When God prophesies a thing to happen, sometimes we think of that in terms of his omniscient so that he knows what's going to happen

and history runs on its own steam and God being omniscient knows the events that are out there and we stop

right there and give him the glory for his knowledge but we don't tend to think that God undertakes mightily to fulfill the word that

he speaks about that future event.

But here you get a different vision of how God knows the future. God knows the future because he makes the future.

How does God know the future?

In this episode of Light and Truth,

John Piper turns to the Book of Jeremiah to emphasize that God's knowing the future means that he makes the future.

The seminar was originally given at Bethlehem Baptist Church on December 6th, 1995.

I'm going to take you through three kings in the rebuilding of the temple after the Babylonian exile and show you that Ezra in writing his book

was set on making sure that his readers knew that while these kings were apparently doing remarkable

things to enable the temple to be rebuilt, they were not doing them without the providence

God in your lives.

In the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia,

in order to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus

King of Persia to build a house in Jerusalem.

The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus King of Persian. So the

Lord's in charge here to get this done. Now it says he's doing this to fulfill a

prophecy. I want to read you that prophecy. Many of you have memorized it and you didn't know you memorized it because you didn't memorize the

verse just before the part that you memorized.

In Jeremiah 29, you've all, I mean not all of you, but many of you have memorized, I know the plans I have for you,

give you a future and a hope, plans for welfare and not for evil.

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