Where does Faith come from?

[Particular]

Who ever denied this? God used wicked Pharaoh to show forth His power and used wicked Amorites for the same in the conquests of Israel - how does this relate with Gen 15:16 that states God's destroying the Amorites was contingent upon their iniquity being completed? All are born in sin - the Amorites too were born in sin, God had just cause to destroy them even in Abraham's time. Why wait for their iniquity to be completed? Why wait to harden Israel until that particular generation filled up the measure of their fathers? Do you find it difficult to accept the longsuffering compassion of our God even towards the wicked?

God declared that the iniquity of the Amorites was complete. Where it seems we differ is that I see God driving the events rather than the Amorites driving the events and God sits in the passenger seat to wait for the inevitable crash.

 

[Reformed]

We must distinguish between man being dead in his sins and God's hardening of man's heart - they are not the same, though one leads to the other. I too believe man is totally unable in the flesh to understand or do any of the things of God, but God's hardening of heart is a specific act He does when He judges people to have filled up their measure of iniquity and not before.

Rom 11:8 is God doing something now that He hadn't done before to the Israelites - God is actively blinding them and concluding them in unbelief now so that through their stumbling now (not already fallen before) these branches can be cut off (not already cut off) and the gentiles can be grafted in through the Gospel. This is an intentional act of God's as part of His mysterious purpose that is being carried out at the fullness of time, and not before.

Rom 11:25 For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.
Rom 11:31 Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.

And these are visited upon this generation specifically, them having been judged of having filled up the measure of iniquity as a nation - thereby marking the fullness of time for Christ to come as their stumblingblock and rock of offense that the Gospel might go out to all the world.
Mat 23:32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
Mat 23:36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.
And God didn't deal with them this way prior to this as seen in Matt 23:37.

The same pattern is seen in God's hardening and destroying of the canaanites. The hardening is a specific intentional act of God's to bring about their sentence of destruction that they might have no favor - it's not simply restating their default state.
Jos 11:20 For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they might have no favour, but that he might destroy them, as the LORD commanded Moses.

And why did God have to wait over 400 years to destroy these people if they were already hardened for destruction from before?
Gen 15:16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

Hello, David.

The hardening I am referencing is judicial. I agree there is a situational hardening that God has used (ex. Romans 9 with Pharaoh).

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[ivdavid]

Where it seems we differ is that I see God driving the events rather than the Amorites driving the events and God sits in the passenger seat to wait for the inevitable crash.

we must with modesty and humility yield to the secret counsel of God...
Since He had given that land to the Amorites...He intimates, that He will not, without just cause, transfer the possession of it to others...Until, therefore, they shall have deserved, by their sins, to be rightfully expelled..
Moreover, the Lord here commends his own longsuffering..the Lord not only bore with them for a short time, but granted them four centuries for repentance...God out of heaven is silently waiting until iniquities shall fill up their measure

What of the above do you not agree with?
This is God driving all events, where He's included His longsuffering waiting for repentance among the events He drives, foreseeing all eventualities perfectly.

 

[ivdavid]

The hardening I am referencing is judicial. I agree there is a situational hardening that God has used (ex. Romans 9 with Pharaoh).

I don't know what a judicial hardening is - I simply understand it as sinners being dead in their sins. Sin itself is deceptive and hardens the heart - God needn't cause anything for this to occur. In fact, God exhorts against this, calling for sinners to repent and live - where God desires against the hardening of their hearts.

This is different from when God actively causes events that lead to a purposeful hardening of hearts for their destruction in judgement. Here, God is turned against them in wrath and desires their hardening unto destruction. Pharaoh, Amorites, Israel after Jesus - if you wish to call this situational, I'd say these span massive situations. Semantics aside, if we can distinguish between God's disposition between the two cases, we'd be in agreement.

 

[Particular]

we must with modesty and humility yield to the secret counsel of God...
Since He had given that land to the Amorites...He intimates, that He will not, without just cause, transfer the possession of it to others...Until, therefore, they shall have deserved, by their sins, to be rightfully expelled..
Moreover, the Lord here commends his own longsuffering..the Lord not only bore with them for a short time, but granted them four centuries for repentance...God out of heaven is silently waiting until iniquities shall fill up their measure

What of the above do you not agree with?
This is God driving all events, where He's included His longsuffering waiting for repentance among the events He drives, foreseeing all eventualities perfectly.

You state:
"God out of heaven is silently waiting until iniquities shall fill up their measure."
I disagree that God silently waits.
You place God in the passenger seat as he waits for the crash.
I place God in the driver's seat as he moves the car to crash because the Amorites are wicked and his judgment is sure.

 

[Scott Downey]

Who ever denied this? God used wicked Pharaoh to show forth His power and used wicked Amorites for the same in the conquests of Israel - how does this relate with Gen 15:16 that states God's destroying the Amorites was contingent upon their iniquity being completed? All are born in sin - the Amorites too were born in sin, God had just cause to destroy them even in Abraham's time. Why wait for their iniquity to be completed? Why wait to harden Israel until that particular generation filled up the measure of their fathers? Do you find it difficult to accept the longsuffering compassion of our God even towards the wicked?

This is talking about nationally, as in wiping out the entire nation or most of them. Individually they were headed towards wrath their whole life, but nationally the destruction was delayed to fulfill God's purposes for Israel to take, inherit the promised land.

 

[ivdavid]

I disagree that God silently waits.

Do I personally have anything to do with your disagreeing? If you were to remove me from this conversation and instead inserted a calvinist, why Calvin himself, would you still disagree with this interpretation? Because this is plain scripture and irrespective of where else we disagree on theological positions, shouldn't we read this the same?

