God’s power over evil…

Someone I know well is a member of a cult. His faith is not in Jesus as God in human flesh who took our punishment for sin. He believes Jesus died to give us the right and power to earn our salvation. While that idea is not biblical, he also believes a few things that do agree with the Bible. One of them is the confidence that God will defeat evil, yet not realizing that He already has.

Today’s chapter in “Born for Battle” says that despite the suffering in the world and the severe persecution of genuine Christians and even of those who claim to be but are not, the power of God will overcome Satan. Actually, He already has. This enemy is now on a short leash, and as the reading says, he is merely a pawn in God’s will, as are those who hold firm to their sin.

Surely the wrath of man shall praise you; the remnant of wrath you will put on like a belt. (Psalm 76:10)

That book’s author also quotes this verse to show that the storm of hate that evil stirs up is used for God’s purposes: "This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." (Acts 2:23)

The very worst evil could do actually turned out to be the very best that ever happened. And because of that, I need to be careful how I evaluate the events of life. Peter was not thinking right when he heard and responded as Jesus told him what would soon happen:

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (Matthew 16:21–23)

The idea of God killing Jesus was foreign to him and still is for many. The Jews did it, or the jealous Pharisees, but how could God crucify His sinless Son?

Yet He did. There was no flaw in His plan. For a time, Peter thought so and became Satan’s mouthpiece. Eventually he learned that God’s redemptive purpose moves along a path of suffering and sacrifice — and as my reading says, any diversion from that is from Satan. For that reason, I’m learning to be careful how I think about the world news and God’s will. We Christians tend to want heaven on earth, a return to Eden in our lifetime. However, the Bible does not promise this and we  remain in a spiritual battle.

Jesus has defeated the enemy, yet this enemy still thrashes about, injuring and deceiving, destroying and duping even sincere people away from faith in the true Savior, salvation that could be theirs by the grace of God. Yet the God who makes the wrath of man praise Him can also take the evil done by their wrath and use it to bring those who fight Him to their knees at the foot of the cross. For me, this is truth that instructs me how to pray for hardened sinners. God can use their sin to save them. Nothing is too difficult for God.

PRAY: Lord Jesus, even my own sin drives me to You. May the sin in the world have that effect on many, that Your goodness is recognized and glorified, even in the mess we humans insist on making. You rebuked Peter for setting his mind on ‘comfortable’ yet You also made of him a strong testimony to Your grace. How badly I need that same power in my life that You may be exalted and the enemy resisted.

Why did God allow sin?

 
Today’s reading from Charnock’s book is so profound that I’m tempted to copy/paste most of it instead of putting it in my own words. In writing about the wisdom of God, this author answers the question I’ve often been asked: Why did God allow Adam and Eve to sin? It ruined everything.

Charnock agrees that sin is “altogether black and abominable” but quickly adds that in His wisdom God allowed it that we might see His mercy and grace displayed in the incarnation and death of his Son for the atonement of sin.

With goosebumps, I stop there and say, “Of course. Without sin we would not see the mercy and power of God. We would only have a small view of His glory and miss His incredible love and power shown in what He did about our sin…

So that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:21)

He permitted Adam’s fall so we could have a fuller discovery of His nature and unbounded goodness. It would not have otherwise appeared. His goodness in rewarding innocent obedience would have been manifested; but not his mercy. Without sin and its production of misery, God’s mercy in sending his Son to save his enemies, could not have appeared.
Nor would we know the power of God in the changing of hard hearts nor His vindictive justice that reveals His wrath against sin. We would not experience imputed righteousness and the glory of knowing it through faith in Christ:

For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face. (Psalm 11:7)
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Without sin, this perfection, whereby God draws good out of evil, would have no reason to happen and been utterly useless.

Instead, sin became an occasion of God glorifying himself as He used it to communicate the knowledge of all these perfections of His nature, which otherwise would not be seen. His justice would have nothing to punish, His mercy obscure, and a great part of His wisdom would remain silent without the presence of sin to order and even use for His purposes.

The OT example is Joseph. God permitted the sin of Joseph’s brethren, that he might use their evil to a good end. Because of his holiness, God never wills sin as an end; but in regard of His great wisdom He wills to permit it as a means and occasion to draw good out of those things which are in their own nature most contrary to good.

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. (Genesis 50:20)

The NT example is like it, but with implications for far more than one family. This was for all of humanity:

This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. (Acts 2:23)

The devil inspired men to kill Jesus yet God ordered it to accomplish His own design of redemption in the death of the His Son. The devil had diabolical ends, and God overpowers his actions to serve His own divine ends. Divine wisdom uses sin to accomplish His will.

PRAY: Because my sin did this to You, Jesus, I abhor sin, even though it still draws me out of fellowship with You. Yet because of God’s wisdom, mercy, and grace, You continually draw me back to Yourself, using everything for good in my life. You are utterly amazing to use the sin that I hate as a means whereby I am able to know Your great love and grace.

What is God’s will?

 

When praying “Thy will be done” I’ve wondered if I’m asking for His perfect will in which everyone does as He commands — a sort of ‘heaven on earth’ request — but I know it is not going to happen.

