What if God doesn't know the future?
VideoTranscript
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The old man's hands trembled as he held the two stone tablets. Moses had been on Mount Si for 40 days and 40 nights, face to face with the Almighty, receiving the very words of God carved by the divine finger. The weight of these tablets wasn't just physical. They carried the covenant, the promise, the future of a nation. As Moses began his descent down the Rocky Mountain path, he could hear something drifting up from the valley below. It was a sound of celebration, but not the kind that should be happening at the foot of God's holy mountain. When Moses finally crested the last ridge and looked down into the camp, his heart shattered.
There, in the shadow of the very mountain where God's presence still lingered, was a scene of complete betrayal. The people had melted down their jewelry and fashioned a golden calf. They were dancing around it, singing, "These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt." The covenant wasn't just broken, it was trampled underfoot. Then God spoke to Moses, and his voice wasn't the calm, instructive tone Moses had grown accustomed to. This was fire. This was fury.
"Go down," the Lord said, "because your people whom you brought up out of Egypt have corrupted themselves. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation. Leave me alone so that I may destroy them. Think about that for a moment. The future of an entire people hung by a thread. God had made a decision.
His justice demanded their complete destruction. The story of Israel was about to come to an abrupt and fiery end. But then something remarkable happened. Moses, a mere mortal, stepped into the breach. He refused to leave God alone. He began to argue with him. He began to reason with him.
He began to plead with the creator of the universe. Lord, Moses said, Why does your anger burn hot against your people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say he brought them out for evil to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the surface of the earth? Turn from your fierce wrath and turn away from this evil against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self. Moses wasn't just begging for mercy here. He was making a case.
He appealed to God's reputation, to his character, to the promises he had made. He was reminding the creator of his own heart. And then the Bible tells us something that should stop every reader in their tracks. So the Lord turned away from the evil which he said he would do to his people in Exodus 32:14.
He turned away. He changed his mind. The future that seemed absolutely certain just moments before. A future of destruction was suddenly rewritten. A conversation between a man and his God had altered the course of history. Now, I know what many of us were taught about this story. We were told that God didn't really mean what he said, that he was just testing Moses or teaching him something.
That explanation might feel safe and tidy, but what if it isn't necessary? What if the Bible means exactly what it says? What if our prayers, our choices, and our pleas can actually influence the future? You see, for centuries, we've been taught to read the Bible through a particular lens. One that insists God must know every detail of the future with absolute certainty. We've been told that a perfect God can't change his mind, can't be surprised, can't truly respond to what we do. But what if that lens is actually making it harder to see what the Bible is really telling us?
Let me share another story with you. It's about Abraham, and it happens on a mountain as well. Abraham had waited decades for the miracle son God had promised him. Isaac was a child of promise, the one through whom all nations would be blessed. And then God asked Abraham to do the unthinkable, to sacrifice his beloved son on Mount Moriah. For 3 days, Abraham and Isaac walked in near silence. Can you imagine the agony in that old man's heart?
When they reached the mountain, Abraham built the altar, bound his son, and raised the knife. In that split second between intention and action, heaven broke the silence. Abraham, Abraham, the angel of the Lord called out, don't lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. Genesis 2 11-12.
Now I know. Let those three words sink in. They're words of discovery. They're the conclusion of a test. They suggest that before this moment, God did not know with absolute certainty what Abraham would do. The test was real because the outcome was genuinely uncertain.
This isn't an isolated incident. Throughout the Bible, we see God testing people in order to know what's in their hearts. When Moses explained why Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, he said it was so God could quote, "Humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not." In Deuteronomy 8:2, "The wilderness was a divine laboratory where God put his people in challenging circumstances to discover what they were really made of. Even Jesus experienced surprise when a Roman centurion expressed extraordinary faith, saying that Jesus just needed to speak a word to heal his servant. The Bible tells us that Jesus marveled at him and turned and said to the multitude who followed him, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith. No, not in Israel."
Luke 7:9. Jesus was amazed, caught off guard by the depth of this outsider's trust. But here's where it gets uncomfortable for many of us. We've been taught that an all- knowing God must know everything that will happen. And so when we read these stories, we're told to explain them away. We're told that when God says he regretted making humanity before the flood in Genesis 66, he didn't really regret it. It's just a figure of speech.
When God changes his mind about destroying Nineveh after they repent in Jonah 3:10, we're told he always knew they would repent. But think about what this does to the text. We're essentially saying that when God speaks clearly and directly, we can't trust what he's saying. We're turning the Bible into a puzzle where the obvious meaning is always wrong and the real meaning is hidden behind layers of theological complexity. But what if we simply took the Bible at face value instead? What if when the Bible says God changed his mind, he actually changed his mind? What if when it says he was surprised, he was genuinely surprised?
