God Changed His Mind

Can our prayers change God's sovereign plan? The answer should be … of course not. When God sovereignly declares that He is going to do something, all of the prayers in the world aren't going to change God’s mind. God not only ordains certain ends, He also ordains the means to those ends, and part of the process He uses to bring His sovereign will to pass are the prayers of His people.

And so we are to pray.

In Numbers Chapter 14 … it appears that Moses changed the mind of God.

There's one sense in which it seems God is changing His mind, and there's another sense in which the Bible says God never changes His mind because God is omniscient. He knows all things from the beginning, and He is immutable. He is unchanging. There's no shadow of turning with Him.

But look at the conversation Moses and God have …
Verse 12 … the Lord says … "I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them …"
Verse 19 … Moses pleads … "Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people …"
Verse 20 … "And the LORD said, I have pardoned according to thy word …"

God knows what Moses is going to say to Him before Moses even opens his mouth to plead for his people. Then after Moses actually pleads for mercy for the people, does God suddenly change His mind? God doesn't have any more information than He had a moment before. Nothing has changed as far as God's knowledge or His appraisal of the situation.

What words or argument did Moses use that would have possibly caused God to change His mind? What we have here is one of … the mysteries of providence … whereby God ordains not only the ends of things that come to pass but also the means of those things.

God sets forth principles in the Bible where He gives threats of judgment to motivate His people to repentance. Sometimes He spells out specifically, "But if you repent, I will not carry out the threat." He doesn’t always add that qualifier, but it's there. This is one of those instances. It was tacitly understood that God threatens judgment upon these people, but if somebody pleads for them in a priestly way as Moses did, then God will give grace and mercy rather than justice. That is what's behind this perceived changing of God's mind.

Is God confused, stumbling through all the different options … Should I do this? Should I not do that? And does He decide upon one course of action and then think … "Well, maybe that’s not such a good idea after all, and change His mind?"

Obviously not. God is omniscient; God is all wise. God is eternal in His perspective and in His full knowledge of everything.

So we don't change God’s mind.

But prayer changes things. It changes us.

There are times in which God waits for us to ask for things in prayer … because His plan is that we work with Him in the process of bringing His will to pass here on earth.

And so we pray.