In any case, we hear God describe the foul smell of these offenders. These few verses should raise a question in our minds about God’s intentions. In 2:11 God calls this invading army, “His army”. Yet here in v. 20-21 He is destroying that army for what they have done. The skeptic will look at this and ask, “what kind of god does this, who is he and how can you call him righteous?” So we must deal with questions such as these. How does the Christian who takes the Bible seriously answer such objections? Clearly God does work like this (Gen. 50:20, Is. 10:12-14; 45:7). And ultimately we must say that it is not our job to question Him (Dan. 4:34-35) but you can’t really begin this conversation with the skeptic like that. Instead, showing your willingness as a believer to approach weighty topics such as this in humility and by admitting that you don’t understand all the ways of the Creator of the Universe will help to soften the objection. But philosophically speaking, the conversation with naturally progress into a discussion of God’s intentions and man’s intentions coming to the same ends but beginning with different purposes. The fact that we creatures do not know the future as God does, allows us to both, be used as instruments by Him, and make our own decisions about what we want to do in a way that our experience is that we had not been coerced by God—this is the reformed doctrine of compatibilism.
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