What if when it says he tested someone to find something out, he was actually discovering something new? This doesn't make God less powerful or less perfect. It makes him more relational, more present, more involved in the real time story of our lives. I wanted to take a second to tell you about my book, which expands on what I'm talking about today. The broken mirror of rediscovering our true nature in Christ will transform how you see yourself forever. Stop living as a struggling sinner trying to be good enough and discover you're already a beloved child of God with his divine nature flowing through you. This book will free you from shame, give you unshakable identity, and show you how to access God's peace, wisdom, and strength from within.
The book shows how this story unfolds from Genesis to Revelation, and teaches you to live from rest, see others as fellow image bearers, and step into your true calling as a radiant reflector of divine light. Your daily struggles will become opportunities for God's nature to shine through you. Get ready to live the abundant life Jesus promised. The link to the book is in the video description. Hard copy, Kindle, and audiobook versions are all available. May God bless your journey along his path for you. You see, there's a difference between knowing everything that can be known and knowing everything that will happen.
God knows the past completely. He knows the present perfectly. He knows every possibility for the future. But what if the future choices of free creatures aren't yet facts to be known? What if their possibilities to be realized? Think about love for a moment. Real love, the kind that moves mountains and changes lives.
That requires freedom. You can't program someone to love you and call it genuine. A robot could be designed to say, "I love you every morning, to never disagree with you, to always put your needs first." But we all know intuitively that this wouldn't be real love. Real love requires the possibility of rejection. It requires risk. When God created us, he wanted genuine partners, not puppets.
He wanted real relationships, not scripted performances. And for that to be possible, he had to give us genuine freedom. The kind of freedom that even he doesn't control. This is actually what makes prayer so powerful. When we pray, we're not just accepting what's already been decided. We're entering into a real conversation with God about what could happen. We're partnering with him in shaping the future.
Remember the story of King Hezekiah? The prophet Isaiah came to him with a clear message from God. Set your house in order for you will die and not live. 2 Kings 20:1. This wasn't a warning. It was a declaration. But Hezekiah didn't just accept it.
He turned his face to the wall and prayed with desperate tears. And God sent Isaiah back with a new message. I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you. I will add 15 years to your life. 2 Kings 20:5 and 6.
The prayer changed something. Hezekiah's tears moved the heart of God. What seemed like a fixed future was suddenly rewritten because of a conversation between a man and his creator. This is the God of the Bible. Not a distant computer executing predetermined code, but a loving father who listens, who responds, who can be moved by our prayers and choices. Now, I know some of you might be thinking, "But doesn't this make the future uncertain? How can I trust God if he doesn't know exactly what's going to happen?
But here's a beautiful truth. Our trust was never supposed to be in a detailed script of the future. Our trust is in a person. We can trust God's character, his love, his justice, his faithfulness. Those never change. We can trust his promises. When God commits to doing something, he has the power to make it happen and just go ahead and try to stop it.
and we can trust his wisdom. Even when we can't see the whole picture, we can trust that he's working with infinite love and perfect understanding. Think of it like trusting a master guide on a dangerous mountain expedition. You don't need him to have mapped out every rock and crevice ahead of time. You need to trust his skill, his commitment to your safety, and his ability to navigate whatever challenges you encounter together. God's sovereignty isn't about controlling every aspect of every moment and every detail. It's about his supreme authority and his unshakable ability to guide history toward his good purposes.
Like a master chess player who can win regardless of his opponent's moves, God can work with our free choices to accomplish his ultimate plans. This changes everything about how we read the Bible. Instead of having to explain away the obvious meaning of passage after passage, we can simply trust what God is telling us. When he says he grieavves over sin, he really grieavves. When he says he rejoices over one sinner who repents, he's genuinely celebrating. When he says our prayers matter, they actually do. The women who walked to Jesus tomb on Easter morning weren't expecting a resurrection.
They carried spices to anoint a dead body. Their hope was small, just to honor their beloved teacher one last time. But when they arrived, everything changed. The stone was rolled away. The tomb was empty. And angels declared, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He isn't here, but is risen."
Luke 24:5 and 6. In that moment, the universe was remade. The fixed, hopeless future they thought they were walking toward was obliterated. The story they thought had ended in tragedy was revealed to be a preface to the greatest triumph in history. This is what the resurrection tells us about the nature of reality. We live in a world where stones can be rolled away. Where death doesn't have the final word, where the future is gloriously, beautifully open to the transforming power of God's love.
And you are part of that story. Your choices matter. Your prayers count. Your voice reaches the throne room of heaven and can actually influence what happens next. When you pray for a sick friend, you're not just submitting a request to a cosmic bureaucracy. You're entering into partnership with the great physician, adding your love and faith as real factors in the situation. When you choose kindness over harshness, patience over irritation, forgiveness over bitterness, you're creating new possibilities in the world.
