Topics · Prayer · Lesson 2 of 6
Abraham, Moses, Nineveh: Does God Change His Mind When We Ask?
If God is sovereign, what does asking do?
By the end of this lesson you should be able to
- Trace how Abraham and Moses ask God to act differently and what each appeals to.
- Compare Exodus 32:14 and Jonah 3:10 with 1 Samuel 15:29 on whether God changes his mind.
- Explain how Philippians 4:6 commands asking while Matthew 6:8 says the Father already knows.
- Identify the readings of Aquinas, Calvin, Lewis and the open theists on what petition does.
- Describe how Edwards, Wesley and Müller handled the question in practice.
Scripture at the center
; ; , ; ;
Tap a reference to read it, then come back to the lesson.
Background
The question is older than philosophy. Scripture says that God knows what we need before we ask () and that he declares the end from the beginning (). It also commands asking, and shows people asking God to do something other than what he had said. The tension is already visible inside the Bible.
Four narratives frame it. Abraham stands before the LORD and asks him to spare Sodom (). Moses asks him not to destroy Israel after the golden calf (). Samuel hears God say he regrets making Saul king, and hears that God does not change his mind like a man (). Nineveh repents and God relents from disaster (). The same Hebrew root (nacham) lies behind the English 'regret,' 'relent' and 'change his mind' in these chapters.
Later theologians took two main roads. The classical road, from the church fathers through Aquinas and Calvin, holds that God's being and purposes do not change and reads relenting language as God's way of speaking in human terms. A more recent road, the open theism of the 1990s, holds that the relenting texts describe real responses to a future God has left partly open. Each side accuses the other of letting a prior philosophy govern the text.
Outline
- Abraham asks: will the Judge of all the earth do right?
- God tells Moses to leave him alone
- Moses' appeal and the LORD's relenting
- God regrets, and Samuel cries out all night
- God does not change his mind like a man
- Nineveh repents and God relents
- Present your requests: asking commanded
How to read it
These are narratives and a letter, and they describe more than they command. and show what happened when two men asked; they do not set a rule that God must yield to an argument. Read each scene for what the narrator emphasises: who speaks, what is appealed to, how God answers.
Hebrew narrative regularly speaks of God in human terms. That is not a reason to dissolve the language: Scripture says God 'regrets' and also that he is not a man that he should (). A good reading holds both statements and asks what each protects. 'Relenting' protects the reality of God's response. 'Not changing his mind' protects the reliability of his word and character.
Let Scripture interpret Scripture. states the principle behind many announced judgments and blessings: they depend on how the nation responds. shows that Jonah knew relenting belonged to God's character. Read as one chapter, where verses 11 and 35 speak of regret and verse 29 denies it.
What the Scriptures say
Abraham stands before the LORD
The LORD has told Abraham what he is about to see at Sodom (). The two men go on, but 'Abraham remained standing before the LORD.' An old Jewish scribal note says the original read the other way round, with the LORD standing before Abraham, and that it was changed out of reverence. Either way, Abraham draws near.
His question is a moral one: 'Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?' He does not claim merit for himself ('I am but dust and ashes'). He asks that the righteous not be swept away with the wicked, and he lowers the number from fifty to ten. At each step the LORD agrees, and then departs when Abraham stops. Sodom falls, and says that God remembered Abraham and brought Lot out.
Abraham has been told earlier that the LORD chose him to teach his household to do what is just (). His asking is part of that calling.
Moses intercedes after the golden calf
The LORD speaks of 'your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt,' as if disowning them. He then says, 'Now leave Me alone, so that My anger may burn against them and consume them. Then I will make you into a great nation.' Many readers see an opening: Moses may stand in the way. The offer also echoes the promise to Abraham.
Moses does not argue that the people deserve mercy. He appeals to three things: the LORD's own rescue ('with great power and a mighty hand'), the LORD's reputation among the Egyptians, and his oath: 'Remember Your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.' Then he asks, 'Turn from Your fierce anger and relent from doing harm to Your people.' The narrator reports: 'So the LORD relented from the calamity He had threatened to bring on His people.'
Relenting does not remove all consequence. Moses descends, the calf is destroyed, about three thousand die, and a plague follows (). The plea turns the threatened total destruction into something less, not into nothing.
, God regrets, and God is not a man
'I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned away from following Me and has not carried out My instructions.' Samuel 'was distressed and cried out to the LORD all that night.' The same chapter then says the Glory of Israel does not lie and is not a man who changes his mind (), and ends by saying the LORD regretted making Saul king (15:35). The Hebrew verb in all three is the same.
