January 2, 2018

I AM PERSUADED THAT HE IS ABLE:

TO NEVER MAKE A MISTAKE (part 1)

Numbers 23:19 “ God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent:”

This verse tells us that our God will never find himself in a position where He would have to repent. The Greek word for this word “repent” literally has the idea of never having to apologize, or acknowledge a mistake. It means to never be in the position of having to admit that you have made a wrong decision, wrong move, or had a wrong motive. God has never been there.

To be fair, Genesis chapter 6 has something interesting to say. “ 5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” Here the Bible tells us that God literally came to the point that he regretted having made man. Now a person might say that this is an example where God made a mistake, realized He had done wrong, and acknowledge that He had messed up. But that is not at all what these verses mean. God did not have these feelings because He had messed up. He had these feelings because we had messed up. God is a perfect God, and only creates in a perfect way. But man has always had the ability to somehow mess up God’s creation. That is what sin does. It destroys. God briefly considered ending mankind because He is a Holy God, and “the wages of sin is death”. God‘s justice demands payment for sin. But praise God, in verse 8, “ Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord”. That means “ where sin abounded, Grace did much more abound”(Romans 5:20). That means Grace will always be greater than sin.

Yes, we make mistakes, but God never does!