40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Samuel 15:10-29 (Episode 239)

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

God regrets but doesn't regret like us. How are we to understand this? Samuel is angry with someone. And God is not pleased with Saul keeping the best livestock and King alive resulting in His rejection of Saul as king. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Conferences 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there you can click on here we still stand not the live stream that a bunch of you already did i'm talking about here we still stand next year it's going to be live and in person one way or another that's what we're talking about you can register for that event and get that early bird pricing for 149 you can attend the conference you need to go to all the sessions got to take care of all your food all your drink you have to pick your breakouts it's

a good time it's gonna be a three-day event next october go ahead and get it uh get that ticket now but also you might be thinking man october let's take a year away i have to wait a whole year well you don't have to wait a whole year because in april we're going to be having our first ever regional event a two-day event in northwest arkansas bentonville that's where that's where i happen to live so i'm familiar with the place it's going to be awesome uh northwest arkansas is great in the spring if you've never been to the ozarks in the spring you should check it out here's the deal though if you're registering for here we still stand the general conference in october you'll see an option to bundle that ticket which is normally 65 for the two-day event you can

get it for 50 bucks so what i'm telling you is that you can register for both the general conference and the regional conference for a grand total of 199 less than 200 chad you can go to both uh if you do that soon total steal total steal total steal yeah it's a no-brainer you got to go to both yeah you gotta go to both if you can like the both of these events are are going to be a blast uh they're going to be different so if you're like i'll just go to one i get it no they're gonna they're gonna be different if you've been to here we still stay before you know what kind of big party that is and all the food and hanging out and you know it's at a resort uh and then uh the regional event will be a little bit different we're gonna have a an actual concert

a first ever concert at one of our events so Andy Gullahorn who's one of my personal favorites is going to be coming down from Nashville

to perform on Friday nights we're having a concert I mean the regular stuff a bunch of hanging out and that kind of stuff as well but we're going to

take over a downtown city square so it's going to be a good time so if you can go Did you say we're taking over the city? Taking over

no the square just the square we're just taking over the restaurants and the venue Getting my hopes up there I thought we were taking taking control no dude the venue is cool i mean you got to think about like an old

an old school uh theater like rock and roll venue kind of thing for this event it's gonna be a it's gonna be a good time so you sent me pictures of that it looks incredible yeah it's really cool inside it's gonna be cool it's gonna be a cool thing if you can go to both you want to go to both hey if you can't you and you live in the if you live in texas or you know kansas city or saint Louis or anywhere in the tri-state area, you definitely want to come check out the Northwest Arkansas event. But even if you need to get on a plane, it's still going to be worth it. You can fly right in here. You can fly 15 minutes from the venue. So get that done. You can go over to herewestillstand.org and you can click on which conference you're interested in. But of course,

if you register for the main conference in October, you can go to the regional one for just 50 bucks if you want to do that all right chad we left saul sitting there had some misplaced piety he was told to kill a bunch of stuff he decided to not kill the best stuff because he was going to sacrifice that to the lord in my mind this is not one of those times where saul is freaked out to see samuel i i think initially he's probably like uh did what you said Yeah, this is a, this is really a fascinating chapter. I mean, for lots of reasons. I mean, there's a, there's a lot of kind of rhetorical stuff going on behind the scene, just the way the story, I mean, there's, of course, there's a multiple, multiple ways that you could tell

the story, right? So the way it's told becomes significant as well. And so you got that going on, you got some, some pretty heavy theology going on here. I mean, like, just for instance, we didn't quite get to this. In fact, we stopped right at the brink of this verse, but what does it mean for God to regret doing something? In fact, the Hebrew verb for regret, Naham, is used three times in this chapter. And on the surface, it's sort of used in a contradictory sort of way, because we hear in verse 11 that God regrets making Saul king. And then at the very end of the chapter, verse 35, it said the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel. And then a few verses earlier, verse 29, we read that the Lord, the God of Israel, the glory of Israel will not lie