The verses are not careless. Verse 29 comes after Saul confesses and asks for pardon (15:24-25). It says that the word taking the kingdom from Saul is not a mood that can be talked back, because God keeps his word, as says of his blessing on Israel. Verses 11 and 35 give God's grief at the failure of the one he made king.
So the passage guards two things at once. God is moved by what people do, and God is not fickle.
Nineveh repents and God relents
Jonah's message was short: Nineveh will be overturned in forty days (). It names no condition. The king orders fasting and hopes God may yet turn. reports the outcome: 'When God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—He relented from the disaster He had threatened to bring upon them.'
Jonah explains his earlier flight in 4:2: he knew God to be gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and ready to relent from disaster, echoing the LORD's self-description in and . The prophet treats relenting as part of God's steady character, not a break in it. The announced judgment was a call, and the call worked.
Jesus later points to this event. The people of Nineveh repented at Jonah's preaching, and 'something greater than Jonah' is here ().
Present your requests to God
Paul writes from prison to a church facing opposition. 'Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.' The command covers ordinary worry, and it names petition (asking for particular things) beside thanksgiving. The reason follows in the context: 'The Lord is near' (4:5).
Paul himself expects the church's prayers to matter to his case. He says his deliverance will come through their prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (), and in he says they help him by praying. Yet the promised result in verse 7 is not that every request will be granted. It is the peace of God, which guards hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
The letter assumes the whole picture of this lesson. God knows, God commands asking, and asking has a result: sometimes the change asked for, always peace.
Key terms
- Relent / regret / change his mind Hebrew nacham
- One root with a range from 'be sorry' to 'relent' to 'be comforted.' It lies behind , , and ; context decides the English.
- Immutability
- The doctrine that God's nature and purposes do not change. Not a biblical word, but a name for what and say.
- Petition Greek deesis; aitema
- Paul's 'prayer and petition' in names prayer in general and the asking of particular requests.
In the whole Bible
The whole Bible holds together two things. God's character does not change: he is holy, faithful and merciful (; ). And he deals with people, who are real agents, in history. The relenting stories show the second without denying the first, because they always rest on an unchanging attribute: his mercy (; ), his oath (), his justice ().
Scripture also gives prayer a real place in what God does. Elijah is a man of like nature to ours whose prayer for rain mattered (), though he prayed after God had promised rain (, -45). Daniel prays in the light of Jeremiah's prophecy (). In each case, the promise does not remove the asking.
The canon does not explain how this works. It gives the pattern: God knows, God invites asking, and God responds. Where the text is silent about mechanism, a reader should hold the explanation lightly and the pattern firmly.
Where Christ is
Christ is the answer to Abraham's question. The Judge of all the earth does what is right, and says he did so at the cross, where he showed his righteousness while justifying those who trust in Jesus. The righteous One was not swept away with the wicked but in their place.
Moses stands between God and Israel, but Moses is a servant in God's house; Christ is the Son over it (). He holds an intercession that does not end: he 'always lives to intercede' for those who come to God through him (), and there is one mediator between God and man (). Moses appeals to the promise to Abraham; every promise of God finds its Yes in Christ ().
Jesus lived the question. He prayed for Peter (). At Lazarus' tomb he thanked the Father for always hearing him (). In Gethsemane he asked that the cup pass and submitted: 'not as I will' (). says his cries were heard. Asking and trust meet in him. Saul, the king who did not obey, contrasts with Christ the king who did.
How traditions read it
Aquinas (Catholic; Summa Theologiae II-II q. 83, a. 2). He lists three older errors: that providence does not govern human affairs, that all happens by necessity, and that providence is changeable and prayer alters it. His answer: providence fixes not only what happens but the means. We pray not to change God's plan but to obtain what he arranged to give through prayer.
Calvin (Reformed; Institutes 3.20.3). If God knows our needs, why pray? Calvin gives several reasons: prayer keeps faith awake, kindles desire for God, exposes our hidden wants, trains thankfulness, and strengthens trust in providence. He says it was commanded for our sake more than for God's. J. I. Packer, in Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (1961), defends holding sovereignty and human responsibility together.
Wesley (Methodist). In his sermon on he says prayer is not to inform God but to ready us to receive, and he calls it a means of grace.
C. S. Lewis (Anglican; Letters to Malcolm, 1964). He treats petition as one way God gives creatures a share in bringing things about, and he is plain that we cannot explain how it works.
