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When the sovereign God seems to be surprised, part 5 (final)

When God called Moses at the burning bush, Moses complained that he was not eloquent. God’s response is seen in Exodus 4:11,

¹¹ The Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?”

The implication is that the Creator has the power to decide whether men are mute, blind, and deaf or to make them speak, hear, or see. Moses did lead Israel out of Egypt, but they remained in the wilderness for 40 years. At the end of that time, as they prepared to enter the land, Moses told the people in Deuteronomy 29:4,

⁴ Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear.

By this time, Moses understood the sovereignty of God and the revelation given to him at the burning bush. God still held the people accountable for their spiritual blindness and their inability to hear His voice, but this accountability was subordinate to God’s accountability. Hence, the judgment upon Israel was not to be permanent, for the day would come when God would open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf.

Such things were illustrated every time Jesus healed the blind and the deaf. Not all are healed in their lifetime, but in the end, God must heal all eyes and ears so that every knee can bow and every tongue can profess Christ to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10, 11). If God should fail to open their eyes and to give them “a heart to know,” whereby they might be saved, then God would be responsible for the loss of most (or all) of His creation.

This is, in fact, where Calvin was in error. He taught that God was sovereign, but he also taught that God exercised His sovereignty by choosing a few to be saved and the others to be tortured in a burning hell forever. God had not opened his eyes to understand the responsibilities of God’s sovereignty. Sovereignty makes God accountable to His own righteous standard, even as man’s authority makes man accountable for his own actions. Hence, Calvin set forth a sovereign God who was essentially an unjust tyrant. By not understanding the restoration of all things, his teachings caused many to reject the idea of the sovereignty of God.

Jeremiah’s Revelation

When the people of Jerusalem degenerated to the point where they were sacrificing their children to false gods, the prophet gave a word of judgment in Jeremiah 19:4, 5,

4 “Because they have forsaken Me and have made this an alien place and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods that neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent, 5 and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter My mind, 6 therefore, behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the valley of Ben-hinnom, but rather the valley of slaughter.”

Judah had adopted the religious practices of foreigners and were sacrificing their first born sons as burnt offerings. This practice was based on the principle, revealed in the distant past through prophecy, that the firstborn Son of God would be offered as a sacrifice for sin. Carnally-minded men then twisted this, thereby creating false religions.

Those false religions believed that their priests represented God. Their temples (or “groves”) were centers of debauchery, where women were required, prior to marriage, to have sexual relations with a priest. Often, this would result in pregnancy, and if she brought forth a son, it was said to be a son of God (by means of the priest). This son, then, was offered as a burnt offering to atone for the sin of the family.

This doctrine later was brought (partially) into the church in its doctrine of hell. By not understanding the nature of the “fiery law” (Deuteronomy 33:2 KJV) that establishes justice according to the God of love, they made it literal and applied it to those who remain blind and deaf during their entire lifetime. In other words, they teach that such sinners must pay the penalty for their own sin, as if they were solely responsible for seeing and hearing the word of God.

This is a violation of the nature of God, and it destroys the New Covenant promise of God to justify all men (Romans 5:18) and to be “the Savior of all men” (1 Timothy 4:10). It also violates the principle of the Jubilee, which is the law of grace that puts a limit upon men’s liability (slavery) on account of their sin. For further study about the nature of “hell,” see my book, The Judgments of the Divine Law.

God said through Jeremiah that this practice never entered God’s mind. This does not mean that God was unaware of it. It meant that this was foreign to His own nature and to all the revelation that He had given to men in His word.

Why Does God Not Intervene?

What Moses said to the Israelites in his day also applied to the people of Jerusalem in Jeremiah 19. Both were blind to the truth of God’s nature, because God had not yet given them eyes to see and ears to hear. But why? Would it not have been so much better to intervene? From our limited perspective, yes, it would have been better. However, it would not have been lawful for God to do this, at least not at that time.

When God delegated authority to man in Genesis 1:26-28, He limited Himself. In other words, although He will ultimately succeed in implementing the divine plan for creation, He decided to do so through man. That is the point of delegating authority to man. This authority is real, and because God is the Author of all authority, He respects that authority.

We may ask ourselves, why did God delegate authority, knowing that things would go wrong? In my view, the purpose for man’s creation is to bring sons into maturity. This could hardly be accomplished apart from delegating authority. If we ourselves never delegated authority to our children, how would they ever come to maturity? Maturity is largely a matter of learning how to use an increasing amount of authority without abusing it. This requires hands-on experience. And most of our learning involved failure at first.

When Adam sinned, he abused that authority, but God did not remove him from his position of authority. Why? Because the divine plan called for a “Son of man” to come to earth, that is, Jesus Christ. Though He had a heavenly Father, making Him the “Son of God,” He also had an earthly mother, which made Him the “Son of man.” As the Son of God, He had authority in heaven; as the Son of man, He had authority in earth.

So when His mission was completed, He said in Matthew 28:18, “all authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” The “earth” part shows that He was given the authority of the first Adam. But if God had withdrawn Adam’s authority on account of his sin, then there would have been no authority for Christ to claim as “the last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45).

For this reason, it was necessary to leave Adam’s authority intact, even though that authority would continue to be abused for thousands of years. In practice, this means that if God wants to do something in the earth, He must do so lawfully. This normally means that God must raise up a man or woman through whom He accomplishes His will. He raised up Moses and trained him for 80 years until he was ready and qualified to lead Israel out of Egypt. It takes time for God to train people, because God, who created time, has subjected His will to the earthly realm of time.

This is why God does not just wave a magic wand and resolve all the problems of mankind. He intervenes in a lawful way when men pray and appeal to the divine court, giving God the lawful right to intervene without contravening man’s authority. So Jesus instructed His disciples to “heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons” (Matthew 10:8). He used men to do His will, because this was part of their training as sons of God.

See also the example of Daniel. The prophet understood that after 70 years of captivity, the time had come for the people of Judah to be set free (Daniel 9:2). The prophet did not merely watch to see what God would do. No, he “prayed to the Lord” (Daniel 9:4). God needed legal cause to intervene, so He trained Daniel and gave him the revelation to appeal to the divine court.

Daniel was a necessary component in this case, because he functioned under the authority given to Adam in Genesis 1:26-28. God had to raise up someone like Daniel in order to get the job done. Theoretically, if no qualified man could be found in the earth, then Babylon might have continued indefinitely. But God knows how to accomplish His will without violating protocol.

God Remembers

When God seems to forget, it seems that He often needs to be reminded of His word. In a court of law, you have to claim your lawful rights in order for the court to recognize it as truth. It is not that our Judge is ignorant of the truth, but in a court of law, that is the protocol. We see this in Leviticus 26:42, where God says, “then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and My covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land.”

It is not that God forgot these things. He was speaking on the level of a courtroom, where men were required to do something in order for God to “remember.” The court had to recognize matters officially and put them into the official court records. So also, Hezekiah appealed to God in Isaiah 38:3,

³ and said, “Remember now, O Lord, I beseech You, how I have walked before You in truth and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in Your sight...”

When such appeals are made, God is neither surprised nor enlightened by the matters brought before the court. Yet on the earthly level, God must be reminded in order for His will to be implemented in the earth. Hence, the sovereignty of God does not negate the need for prayer or other actions that are to be done by the leading of the Spirit. Not only are we active participants in the divine plan, we are also sons of God through on-the-job training. In that sense, we are vital in the implementation of the divine plan.