or change his mind now in all three of those verses the verb for regret or change his mind is naham so which is it will he naham or will he not naham so we're going to kind of wrestle with that a little bit we've actually encountered this in earlier books we encountered it the story of the flood yep lord regretted he had made man on the earth and we encountered it uh after the episode the golden caps so we got that to get to and we just kind of kind of figure out what's going on here between saul and samuel and uh i mean their pretty rocky relationship is gonna really really come to the fore here as we as we work our way through it it's a lot a lot of pretty uh pretty good stuff coming up yeah yeah i mean so the the the god regretting things is is tricky i think

that sometimes we can take the sovereignty of God and then apply it in a way that's not helpful, as if sovereignty somehow means that you would be unemotional and have no feeling toward anything that happened because you know all things, right? So if you're omniscient and you're sovereign, well, how could you have any feelings about the way anything happened? Of course, you knew it was going to happen uh not only that but you have control over it if you want to and so we take this idea of god and we're like well god doesn't have any any feeling toward things that go on because he could just change what went on if he had if he didn't approve of it or didn't like it and of course why would he regret anything i mean he he knows what the outcome of his decisions are going

to be so why would you ever make any decisions that you would regret uh this doesn't seem like something that anyone would do if they were both sovereign and omniscient. Why would you want to do this? But we are not sovereign and omniscient, but there's certain things that we know, Chad, and we still do. This is going to be a very weird example, but it's the one that popped into my head. Have you ever had a pizza and there's one piece left and you're not, you know that you shouldn't, you're already full, you're already done, and you know that you should not. But you say, i'm going to regret this later and then you take that thing and you eat it now in that moment you're omniscient in this way that you know that you are going to regret that later you know you

are you've stated it and uh and it may in the next uh the next day it comes to pass that you do in fact when you wake up you you do have regret uh just as you predicted but this does not stop you from doing it. So this is a poor example, but it's what it means is that like you, you can know things and still do things. And then that thing exactly happens. So God doesn't not know when he calls Saul to be King that he's going to regret it, but he does it anyway, uh, for other purposes. Now they're probably not the same purposes that you and I would maybe eat that piece of pizza. They're different purposes, but you ate it for a reason, and sure enough, you regretted it, and God appoints Saul King for a reason, knowing that he will regret it.

I wish I could not identify as well as I can with your example, but I've experienced that on multiple occasions, and it's actually a great example, and it's a great—this is a, in my mind, a good example of how necessary it is to have both, I guess what you would call a good biblical basis for describing how God acts with his people. And at the same time, a good theology, a good, maybe a systematic theology, because these two work in tandem. So that, I mean, if you're, if you're just kind of a systematic theologian and you're dealing with the sovereignty of God and the omniscience of God, and you're just speaking in those categories and you encounter something like this, well, then it's easy to kind of dismiss this, right? Oh,

this is just kind of an anthropomorphism. This is just kind of ascribing human qualities to God. But I think if you hold these both in tension and see how they interact well with each other, then that's the best way forward. Yeah, and I actually like texts like this because it personalizes God. God is not unpersonal. He's not even un-person, right? So he is a God who actually does feel things. This God does regret things. He gets angry. He gets sad, which all means that he is also capable of the thing that he says the most about himself, which is love. So if you want a God who is love and who feels love and compassion and passion towards sinners or anybody else, these verses tell you that he is capable of such a feeling because he is capable of feeling, period.

Yeah, I would much rather have a God like this than kind of a cold, aloof, deistic kind of God who shows no emotion, has absolutely no human-like qualities, and it is sort of the generic great cold power out there in the universe. Give me the God of the Bible over that any day. No, that's not the God you want at all. And it's also this regret kind of language. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but when I read it, it's like a remorse or a sadness that is baked in there.