Open theists (Pinnock, Rice, Sanders, Hasker and Basinger, The Openness of God, 1994; Gregory Boyd, God of the Possible, 2000). They take the relenting texts at face value and hold that God leaves some of the future open, so prayer can contribute to what happens. Many Reformed and Catholic scholars, and other evangelicals, reject this as inconsistent with God's foreknowledge.
This lesson reads the narratives as they stand: God truly responds, and his character does not change. It does not choose between the classical and open accounts of foreknowledge.
How praying people lived this
Jonathan Edwards 1703 - 1758 · Congregational / Reformed, New England
Edwards, pastor at Northampton, Massachusetts, wrote An Humble Attempt (1747) to urge a plan from Scotland. In 1744 Scottish ministers had agreed to set aside Saturday evening, Sunday morning and the first Tuesday of each quarter for prayer for a revived church, in private societies, public meetings or alone. Edwards based it on and . The Scottish plan laid no binding vow on those who joined. Edwards held strong views on God's sovereignty, yet he argued for scheduled, agreed asking.
The principle: God has promised to bless; asking together is the means he has appointed.
“when once there comes to appear much of a spirit of prayer in the church of God for this mercy, then it will soon be accomplished”
George Müller 1805 - 1898 · Brethren, Bristol, England
Müller directed orphan houses in Bristol and made his needs known to God alone, keeping written records of requests and answers. His own entry of 7 June 1884 reports a legacy of over eleven thousand pounds that had sat in Chancery for six years. He prayed daily that it be paid, believing that God would act in his own time. These accounts are his own, not independent audits, and he also writes of long delays that tested faith.
The principle: Ask for specific things, keep asking over years, and trust God's timing.
“I kept on praying, however, and for six years prayed day by day that the money might be paid”
John Wesley 1703 - 1791 · Anglican / Methodist
Wesley preached on in his Sermon 26. Commenting on , he argues that the point of asking is not to inform God, who already knows our wants. In another sermon he calls prayer a means of grace, the channel through which God's grace is conveyed. Asking stays central for him.
The principle: Prayer prepares the one who asks to receive what God is already willing to give.
“It is not so much to move God, who is always more ready to give than you to ask, as to move yourselves, that you may be willing and ready to receive the good things he has prepared for you.”
Review questions
- What three arguments does Moses use in , and what does each appeal to?
- How does use the same Hebrew verb to say that God regrets and that God does not change his mind?
- What does tell us about why God relented at Nineveh, and which earlier text does it echo?
- How does Aquinas answer the objection that prayer cannot change God's plan, and how does Calvin answer the question 'why pray if God already knows'?
- What does Paul expect prayer to do in and 4:6-7?
Read further
Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.20 · John Calvin, 1559 free to read
Section 3 answers 'why pray if God already knows?' with reasons from benefit to the one who prays and God's command; the rest of the chapter gives rules and an exposition of the Lord's Prayer.
Read it ↗Summa Theologiae, II-II q. 83, 'Of Prayer' · Thomas Aquinas, 1270s link only
Article 2 asks whether prayer is fitting and answers that providence includes the means, so prayer takes its place in God's ordering. English edition 1947; link only.
Find it ↗An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer · Jonathan Edwards, 1747 free to read
A Reformed pastor argues from Scripture that united, scheduled prayer is promised a hearing and may precede a wider awakening.
Read it ↗Sermon 26, on the Sermon on the Mount · John Wesley, 1740s-80s free to read
A Methodist reading of that stresses the benefit of prayer to the one who prays.
Read it ↗Answers to Prayer, from George Müller's Narratives · George Müller, compiled by A. E. C. Brooks, early 20th century free to read
Selections from Müller's accounts of requests and answers, including six years of prayer for a legacy.
Read it ↗Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer · C. S. Lewis, 1964 link only
Letters on petition and its place in a world governed by God, written with candour about what cannot be explained.
The Openness of God · Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, David Basinger, 1994 link only
Five authors present the open view that God's knowledge of the future is not exhaustive and that prayer can affect outcomes.
God of the Possible · Gregory Boyd, 2000 link only
A popular statement of open theism that reads relenting texts at face value.
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God · J. I. Packer, 1961 link only
Argues that Scripture teaches God's sovereignty and human responsibility together.
Prepared with AI assistance from public-domain sources and other books' published teaching. A scholar's review is still to come; if you spot anything to correct, please tell us.
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