Chapter 1. 17
God Regrets
God
has emotions; LOVE, MERCY
and COMPASSION
as
well as SORROW, GRIEF
and REGRETS.
Does
God regret differently than man?
God is not a man
The Book says man was made in
God’s image, so we try to attribute to God, who lives outside of time physical attributes
just like us. We say he has eyes because
he sees all and because we use our hands to make things, we say; by God’s hands
all things were created.
QUESTION; DOES GOD HAVE HIS BAD DAYS like us where He
REGRETS stuff?
There is a movement today called “Open-Theism”; that God is like us, He does not
know how the future will unfold; that if He did, He would do things
differently. The
Book says HE IS NOT A MAN with attributes that He would lie, change his
mind, or even REGRET. Known unto God are ALL His works from the beginning of the world. Everything He plans will come to pass,
for He does whatever He wishes; it will be as He has
decided. It will all
happen just as He has planned. His thoughts are NOT our thoughts, neither are His ways our
ways because His ways and thoughts are so much higher than ours.
This makes it impossible for us to understand His decisions and His ways.[1]
If God
is All-Knowing; then He is NOT growing in knowledge and wisdom;
He is NOT in a learning curve, He cannot improve upon His perfection; He is the
same yesterday, today and forever; He does NOT change. So the elephant in the room is the question;
how can an All Knowing, All Powerful and
All Present God; knowing the end from
the beginning REGRET what he has
done when He already knew how it was going to end? Is God’s regretting somehow different from
that of man? SELAH; ponder that
Image of God
God’s
Image or Likeness is His NATURE; the Book gives examples of His COMPASSION; in reaching out to others, having the
desire to lift others up, this is His image of LOVE. Mortal man differs from all other creatures
because of his self-reflective, rational nature of thought processes, His
capacity for abstract, symbolic as well as concrete deliberation and
decision-making, this is truly being made in God’s image, no other creature on
earth has been given this likeness.
Man was made in God’s Image to be able to SEE, HEAR and SPEAK with KNOWLEDGE; and with His COUNSEL to have understanding of what is GOOD
and what is EVIL. We were made in His likeness to UNDERSTAND, ADMINISTER, RULE and JUDGE concerning
His commandments and “The Law of Life”.
GOD IS NOT
A MAN; He is not
physical; He is Divine and it is in the spiritual attributes of His Image in
which we are created. The only thing
that is lacking is to be ETERNAL like Him and He has provided “THE WAY” for those who would “seek it”.
Before
we go any further, you
must get this; God in His awesome mercy created and surrounded man with
everything he could possible need before He created him and then set him smack
dab down in the middle of it. This Image
of God is LOVE, MERCY and COMPASSION. God did not create Death nor does He take
pleasure in it. Man was created to have “the HOPE of eternal life”; to be ETERNAL just like
God and that attribute comes by the way of “FREE WILL”.
Man’s Free Will can reject the
spiritual and moral likeness of God.[2]
THE APOCRYPHA contains books that may or may not be
written by the author as its title might suggest, as many were just outright FAKES.
Therefore most were left out of our Bible, but
I find they shed a lot of light on what the people were thinking during that
time. I include some of them here as some
students of the Word do not yet have a copy in their library.
THOUGHTS FROM THE APOCRYPHA
2 Enoch 65:1-2
– God created the physical and the spiritual
1
And Enoch answered all his people saying: Hear, my children, before
that all creatures were created, the Lord created the visible (physical) and invisible (spiritual) things.
2 And
as much time as there was and went past, understand that after all that he
created man in the likeness of his own form, and put into him eyes to SEE,
and ears to HEAR, and heart to reflect (THINK), and intellect wherewith to deliberate. (REASON).
2 Enoch 44:1-
God created man in His likeness
1
The Lord with his hands having created man, in the LIKENESS
of his own face, the Lord made him small and great.
2 Enoch 44:3 -
Compassion to lift up, help and give to the needy
3 Blessed
is the man who does not direct his heart with malice against any man, and HELPS
the injured and condemned, and RAISES the broken down, and shall do CHARITY
to the needy, because on the day of the great judgment every weight, every
measure and every makeweight (will
be) as in the market, … and according to his measure shall take his
reward.
