Hi Mike,

I was reading Jeremiah 32 this morning and ran across the following verse:

Jer 32:35 And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.

I was confused by the comment “neither came it into my mind” since God foreordained everything and wondered if you could explain that phrase when you get a chance?

Thank you, and you all have a great day!!

K____

Hi K____,

Knowing that God creates and orchestrates the good and the evil gives us the answer to your question about what appears to be a blatant contradiction. It was God who caused Joseph’s brothers to sell him into Egypt, and yet He tells us ‘you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good’.

Gen 50:20 But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

That is the very purpose for all evil that has ever been or will ever be. In the end it is “meant for good…[and] all in Adam will be saved… yet so as by fire”. (1Co 3: 16 and 1Co 15:22 )

When God says it never entered His mind to have the Canaanites put their sons through the fire, He is telling us that He is a God of love who will work all the evil He has created for good. He is not passing the buck upon the Canaanites or the Israelites who followed the customs of the Canaanites.

In order to be sovereign in all things God must cause us to sin, and then He must cause us to repent and return to Him, and that is exactly what He tells us He is doing:

Psa 90:3 Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.

If God is going to save us from our sins, then He must first make us sinners, and if He is saving but a few at this time, then He must sacrifice the multitudes for those few at this time. Then He will use the few to save the many:

Rom 11:30 For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief:
Rom 11:31 Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.

In the midst of this exercise God must speak to us in terms that express His loathing of the sins of the flesh which He made “marred in the hand of the Potter”. (Jer 18:4).

It is good to know, as I said earlier, that God uses His own word to deceive most prophets in this age.

Eze 14:9 And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel.

So He is a cloud that is bright day in the middle of the night to those who He gives eyes to see, and the very same cloud, His word is total darkness to those who He has not given eyes to see and ears to hear:

Exo 14:20 And it [Christ, the cloud] came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night.

Mat 13:9 Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Mat 13:10 And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
Mat 13:11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

I will give you one more example of how God uses His Word to deceive those He is deliberately in the process of deceiving.

God tells us that “He is not a man that He should repent”:

Num 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

Yet we are told “It repented the Lord that He had made man”:

Gen 6:5 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.
Gen 6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

Is this telling us that God is not sovereign and that puny mankind had thwarted what He had originally planned for mankind? Absolutely not! If that is the case then God’s words contradict themselves, and this verse would prove it to be so. But we are clearly instructed that God’s truth is only to be found, not in ‘some’ of His Word, but in “the sum of thy Word is truth”.

Psa 119:160 The sum of thy word is truth; And every one of thy righteous ordinances endureth for ever. (ASV, ESV, LITV, YLT)

This principle is again demonstrated in the first book of Samuel where Samuel tells King Saul:

1Sa 15:29 And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent.

And in this very same chapter we are also told:

1Sa 15:35 And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul: and the LORD repented that he had made Saul king over Israel.

There it is for all who God is deceiving. He has given them an opportunity to point to His own words and tells us that He contradicts Himself and that His words are not worthy of our faith. But to a chosen few who He gives to understand the dynamics of His sovereignty, these words serve only to demonstrate that a sovereign God must destroy our old man, typified by King Saul, and through the trial of that destruction, produce a new man who is conformed to the image of our risen Lord.

I hope you now understand why God said that Israel causing their sons to pass through the fire to Molech had never entered His mind.

Your brother who is with you in your struggles.

Mike