Or am  I asking that God will use the disobedience of humanity to accomplish His purposes, such as He did with Joseph was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, and even more profound, something like when Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” yet “crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” (Acts 2:23)

God can use evil for good, a truth that God showed me early in my Christian life:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

The ‘good’ here is being transformed into the image of Christ and ‘all things’ includes even the unpleasant events of life, the trials that I’m to count as pure joy (James 1:2-4).

At least one theologian* speaks of the will of God in three ways. One is His “decretive” will or His absolute decrees, the things He is going to do that no human can stop or change. In other words, what God determines or promises cannot be cancelled. He will do it.

The second is His “perceptive” will, or insights revealed in His law as those things that are right or proper, His rule of righteousness for the way His people should live. Sadly, the OT tells how the will of God for faithful obedience was substituted by ritual rather than a loving zeal for God. Lest we think ‘salvation by grace’ changed that, we need to examine ourselves. Are we “seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” or relaxed in the righteousness of Christ without “thy will be done” being a priority?

The third aspect of God’s will is “disposition” which refers to His character and is about what pleases God. He may allow evil but not give permission to it and is not at all pleased by it. As a believer, I sense His pleasure and feel joy when I obey, but also feel His grief when I do not.

Take these three aspects of God’s will and apply them to this: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

• In the “decretive” nobody perishes and then universalism is true and hell is vacant of people. Not biblical.

• In the “perceptive” sense, God does not allow people to perish, but grants His moral permission. This does not fit the context of the passage.

• The third option of “disposition” makes sense in that God is not willing or inwardly disposed to, or delighted by, people’s perishing. Instead, He desires and commands my obedience. When I fail, I am not destroying His sovereignty nor making a lie of His desire that I obey.

This OT verse says something else about God’s will: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29) He does not tell me everything, only what I need to obey Him.

Yet the marvel of God is that He can use “all things for my good” even my disobedience. For one thing, it produces greater humility and dependence on Him. This does not mean disobedience is a virtue in disguise. It only means God can bring good out of evil (as He did with Joseph) and points to the transcendent power of His sovereignty. It also means that I should seek His revealed will and comply with it, not assume that I can do whatever I want and He will turn it to good.

Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long . . . .Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. (Psalm 25:4–9)

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. (James 1:5)

Lord Jesus, I thank You for revealing much about who You are and how You think. Your will is often hidden, yet when I ask for wisdom and guidance, You hear and respond. You, who spoke all things into existence, are involved in the lives of Your people. You ask us to pray that Your will be done here on earth. Grant me the ability to pray with discernment so I understand what I am really asking.

EXTRA: Read Psalm 119 and note any changes I need to make when praying. What am I thinking when I ask that His will be done?

* Sproul, R. C. Can I Know God’s Will? Vol. 4. The Crucial Questions Series. Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2009.

 

 

Sovereignty means sovereignty!

 

READ Isaiah 16–20

After this weekend’s small taste of what God can do with people who seldom acknowledge Him, I’m thinking about the future when Jesus returns. What will happen to the nations who reject Christ? How will agnostics be treated? What will God do with the quasi-religious who are neither anti-Christ nor solidly for Him?

This portion of Isaiah’s prophecy is about the nations. Some will be judged severely, others not. These chapters are a challenge to understand, but a few verses stand out:

“Give counsel; grant justice; make your shade like night at the height of noon; shelter the outcasts; do not reveal the fugitive; let the outcasts of Moab sojourn among you; be a shelter to them from the destroyer. When the oppressor is no more, and destruction has ceased, and he who tramples underfoot has vanished from the land, then a throne will be established in steadfast love, and on it will sit in faithfulness in the tent of David one who judges and seeks justice and is swift to do righteousness.” (Isaiah 16:3–5)

This points to Jesus and His incredible love for even His enemies. Certainly, when He rules it will be in grace and faithfulness but also in justice and righteousness. Also, I’ve become more aware of His power in the lives of anyone whom He wants to use for His purposes, whether they have faith or not. This morning’s church service referenced how Peter declared to the Jews: “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23) and later added, “And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled.” (Acts 3:17–18)

God is sovereign in the affairs of man. We are not puppets and yet He works in people’s lives to accomplish what needs to be done — like the crucifixion of His Son that we might be saved! Events like that seem negative in our minds, but purposeful in the mind of God.

Not all God does will have a happy ending though. Isaiah speaks of the nations who oppose Him and their downfall because they do not respond to His goodness:

He will not look to the altars, the work of his hands, and he will not look on what his own fingers have made, either the Asherim or the altars of incense. In that day their strong cities will be like the deserted places of the wooded heights and the hilltops, which they deserted because of the children of Israel, and there will be desolation. For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge; therefore, though you plant pleasant plants and sow the vine-branch of a stranger, though you make them grow on the day that you plant them, and make them blossom in the morning that you sow, yet the harvest will flee away in a day of grief and incurable pain. (Isaiah 17:8–11)

On the other  hand, He will produce a good and great change in these three: Egypt, Assyria, and Israel. Speaking through Isaiah, God says:

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.” (Isaiah 19:23–25)

Thinking in such grand scale is hard for me as a ‘detail’ person, yet the Lord stretches my mind as well as my hope. Someday this wonky and on-tilt-right-now world will be filled with people who worship Him. He will bring it to pass. It seems impossible yet God keeps His promises and fulfills every prophecy. I might not be here to see this highway, yet He says it will be there. Right now, I’m in awe of His sovereign power to do what He determines to do, with or without human cooperation.