When God, in the case of the flood, it seems that God is both angry and sad, that he is hurt. And I think that we understand what this is like. There are certain things that we know. We both know that unless something terrible happens, that our parents will die before us. Now, I know that. I know that at some point, most people bury their parents. this does not make that day easier just because you know it i mean the actual day comes to pass at some point when that day comes to pass it hurts and it hurts no less because just because you knew

it was coming i think that's the same for god uh that god knows certain days are coming certain things events will come to pass he knows all things and in some essences in all places but still those things happen in a place in time at some point and it doesn't any more than it does for us it doesn't make it necessarily easier yeah yeah we when we've been talking it reminded me that actually i wrote about this uh this verb naham in unveiling mercy i can't remember in connection with the flood maybe but anyway i i think the analogy that i use there with regard to you know how to translate it how do you be sorry regret or what was i think i used the analogy of parents you know if they have a child that that really goes astray i mean that just ends up down

a down a really bad path they regret that they don't regret having the child of course they just feel sorry they feel regret because of the decisions that that their child has made and because they actually love their child and want the best and it's some way like that with our with our father i mean he he regrets that humanity has gone the way that they have uh but that doesn't that doesn't alter what uh he actually desires for for humanity yeah and the earn from the way and live yeah and i know we haven't even gotten to the text yet but a lot of this is going to be this first line of this is that god is going to say that he regrets uh making saul king i also when i when the case of saul i wonder uh i won't say that this is the

case but i wonder if as things are playing out is if god is like it would have been better for Saul if I had not made him king. I regret making him king because it hasn't went well for him. It hasn't been personally good for him. It didn't turn out great for the people either. And so I don't think that it's completely removed from God's feelings towards Saul, that this was, that he, as we've said before, that he is ill-suited for this position. yeah you almost see that that uh that kind of compassion i guess uh increase as saul just unravels right i mean this what we've seen so far is is nothing compared to what's going to happen to him in subsequent chapters uh so yeah it's gonna it's gonna be a rough road for

saul uh from from here on out well it already has been but it's going to get even even rougher Well, I guess 15 minutes into the podcast, we should get into the text. I guess we should. Yeah. I mean, we really have kind of been covering the territory because in some ways that particular, this particular discussion covers the whole rest of the chapter because we have three occurrences of this particular verb. Okay.

So verse 10, the word of the Lord comes to Samuel. Now, Samuel has not been part of the story so far, right? Except sending Saul on this mission. that's how the chapter starts out Samuel says to Saul that he is to go and strike down Amalek so he appears there and now he's going to reappear when the word of the Lord comes to him and says I regret that I've made Saul king why because he's turned back from following me and has not carried out my commands. So in the plural there, commands. Now, I'm not sure exactly how to translate the rest of this verse. My translation to American Standard has, and Saul was distressed and cried

out to the Lord all night. Now, in the ESV, it says Samuel was angry and he cried to the Lord all night. Now, this is pretty fascinating with regard to Samuel's approach or reaction to this word from the Lord. We've talked both on and off the podcast about Samuel and Saul's kind of back and forth relationship. And at times, Samuel almost seems to have a sort of maybe jealousy isn't the right word, but he seems to be disappointed that the people, as it were, rejected him and wanted a king instead. And then at other times, he seems complimentary toward Saul, even really in a way, adopting him as his son. And then at other times, he almost seems to react with vehemence and anger at Saul for what he's done.

