Jacob and Esau were chosen to be fathers of nations. Esau who became Edom would serve Jacob who became Israel. The one nation became a recipient of God’s love, blessing and eventually separation; and the other eventually of God’s hatred. Both were promised nationhood, but one was prophesied to serve the other. Does all this stem from predestination or is it based on God’s foreknowledge? In the following passage where God is messaging Israel the nation that sprung out of Jacob’s loins, we are told just how God works with nations.

Jer.18:1-10. This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.  Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. (Note that God here is speaking to Israel, and not to individuals) If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned.  And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted,  and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.

God in this passage, does not determine what the nation will do as in predestination, but rather he first sees what the nation does, and then He acts accordingly on that nation afterwards, and His action is as a result of their corporate behavior.  Each of these nations Israel and Edom, brought on themselves from God what their actions deserved. Now I want you to think about Jonah and Nineveh. Jonah did not want to go and preach to Nineveh mainly because he believed that Nineveh would turn and God would relent. God’s ways were well known to His prophets. I am not at all certain that they are so well known to his people today.

So, let us think about America today in light of what God says here. As a nation we just as Israel and Edom before us, do not deserve God’s blessing. His grace has come to us and to the free world because He is long suffering. I’m not speaking about individuals now, but about a corporate United States, we corporately have failed as a nation to walk uprightly before God. We have denounced His ways in our laws, and in the actions among the masses. As a corporate body (His people) we have not loved Him with our whole heart; we have not loved our brothers as ourselves. We have passed laws in opposition to the laws that He gives us.

We are in the hands of the potter right now as a nation. He will do with America as He determines based upon our actions. Will He reconsider the good which He had planned for us? For if we repent, He has here stated, that He will relent. And what if He has determined us to be undeserving in His foreknowledge? God is full of Grace and He does forgive, but corporately will the leaders of this nation seek Him and repent? I don’t know?

If we as believers follow the WOKENESS of sinful thinking, and are confused over what is the sin of the homosexual; and of the transgender; and of their advocates, and promoters in society; and of the Atheists who deny this God; of the abortionists who readily sacrifice the unborn children to a false god; and even though we do it all in the name of freedom; then will we lose this our freedom? I don’t know.

God’s will be done. As for me and my house we will serve the Lord. This fact I do know: God does both send blessing and cursing on nations based upon the actions of those nations. True because of the foreknowledge of God He already knows what those actions will be, but that fact does not make Him responsible for those evil or those good actions. They and we are responsible before God.