Wisdom of
Solomon 1:13-14 – Created all things, but not death
13 For
God made NOT DEATH: neither hath he pleasure in the
destruction of the living. - For he created
all things,
14 that
they might HAVE THEIR
BEING: and the generations of the world were
healthful; and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor the kingdom of
death upon the earth
Wisdom of
Solomon 2:23 – Created with the hope of eternal life
23 For
God created man TO BE IMMORTAL, (full hope of eternal life) and made him to be an image of his own
eternity.
Sirach
17:4 – God made man ACCORDING to His Image
1 The
Lord created man of the earth, and turned him into it again.
2 He
gave them few days, and a short time, and power also over the things therein.
3 He
endued them with strength by themselves, and made them ACCORDING to
his image, and put the fear of man upon all flesh,
4 and
gave him dominion over beasts and fowls.
Sirach 17:5 –
Gave man Understanding and Speech
5 They
received the use of the five operations of the Lord, and in the sixth place he
imparted them UNDERSTANDING, and in the seventh SPEECH,
an interpreter of the cogitations thereof.
Sirach 17:6 –
Gave Counsel to speak, see, hear and understand
6 COUNSEL,
and a tongue, and eyes, ears, and a heart, gave he them to understand.
Sirach 17:7-10
– Filled man with knowledge of Good and Evil
7 Withal
he filled them with the KNOWLEDGE of understanding, and shewed them GOOD and EVIL.
8 He
set his eye upon their hearts, that he might shew them the greatness of his
works.
9 He
gave them to glory in his marvelous acts forever, that they might declare his
works with understanding.
10 And
the elect shall praise his holy name.
Sirach 17:11 -
Gave them the law of life
11 Beside
this he gave them knowledge, and THE LAW OF LIFE for a heritage.
Sirach 17:12 –
Gave them His judgments and commandments
12 He
made an everlasting covenant with them, and shewed them his JUDGMENTS.
13 Their
eyes saw the majesty of his glory, and their ears heard his glorious voice.
14 And
he said unto them, Beware of all unrighteousness; and he gave every man COMMANDMENT concerning his neighbor.
2 Esdras 8:44 –
Gods’ mercy surrounded man - all his needs met
44 Even
so perishes MAN also, which is formed with thy hands, and
is called thine own image, because thou art like unto him,
FOR
WHOSE SAKE YOU HAVE MADE ALL THINGS,
and
likened him unto the husbandman's seed
Adam
& Eve
Before
God created humans in his own image, He first placed into effect the Law of Sin
and Death AND the Plan of
Salvation. This was because,
that in His Omnipotence, He knew that Adam and Eve would eat from the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil.
This sin would SEPARATE them from God, but the Plan of Salvation would give them THE WAY back to Him if they chose by FREE WILL to “seek it”.
The literal translation says God was grieved “all the way to His heart”. Consider the depth of an infinite God, how
much grief it took to fill all the way to His heart. Now wrap your mind around the fact that our
Omnipotent; all knowing God knew what would happen and did it anyway. [3]
Genesis
6:5-6 – God regretted what man must now go through
5 The LORD observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth,
and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and
totally evil.
6 So THE
LORD WAS SORRY HE HAD EVER MADE
THEM and
put them on the earth. IT BROKE HIS HEART. (NLT)
Sin grieves God; He saw how mankind would become mired
deep in sin and separated from Him and He REGRETTED in His heart what man would have to
endure in order to find his way back to Him. Consider that in the end, God’s perfect plan
of love WILL result in a world WITHOUT SIN.
King Saul
God does not regret through ignorance
of future
events, He repents or regrets based
on knowing that He has already foreseen the future and knows how it will end. The Book says He
knows the End before it has ever begun. The
Hebrews wanted a King like all the other nations. The Priest Samuel was deeply hurt with their
demands and told God what the people were saying. God told Samuel to not despair; they were not
rejecting him, they were rejecting Jehovah God. Samuel WARNS the Hebrews of what will happen if they
choose to be like the other nations.