Now what's interesting about this particular passage is because the Hebrew verb is angry, so I don't think distress is the best way to translate this. So Samuel's angry, but the real question is, with who? It's obvious what he's angry about. He's angry because of the whole situation here that now has been created by Saul. But God says, I regret that I've made Saul king, as it carried out my commands, and Samuel was angry. So is he angry at Saul? Is he angry at God? Is he angry at both of them? Is this kind of this general anger toward everything that's going on? It's a little difficult to tell, although I will say this, and this was surprising to me. it's uh it's kind of a technical hebrew point of grammar but the way this sentence is constructed

we have other parallels to this and the other parallels seem to suggest that samuel's actually mad at god here yeah it seems to me what he's that he is now this is a samuel's a man who uh is i think that cares deeply for the people of israel and when god said hey we're gonna ask for a king. Samuel knows it's a bad idea, and God's going to give them what they want, and he points Samuel towards Saul. So Samuel doesn't like this, but God says, hey, don't worry about it. They haven't rejected you. They've rejected me. Now Samuel's not totally buying that argument. He thinks that they've—he's not saying that they haven't rejected God, but it sort of feels like a little bit like they've rejected both of them. It feels pretty personal. Yeah, and I think that

it makes sense that samuel will be angry with god as a man who clearly understands what we talked about earlier which is the omniscience and sovereignty of god that when god comes along and says i regret that i have appointed saul king samuel of course uh i think it's very natural for him to be like well what in the heck i mean like why did you pick him to begin why did you pick him and also i'm the one who had anointed him this looks terrible like if he's terrible this doesn't look exactly great uh for me like i picked the wrong guy or something so i could see samuel being not really angry with saul but him going right to who he thinks he doesn't think he's like look because we've said a hundred times now saul didn't ask for this job he didn't

campaign for this position so samuel knows where to place the blame as far as look you picked this guy like he didn't show up at my doorstep saying i'd like to be king now you told me and so samuel in some ways is i think right and uh if you're going to if you're going to be angry uh he's pointing the anger in the in the right direction that uh look you're the one that knows all things you're the one who appointed him if this is not going well i the people are probably going to point the finger at me but that ain't where it should be pointed yeah and i'm glad you said what you did too about, you know, I mean, he knows, he knows the direction to point, right? And not only does that, but I was thinking about this connect, this situation in comparison to one of

the other situations where the same kind of Hebrew grammar is used, and that's way back in Genesis four. So when, when Cain is angry, because the Lord doesn't accept a sacrifice, the same kind the language is used there. But contrast these two situations. So Cain is angry at God, obviously, but he doesn't say a word to God. Now, in this situation, Samuel is also angry at God. And how does he respond? It says he cried out to the Lord all night. Now, what's fascinating is the verb for cry out is the same word that's used back in Genesis 4 for how the blood of Abel was crying out to the Lord. So rather than Cain being angry and actually crying out to God, instead he lashed out at his brother and the blood of that brother ended up doing the lamenting, ended up doing the

crying out. So my point is that when we are angry with God, either for what we think are good reasons or maybe for what ended up being bad reasons, whatever the situation might be, the best thing we can do is actually turn to god with that anger and cry out to him rather than lashing out at someone else which tends to be what we what we do okay so we kind of got the groundwork laid let's see uh see what happens it does seem as if it does seem as if samuel is still pretty upset as as the story goes on he gets up early goes out to meet saul and they tell samuel that Saul came to Carmel and behold, he

set up a monument for himself and then he turned and proceeded on down to Gilgal. That's an odd detail, by the way. He set up a monument for himself. Like he built a statue of himself? Like, that's a great thing I did here. I suppose so, yeah.

It's actually, the Hebrew there is yad, which is the word for hand. It usually just actually does mean that hand, but I guess it has a few a few isolated occurrences where it has this meaning of a of a monument it's almost get the image of like you know somebody holding their arm up and waving their hand like hey look at me look what i did it's kind of a the idea here behind uh uh using that word for a monument it sort of

leads you to believe uh even more that saul does not see what's coming coming uh because uh he's probably feeling pretty he's maybe he must be feeling pretty good about the way things have gone yeah i mean every time i said monument for myself it's usually because i'm proud of myself yeah yeah so build a little build a little statue like this is a really really great thing i've done i think yeah i think that everyone would agree so much so that i could you know build this thing right here i think that this this shows you that yeah this is going to be a bummer for for saul because i don't think he sees sees this uh yeah i don't think he sees this coming no and you can you can tell that from the next verse when Samuel shows up and Saul goes out