You're partnering with God to add goodness to the universe. Now, this doesn't mean we're equal partners with God. He's always the senior partner with infinite wisdom and love. But he's invited us to the table. He listens to our input. He works with our choices. He responds to our prayers.
Now, I know some of you are thinking about the hardest question of all. If this is true, then why is there so much evil and suffering in the world? Why doesn't God stop it? And here's where this understanding of God actually helps us make sense of one of faith's biggest challenges. For centuries, people have struggled with this puzzle. If God is all powerful and all good, and if he knows everything that will happen, then why does he allow terrible things to occur? If he knew from the beginning exactly what evil would happen and created the world anyway, doesn't that make him responsible for it?
But what if God didn't plan the evil? What if when he chose to create genuine love, he had to accept the risk that free creatures might choose hatred? What if when he decided to make real relationships possible, he had to allow for the possibility of real betrayal? The God who takes his few isn't the author of evil. He's its greatest opponent. He didn't write a script that included suffering. He planted a garden knowing that the gardeners might choose to poison it.
His heart breaks with ours when evil happens because it isn't what he wanted either. This means your suffering isn't part of some divine plan written before you were born. It means God grieavves with you in your pain. Not because he authored it, but because love always grieavves when what it loves is hurt. And it means he's working not because he caused the problem, but because his redemptive power is so great that he can bring good even from the evil he never desired. The God of the Bible isn't afraid of our freedom because he's confident in his own love and power. He's not threatened by our choices because he's skilled enough to work with whatever we bring him.
He's secure enough in his own being that he doesn't need to control every outcome to remain sovereign. This is the God who wept over Jerusalem because he genuinely wanted them to choose peace but knew they might not. This is the God who celebrates in heaven when one lost sinner comes home because he knows the real danger of being lost. This is the God who burns with holy jealousy when we chase after other things because his love for us is passionate and personal, not distant and philosophical.
You're made in the image of God. This means your capacity for love, for choice, for relationship. It's not a pale imitation of something divine. It's a genuine participation in it. When you love someone with real, risky, self-giving love, you're reflecting the very heart of God. When you make choices that create beauty and goodness in the world, you're partnering with the creator in the ongoing work of creation. The future isn't a locked room you're destined to enter.
It's an open field and the path across it is being made by your choices, your prayers, your love. God walks with you, guides you, empowers you, but he doesn't control your every step because love, real love, requires that kind of freedom. So when you face a difficult decision, you're not trying to crack some divine code. You're standing in an open field of possibilities, trusting the character of the God who walks with you. When you pray, you're not trying to guess what's already been decided. You're entering into real conversation with a God who listens and responds. When you choose to love, forgive, serve, or sacrifice.
You're not just following a script. You're creating new realities in partnership with the author of love himself. The cross shows us just how far God was willing to go with this risky love. He didn't just create free creatures from a safe distance. He became one of us. He entered into the vulnerability of human existence. He allowed his own heart to be broken by our choices.
And when we did our absolute worst, when we took his perfect love and nailed it to a tree, he responded with resurrection power that transformed even the ultimate evil into the ultimate good. That's the God we serve. Not a cosmic computer executing predetermined code, but a passionate, loving father who has bet everything on the possibility that we might choose to love him back. He's taken the ultimate risk for the ultimate prize. genuine relationship with his children. And here's the beautiful thing, that risk is paying off. Every time someone chooses faith over fear, love over hate, hope over despair, God's great gamble is vindicated.
Every time someone prays and sees an answer, every time someone forgives and experiences healing, every time someone steps out in faith and finds God faithful, the wisdom of creating a world with an open future is proven. You are part of that vindication. Your life, your choices, your love, they matter more than you know. You're not just waiting for a predetermined future to unfold. You're helping to create it. You're co-authoring the story with the God who loves you enough to give you real freedom and trusts you enough to give you genuine responsibility. The stone has been rolled away.
The tomb is empty. The future is open. And you have a pen in your hand, ready to write the next chapter of your story in partnership with the God of infinite love and boundless grace. Let this be our prayer. Aba, Father, thank you for trusting us with real freedom and genuine choices. Thank you for being a God who listens to our prayers, who responds to our hearts, who walks with us into an open future filled with infinite possibilities. Help us to trust your character when we can't see the whole path ahead.
Give us courage to love boldly, pray boldly, and choose boldly, knowing that our decisions matter to you and to the world. Thank you for the cross that shows us how far your love will go and for the empty tomb that reminds us that no stone is too heavy for you to roll away. We pray this in the name of Jesus who showed us what vulnerable risk-taking love really looks like. In his name, amen.
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