God chooses Saul to be king and states
that there is “no
one in Israel like him”. Time
moves on and Saul takes it on himself to offer a sacrifice to God instead of
waiting on his Priest Samuel as he was instructed. Later on King Saul disobeys God’s command to
completely destroy the heathen Amalekite nation; men, women, children, babies,
cattle, sheep, goats, camels and donkeys.[4]
God said I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has
turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. THE LORD
REGRETTED that His PLAN
would include King Saul and the nation of Israel in a time of tribulation, He
grieved because of what they would have
to endure because of their sin; He knew all of this and did it anyway.
Obedience is better than
sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of a ram.
The Take Away
There are two kinds of regrets; One Reveals God’s nature, He does not change, alter nor regret His plans
that He performs. The other Reveals God’s emotions of sorrow about rebellion and sin; He has deep
emotion of regrets knowing that mankind will be separated from Him. When an “infinite” God says TWICE that He regrets making
mankind and making Saul King of Israel, He is allowing a “finite” people
to understand His
emotions by briefly pulling back
the curtain and letting us have a glimpse into what He foreknew before He
created the World.
He knew the pain and the Sorrow mankind would bring Him, but yet He did
it anyway in order for the His Plan of Salvation to be put into effect. God knowing something does not diminish how He feels. He knew that His greatest creation would
become SEPARATED from Him; so before He
ever created mankind, He placed into effect THE PLAN for us to FIND OUR WAY BACK to Him.
Imagine the hurt and grief in your heart knowing that because of FREE WILL some of your kids will
reject YOU. God knew the gateway to life is very narrow and the
road is difficult, and only a few will ever find it; yet He created
mankind anyway.
If you are NOT
given the opportunity to choose, then the outcome can never be known. Abraham
could have changed his mind going up the mountain, he could have changed his
mind when he stacked the firewood. But
it was only when Abraham raised his knife to sacrifice Isaac did we know for
sure that he would not change his mind. SELAH; ponder that
awhile.
This is hard to fathom, but in the end, because of FREE WILL we will live in a world
that is totally without
sin. LIFE IS CHOICE DRIVEN[5] It’s in the Book
Genesis 6:6 – IT BROKE GOD’S HEART Knowing man’s
rebellion
6 GOD
was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place;
IT BROKE HIS
HEART. (MSG)
Matthew 7:14 – It BREAKS GOD’S HEART; few will
choose Him
14 But THE GATEWAY TO
LIFE IS VERY NARROW and the road
is difficult, AND
ONLY A FEW EVER FIND IT. (NLT)
[1] Genesis 1:26-27 – Man made in the image of God -- Isaiah 55:8-9 – God’s ways and thought are
higher than man -- 1 Samuel
15:29 – God does not regret like a man -- Numbers
23:19 – God does not change His mind like a man -- Hebrews 13:8 – God is the same yesterday,
today and forever -- Romans
11:33 – It is impossible to understand his ways -- Isaiah 14:24 – Everything God decides will
happen as planed -- Acts 15:18 –
God works are known unto Him from the beginning -- Isaiah 46:10 – Everything God plans will come
to pass
[2] Acts 17:27-28 – God’s purpose
was for the nations to seek Him if they will
[3] Genesis 1:27 – God created humans in His own image
-- Psalm 139:16 – God knew
mankind’s actions before creation -- Genesis 2:15-17 – If you sin, you will
surely die -- Genesis 6:5-6 –
God regretted he had ever made humans -- Romans 6:23 – The wages of sin is death -- Romans 8:1-3 – God gives the plan of salvation -- 1 Corinthians 15:57 – Thank God for the Plan
of Salvation
[4] 1 Samuel 8:6-7 – The Hebrews reject God’s leading for a King -- 1 Samuel
8:11-20 – God WARNS what a king will do to them -- 1
Samuel 10:21-24 – Saul is chosen to be the King of Israel -- Samuel 13:9-14 –
Saul disobeys and offers a sacrifice – 1 -- Samuel 15:3 – Destroy the ENTIRE
Amalekite nation – Disobeys -- 1 Samuel
15:22 - Obedience is better than sacrifice -- 1 Samuel 15:11 – God Regrets Saul has turned his back -- 1 Samuel
15:35 – God regrets He made Saul the King
[5] Matthew 22:14 – LIFE IS CHOICE DRIVEN
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