to meet him. And he's just like bubbling over with enthusiasm. He says, blessed are you of the Lord. I have carried out the command of the Lord. Which is exactly what the Lord said that he had not done. This is, this is a, there's a lot of, we're doing a lot of morals in these stories, but, but there are kind of weird morals there where these morals are things not to do that you might be inclined to do. Don't make oaths. Don't say that you'll kill people that are important to you if certain things aren't carried out. Also, I don't think it's ever good to go up

to someone and say, I have carried out the commandments of the Lord. This is not a wise thing to say. As a good rule of thumb, never say that. Let someone else tell you that you've carried out the commands of the Lord. Let another lips praise you for the commandments that you've kept that's proverbial right there all right so samuel's response is uh is classic i mean saul is i think saul expects sam to to say you know well done good a faithful servant and instead we have this and this is just dripping with sarcasm samuel says oh yeah what then is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen which i hear I mean, of all the ways to respond, I mean, it's certainly memorable, right?

Oh, yeah, so you've carried out the command of the Lord. What's up with all this animal noise I hear? If you carried it out, there wouldn't be any sheep left to bleat or any oxen left to be making whatever noise oxen make. Samuel's accusation is rather creative, or his counter his counter to saul's just to saul's claim is is pretty creative so saul's got he's going to defend himself right or go ahead well i don't even know yeah well you say yeah i don't even know if he's defending himself as much as he's i think at this point

he still thinks this is a just an explanation it's i don't even know if he's in need of thinking at this point he's in need of a defense yeah so he says uh they have they the meaning the uh the people they have they have brought them that is to say they have my people have brought the animals from the amalekites for the people spared the best of the sheep and oxen to sacrifice to the lord your god but the rest we have utterly destroyed yeah now the the one hint i might be so the the and i do think it's interesting that he does this in his reply he does he does make this thing where he refers to the the lord as samuel's god yeah right so he might he might uh have an inkling that samuel's maybe it's probably written on samuel's face that he's a little a little irritated

i mean he has been up all night uh fighting with god and so uh so i was like all right look i'm gonna make some sacrifices to your god with these animals this is a good idea but it is interesting that he doesn't say my god or our god or just the lord god right there's a subtle shift too and i don't know if we want to read too much into this but with regard to the subjects because back in verse nine it says but saul and the people spared agog and the best of the sheep and the oxen and so forth now in saul's response he says for the people spared the best of the sheep an oxen a little bit of an adam move there yeah there's a little bit of a little bit of adam responsibility here these people the lord gave me to rule over right yeah so uh i i that's why i

find this chapter so fascinating because you're you're constantly from verse to verse you're trying to guess kind of what's going on in everybody's mind and you know is this a straightforward answer is he kind of sidestepping responsibility a little bit here what's what's happening well sam was about to tell him to shut up in hebrew yeah pretty much yeah in fact uh i don't i don't like the new american standards translation they say uh they say wait and uh the esv has stopped but i think shut up would be a much better translation so he says to him basically just stop talking shut up because i've got something to say to you let me tell you what the Lord said to me last night.

And Saul responds, speak. All right, let's have it. So Samuel says, he's got this long speech that he's about to deliver. Samuel says, isn't it true that though you were little in your own eyes, you were made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the Lord anointed you king over Israel, And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, go and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are exterminated. Why then, by this point, you know that Saul is getting nervous.

Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord, but rushed upon the spoil and did what was evil in the sight of the Lord? so there's there's some uh kind of interesting additions here first of all when he is talking about the mission he says he adds the sinners in the original commission he just says hey go utterly destroy the amalekites but it's as if sammy wants to make sure that we know how bad the amalekites are so he throws in the sinners and then the verse 19 he says why then did you not obey the voice of the lord but rushed upon the spoil that verb in hebrew has this idea of almost like a predator would pounce upon the prey something like that yeah actually the uh the esv uh actually translates that as uh as pounce yeah yeah that's a that's a good that's a good

translation there's actually no record of that happening about them pouncing upon the the prey So I'm not sure if that is just Samuel sort of, uh, hamming this up, you know, kind of just maybe engaging a little bit of hyperbole to, to make his point or what it is. But I mean, the, the, the overall message of course is clear. He says, listen, we all know how you started, right? You were a little in your own eyes, but God chose you. He made you the king. He sent you on this mission. He gave you a clear command.

go and utterly wipe them out until they are exterminated so based upon all that why did you act the way you did why didn't you obey the voice of the lord but instead ended up doing what was evil in the sight one thing that's interesting about the way he starts too and you can tell me this translation work is wrong here but it's it seems to me that he says not even that though you were little or or small but though you are uh little in your own eyes are you not the head of the tribes of israel it seems that there's two things going on there that's all still doesn't think too much of himself so there's not there's not this like huge arrogance in saul uh that this this seems like a a current thing that though you are little in your own eyes are you not the head

of the tribes of Israel. And then also that when he shifts over and says, oh yeah, the people went and did this thing, that maybe Samuel is saying, look, I know in your own eyes that you don't view yourself as like some sort of leader of men, but you are in fact the head of the tribes of Israel, so whatever they do falls on you, regardless of how you view yourself. yeah yeah that's a that's a great point and i when you were talking i was looking at the hebrew there it could it's one of these situations where it could be translated as past or present it's kind of a verbless verbless sort of sentence so yeah i mean it and i think it makes sense you know it doesn't matter if you translate it past or present that does seem to be the way in which

saul views himself right yeah doesn't matter how you look at yourself this is your vocation to which god has called you yeah you could say like well the people were they rushed it what was i gonna do well you're the king so you were gonna stop him that's what you're gonna do bucks buck stops with you okay so uh he's got a response saul said to samuel i did i did obey the voice of the lord and went on the mission on which the lord sent me and had brought back agog the king of amalek and utterly destroyed the amalekites but the people here we have this uh possible blame shifting again but the people took some of the spoil sheep and oxen the choices of the things devoted to destruction to sacrifice to the lord your god at gilgal he just basically

repeats the whole thing like maybe you didn't hear me the first time like i go check out the amalekites you'll see uh this is a heap of flame and ash there okay and then the people took this stuff, as I already said, to sacrifice to the Lord your God. Just making myself clear here, just repeating the exact same thing. You're getting old, Samuel. I don't know if you're going deaf, but I already explained exactly what happened. Go check out the Amalekites. Go take a look at what's going on over there. Yeah, yeah. In case you didn't hear me right the first time, I'm going to say it again. And Samuel goes on to make it clear that, oh yeah, I heard you. I heard you. Now, let me deliver you a kind of a stock prophetic sermon. This is when

I say stock prophetic sermon, it's because we hear this kind of language repeatedly in the later prophets, especially in, well, Isaiah has it, Jeremiah has it, Hosea has it. I expect that the people heard this quite frequently from prophets. So here's how it goes. Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the lord behold to obey is better than sacrifice and to heed than the fat of rams for rebellion is as the sin of divination and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry because you have rejected the word of the lord he has also rejected you from being king i really like the way that the the esv translates verse 23 which is for rebellion is as the sin of divination and presumption

is as uh iniquity and idolatry basically this this sort of uh misplaced piety that we've talked about uh is being addressed there where yeah you presumed that god would really dig it if you like kept this stuff to sacrifice for him uh but you should never presume um that god wants you to do something other than what he's told you to do yeah no matter how good or or pious you think it is yeah this i mean this uh this whole subject came up quite a bit uh during the reformation right we have all sorts of we have all sorts of piety uh which was not commanded by god all sorts of religious practices which were not commanded by god which were in the end deemed to be of even greater value than the things which god himself had commanded right yeah and this does seem to

