent you on a mission and said go devote to destruction the sinners the Amalekites and fight against them until they are consumed why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord." And Saul said to Samuel, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, I have gone on the mission on which you sent me, or which the Lord sent me, I have brought Agag, the king of Malachak, I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction, but the people took the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best things and things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal." So what we see here is a man whose heart is far away from God.

He's doing the external matters, but he's not doing all that God had commanded him. And he's showing himself to be a man of false repentance. He's showing himself to be a man who really did not have a heart after God and who did not have a living relationship with God. A man who for God's purposes was used to advance the nation of Israel but also in God's purposes ultimately would be humbled and would be put to death in battle and that would make way for a man who was after God's heart, who was David, who would be a faithful king unto the Lord despite all of his own issues with sin. And so what we see here is a condemnation, as it were, of Saul.

In verse 29, we see a fascinating retort to this whole issue where Samuel says in verse 27, as Samuel turned to go away, Saul seized the skirt of his robe and it tore, and Samuel said to him, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you and also the glory of Israel will not lie or have regret for he is not a man that he should have regret." And so when we come across a statement like that we we see as it were Samuel tempering the viewpoint that Saul would have a God and that we would have of God. That God is not a man like us that he should have regret or that he would lie. The God is unchangeable, the God is omnipotent, the God is omniscient, the God is sovereign over all things. And so that statement gives us that sort of foundation for us to stand on in interpreting this passage. Let me just step back for one minute and say that when I think about Saul as an individual, he was guilty of many things in his life that were an offense to God.

Isn't it wonderful to think for a moment that in God's divine plan, that in God's plan to redeem his people, that he works in the lives of certain people, some of who are sitting right here in this audience and standing before you, who have done many wicked things and thought many wicked things and rebelled against God. Yet God in his sovereign providence has drawn us and brought us out of our wickedness into a place of loving relations with him. Whereas Saul shows himself to be reprobate, those who love God and who serve him gladly, even in their struggles with sin, but yet always leading to the repentance of life, show themselves to be of the elect. And that's the picture we see over and over in Scripture, that God fulfills his divine plan, and God sends some, as it were, to destruction. There are vessels of wrath designed for destruction in Romans chapter 9, as the Bible tells us, and others are vessels of mercy that are designed for life.

And so we rejoice in such purposes as that. Here are some comments from Calvin and Matthew Henry on this passage. When God repents of having made Saul king, the change of mind is to be taken figuratively. A little later there is added, the strength of Israel will not lie nor be turned aside by repentance, for he is not a man that he may repent. 1 Samuel 15, 29.

By these words, openly and unfiguratively, God's unchangeableness is declared. Therefore it is certain that God's ordinance in the managing of human affairs is both everlasting and above all repentance. And then Matthew Henry. Repentance in God is not as it is in us, a change of mind, but a change of his method or dispensation. He does not alter his will, but wills his alteration.

The change was in Saul. He turned his back from following me. This construction God put upon the partiality of Saul's obedience and the prevalence of his covetousness. And hereby he did himself make God his enemy. God repented that he had given Saul the kingdom and the honor and power that belonged to it, but he never repented that he had given any man wisdom and grace and his fear and love.

These gifts and calling of God are without repentance." And that's where you and I can be grateful that God in His mercy has worked in our lives, bringing us to Himself, persevering as it were through our rebelliousness, softening us, convicting us of our sins, drawing us to Himself, and giving us the gift of life. All done by God. Not by some sort of cooperative arrangement or synergism. Man in free will and God in his sovereign purposes working together. No, that's not it.

But only a divine monergism that God alone is the one who foresees and foreordains, that God alone is the one who elects, that God is the one who predestines, that God is the one who draws us and converts us, that God is the one who justifies us, and God is the one who sanctifies and glorifies us. In all these matters, God gets the glory. Soli Deo Gloria. Now there are many other passages we could go to. You'll find them listed in the description here.

I'll just name a few. 2 Samuel 24, 15, and 16. In regard to David's census, to David's census, Psalm 106 44 and 45, where it says that God, for their sake, remembered his covenant and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love. Psalm 110 verse 4, the Lord is sworn and will not change his mind. The psalmist says, Jeremiah 15 6, You have rejected me, declares the Lord, you keep going backwards, and so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you I am weary of relenting or repenting in regard to you He's speaking of the nation of Israel.