 

[ivdavid]

This is talking about nationally, as in wiping out the entire nation or most of them. Individually they were headed towards wrath their whole life, but nationally the destruction was delayed to fulfill God's purposes for Israel to take, inherit the promised land.

Borrowing from the arminian corporate-individual distinction?

But God's purposes for Israel to take the land is expressly revealed to be delayed because the Amorites' iniquity is not yet completed. God's principle for the Sum should be equally valid for the Parts, right?

 

[Particular]

Do I personally have anything to do with your disagreeing? If you were to remove me from this conversation and instead inserted a calvinist, why Calvin himself, would you still disagree with this interpretation? Because this is plain scripture and irrespective of where else we disagree on theological positions, shouldn't we read this the same?

I disagree with your argument. If someone else made your same argument I would disagree with them. Calvin is not correct in every view he held.

 

[Particular]

This is talking about nationally, as in wiping out the entire nation or most of them. Individually they were headed towards wrath their whole life, but nationally the destruction was delayed to fulfill God's purposes for Israel to take, inherit the promised land.

God drove the events.

 

[Scott Downey]

Borrowing from the arminian corporate-individual distinction?

But God's purposes for Israel to take the land is expressly revealed to be delayed because the Amorites' iniquity is not yet completed. God's principle for the Sum should be equally valid for the Parts, right?

No, it is speaking of their Nation.
Just like God speaking of Esau in this way,
Obadiah 1:8
“Will I not in that day,” says the Lord, “Even destroy the wise men from Edom, And understanding from the mountains of Esau?
Obadiah 1:9
Then your mighty men, O Teman, shall be dismayed, To the end that everyone from the mountains of Esau May be cut off by slaughter.
Obadiah 1:18
The house of Jacob shall be a fire, And the house of Joseph a flame; But the house of Esau shall be stubble; They shall kindle them and devour them, And no survivor shall remain of the house of Esau,” For the Lord has spoken.
Obadiah 1:19
The South shall possess the mountains of Esau, And the Lowland shall possess Philistia. They shall possess the fields of Ephraim And the fields of Samaria. Benjamin shall possess Gilead.

 

[Scott Downey]

Amorite individual people did not live for 400 years while Israel was in Egypt. So God is not talking about individual Amorite but all the Amorites along with the other nations Israel is about to dispossess.

And there was also the NEPHILIM in the land. In genesis God destroyed all the corrupted people who had been corrupted by Nephilim, and now we see they have established their stronghold over the land Israel was to posses. This was a work of the enemy to oppose the prophecies God had given. In Genesis, it was about the coming Messiah to be born, who had to be pure, uncorrupted and have no part in Satan's physical influence in the flesh over the entire world, so only Noah was perfect in all his generations, (think DNA) the rest of mankind had been altered by the Nephilim into the seed of the serpent as the fallen angels had taken human women as wives and had children by them, corrupting all flesh. This is not just spiritually corrupted, everything about all flesh had at that time corrupted itself from how God had made them. And the solution was a global extinction of all flesh that breathed air to eliminate that satanic breeding. The same thing was happening again.

Exodus 23:23
For My Angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off.
Exodus 33:2
And I will send My Angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite and the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite.
Numbers 21:34
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Do not fear him, for I have delivered him into your hand, with all his people and his land; and you shall do to him as you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who dwelt at Heshbon.”
Numbers 22:2
Now Balak the son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites.
Numbers 32:39
And the children of Machir the son of Manasseh went to Gilead and took it, and dispossessed the Amorites who were in it.
Amos 2:9, Nephilim giants of large stature
“Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, Whose height was like the height of the cedars, And he was as strong as the oaks; Yet I destroyed his fruit above And his roots beneath.
Amos 2:10
Also it was I who brought you up from the land of Egypt, And led you forty years through the wilderness, To possess the land of the Amorite.

Numbers 13:32-33 New King James Version (NKJV)
32 And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. 33 There we saw the [a]giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
Footnotes:
Numbers 13:33 Heb. nephilim

etc...

Genesis 6:4
There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Numbers 13:33
There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
Deuteronomy 2:11
They were also regarded as giants, like the Anakim, but the Moabites call them Emim.
Deuteronomy 2:20
(That was also regarded as a land of giants; giants formerly dwelt there. But the Ammonites call them Zamzummim,
Deuteronomy 3:11
“For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the giants. Indeed his bedstead was an iron bedstead. (Is it not in Rabbah of the people of Ammon?) Nine cubits is its length and four cubits its width, according to the standard cubit.
Deuteronomy 3:13
The rest of Gilead, and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, I gave to half the tribe of Manasseh. (All the region of Argob, with all Bashan, was called the land of the giants.
Joshua 12:4
The other king was Og king of Bashan and his territory, who was of the remnant of the giants, who dwelt at Ashtaroth and at Edrei,
Joshua 13:12
all the kingdom of Og in Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and Edrei, who remained of the remnant of the giants; for Moses had defeated and cast out these.

 

[Yeshua1]

God declared that the iniquity of the Amorites was complete. Where it seems we differ is that I see God driving the events rather than the Amorites driving the events and God sits in the passenger seat to wait for the inevitable crash.

indeed, for just as in Revelation, Jesus is bring everything to its conclusion per His will and time!

 

[The_5_Solas]

Faith comes from God.

 

[JosephBKuzara]

We are not arguing against grace through faith. What I am arguing against is the idea that faith is not also a gift and that somehow we accomplish that faith on our own.



Hebrews 12:2
looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, being the one who granted and gifted it

God is the source and sustainer of the faith we have