be the way in which uh in which humanity works where we tend to create our own kind of piety our own religious practices and elevate those as if they are actually superior to that which god himself has said or which god himself has given so uh i want to let's keep moving so we can can wrap up this uh this chapter this is this this part is uh is sort of uh heartbreaking you mean what's coming up yeah oh this i was reading through this this morning and i thought the exact same thing i thought man this is brutal so saul says to samuel i've sinned complete confession i have sinned i have indeed transgressed the command of the lord and your words because i feared the people and listened to their voice now therefore please pardon my sin

and return with me that i may worship the lord this seems pretty good a pretty good confession yeah yeah so you you would think that the response would be uh i forgive you yes this guy is asking this man is asking for the absolution is he not yeah he is yeah but he doesn't get it at least not yet samuel says to him he almost ignores the request for forgiveness he says i will not return with you because you have rejected the word of the Lord, where the Lord and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. So Samuel turns to go and Saul reaches out and grabs the edge of his robe and tore it. And Samuel, taking advantage of that opportunity, uses it as a prophetic sign. He says, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to your neighbor

who is better than you and here we have the verse i referred to earlier and also the glory of israel will not lie or regret or change his mind he is not a man that he should change his mind so uh it it doesn't look good for uh for saul at all not only has samuel seemingly withheld forgiveness but he's taken this kind of opportunity to kind of double down on not just the threat but now the pronouncement that it's over that the kingship is being completely taken away from him this is this is rough and saul seems pretty desperate i mean you at least in my mind this ripping his robe is not something done in anger but almost him desperately trying to to grab a hold of him to make him stay and then you have this weird regret language again where like hey the glory of israel

this is god of course um he's not he's not like a man where he would have regret and you're like what are you talking about? Like, it's just said that he regretted making Saul king. Now, I think what this shows you is that God, of course, does regret things in a similar way that we regret things, but not in the exact same way that we regret things because of who he is. And so this God who is able to make all things work together for good doesn't regret the way that we regret, because when we regret, we don't have a way of—we do not possess the power to shape things to our will. And so when we regret, we're just left with that. When God regrets doing something, He then shapes and molds this thing into the thing that He is ultimately planning.

Yeah, and I do think that's the main point of verse 29, is that it's not that He doesn't change his mind or regret because obviously he does i mean we have multiple instances of this but he doesn't do so in the way that we do right i mean we're we're here today and gone tomorrow and between today and tomorrow we make a lot of regrettable decisions we change your mind all the time we're we're fickle we're we're arbitrary but in fact the very the very word that's used here for the glory of israel as my translation has it also means in many contexts everlasting so it's kind of an accent on god's yesterday today and tomorrow being the same so he's the god who isn't temporal isn't constantly shifting like we are but instead he is the he's the eternal

one who when he regrets it's not the kind of human regret that we are we are accustomed to Yeah, I think maybe a way to think about this, you know, Jesus weeps when he hears about Lazarus, so he weeps like we do, but yet doesn't weep exactly like we do, because he knows about the resurrection, and he knows what he's going to do. I bring them up all the time, the best Christian hardcore band of all time, they have a great, they have a song about Lazarus, and it says it says that Jesus had tears on his cheeks and resurrection on his lips therefore he doesn't weep exactly

the same way that we do he does weep and he does feel sadness but he knows things that we don't know and he has power that we don't have yeah amen that's perfect and you know what we're not going to finish this chapter Chad because we're going to have to leave a very violent reaction

to this whole thing for next week but guys if you would like to come hang out with us in uh april in northwest arkansas and or san diego in october make sure you go to here we still stand dot org you can check out all the conference info there or just go to the website and click on the events chad i will see you next week where we will in fact finish chapter 15 yeah all right we'll see you then Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.