Jeremiah 26, 3, it may be that they will listen and everyone will turn from his evil way and I may relent of the disaster that I intend to do them because of their evil deeds. Or in Jonah 3, verse 9 and 10, where the king of Nineveh says, who knows, God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he said he would do to them, and he did not do it. And if you recall, Jonah was very sorrowful over that, that he wanted to see them destroyed. But God in his grace and mercy had a far bigger plan for Nineveh than their destruction that day.

That God would bring them to himself. And so what we see is we have this survey of a number of different scriptures is this tension, as it were, between God's divine foreknowledge, his omniscience, and man's will. And I believe that the answer lies in scripture interpreting scripture, the more easy to understand passages shedding light on the harder to understand ones. That's a basic reformation principle which we call the analogy of faith or scripture interpreting scripture but we also see the solution in these following points one that God is eternally holy righteous and omniscient the God not only foresees all things but God for ordains all things That it's not the devil who's in the details, but God who's in the details. That God is the one who has worked in this world in such a way that even though there's hardship and there's sickness and at times there's rebellion and suffering and consequences of sin, God uses all of that To accomplish his purposes and to extend the kingdom of Jesus Christ Just think for a moment in your own life how God patiently endured the rebellious spirit in you but by his grace brought you to repentance giving you that gift of faith so that you could believe and serve him throughout the rest of your years we are all much like The Apostle Paul were unlikely converts except by the grace of God, that God had foreordained all things.

Verses that support this are Deuteronomy 29, 29, the secret things belong to the Lord our God but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do all the words of his law. There are secret things that belong to God alone, but then there are other things that are revealed that we understand. We must keep those in proper perspective. We must acknowledge that God is God and we are fallen creatures that are in need of his grace and mercy and when he gives it we rejoice and we follow after his son happily. Another passage, Isaiah 45 verses 5 through 7.

I am the Lord and there is no other besides me. There is no God. I equip you though you do not know me, that people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none besides me. I am the Lord, there is no other. I form the light and I create darkness.

I make well-being and I create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. Now that's a picture of a God who's in control, who doesn't have a limited foresight. That's a picture of God who uses all of the difficulties and calamities of this world for his purposes. And ultimately, he wins today.

And he's the one who gets all the glory. So the first point is God is eternally holy, righteous, and omniscient. Secondly, that God is changeless in his being. Isaiah 46, 9 through 10, I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from the ancient times, things not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose.

God is involved in all the details. God is changeless in his being. Thirdly, God is faithful to his covenant promises. God has determined to save a people, and by his grace we could be numbered in that. And in saving a people, it says that for their sake, he remembered his covenant in Psalm 106 verse 46 and relented according to their abundance of his steadfast love.

God is faithful looking upon all the difficulties of life and forgiving us and working with us and bringing us to himself so that we might serve him. He's faithful to his covenant promises. Psalm 103 verse 17 and 19, but the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children's children to those who keep his commandments the Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over all. That shows us the divine authority of God over all things, that he is faithful to his covenant promises to those who keep his commandments. Fourthly, God is loyal to his covenant people.

God works amongst his people. Martin Luther talked about how as a new Christian, he still struggled with sin. He said he was simo justus et peccator, which in English means he was simultaneously justified while at the same time a sinner. He referred to himself as a sinner saint. The Roman Catholics fired back and said, that's just a mere legal fiction.

You're deluding yourself, Luther, to think that by God's divine declaration and justification that you have been forgiven of your sins, when as yet you still struggle with them. But Luther simply went to the Bible over and over and over again showing that God in his mercy is loyal to his covenant people and that He justifies us by imputation at a certain point in time, and then He perfects us through sanctification, through our struggle with the world and the flesh and the devil, and brings us to himself to live in holiness forever and ever. And that is God's plan. There is no limitation of foresight or omniscience. There is no restriction of God's omnipotence only to the big events of this world and not to the small events.

Instead, what we find in the Bible is a picture of our sovereign God who rules over all things and that he is eternally holy and righteous, he is changeless in his being, he is faithful to his covenant promises, and he is loyal to his covenant people. And upon that note, I will end. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you that our God is a great God and that he has so accommodated himself in the language of the scripture, to give us some sense of who he is. We thank you, Lord, that in the midst of that, you continue to prove over and over that you are eternally holy and righteous and omniscient and we thank you Lord that you are changeless in your being and faithful to your covenant promises, and loyal to your covenant people, whom you have saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In his name we now give thanks. Amen.