The Messenger 10
Introduction
Let me begin today’s message by inviting you to spend a few moments reading through Ps 77. I am using the New International Version of the Bible. Please take special note of the contents of verses 10-12.
From a seemingly inconsolable despair at the thought that God had rejected him (verses 7-9), the whole tone of the psalm changes from verse 11 onwards. The reason? The psalmist had made a conscious decision to remember the deeds of the Lord instead of dwelling on his own feelings and circumstances. From that point everything changes.
Like the psalmist we, too, can reach a point in our life when we feel that God has abandoned us. And like the psalmist we, too, are tempted to cry out in our despair:
Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favour again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? Ps 77:7-9
What is it that we can learn from the psalmist that will help us when we are at that breaking point? Just this: if we are going to emerge from a spiral of despair and negativity, then like the psalmist we, too, need to “remember the deeds of the Lord.”
I trust you are beginning to appreciate that what we have been looking at thus far in our study of Ephesians is designed to encourage you to reflect on all that God has done for you in Christ. It was a plan that had its beginnings before time began, was revealed in history and is to be completed in the future.
What if’s?
As I said before, God’s choosing of us is not only a difficult doctrine but raises some very awkward questions.
Why, for example, did God make us in the way He did?
If He planned salvation in eternity then He must have known we were going to fail. Why didn’t He just create us in a way that we wouldn’t have needed salvation in the first place? Think of all the heartache, suffering and destruction it would have saved. Only God knows the answer to that. Far be it from me then to think that I have the answer. What I can do, however, is provide you with a few pegs on which to hang your own thoughts and reflections as we go on this slight detour in our study of Ephesians.
Peg no. 1 – What if the most important thing God wants from us is a genuine love for Him; and what if our love for Him can only be genuine if we are free to choose between God and an alternative lover?
Whether we take the opening chapters of Genesis literally or figuratively, its message remains the same. God loves us, but we are created free to choose between loving Him or loving ourselves more (“to be like God”).
The temptation to be like God is, to put it simply, the temptation to be free of accountability to God, to be free to make our own rules and to live in whatever way we choose. Why be under God when you can be like God? It is a tempting and seductive lover and can assume a thousand disguises. However, it is this freedom to decide which love we will pursue that God gave at creation.
Now think about it. Could our love for God, the thing He wants most from us, really be genuine if the human race didn’t have the choice of pursing an alternative love?
Peg no. 2 – What if God is more concerned with the development of our character than our comfort? And what if character could only be developed through our learning to overcome opposition and difficulties?
If God planned salvation before the world began it must have meant that God knew we were going to fail – that we were going to choose the alternative lover. That doesn’t imply that God planned for us to fail nor that He wanted us to fail. When He created us He gave us a wonderful privilege – the privilege of making choices, even wrong choices. Learning to accept responsibility for the wrong choices we make; learning to face up to what really is inside of us; learning to cope with the consequences of wrong choices that we and others have made; learning to overcome obstacles instead of allowing ourselves to become victims of our circumstances – are all part of what it means to be human. It is a price we have to pay, but then character has to be forged in the furnace of struggle, discipline and opposition. Character is not a free gift. The alternative is to have been created an automaton.
I am sure that occasionally you feel as I do – you wish that God would put your character development on hold for a while. Remember, however, that there is a song that one day you will sing that no angel will ever be able to sing – it is the song of the redeemed.
Take a few moments to read through Heb 12:1-13. If you are going through difficult times right now don’t be discouraged. What we are going through has the potential ultimately to ‘produce a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.’
Peg no 3 – What if salvation is actually an integral part of God’s plan of creation and not something totally separate from it?
What God created in Genesis was indeed good but not perfect. If it had been perfect there would have been no sin in the Garden of Eden. But it seems to me that God had something far deeper and more incredible in mind when He placed us on this earth – not only for us but for the whole of creation itself.
Creation, salvation, and ultimate perfection seem to be intimately inter-connected. They seem to me to be part of God’s long term plan that existed in His mind from the very beginning. He could have done it, I suppose, in another way but He chose to do it that way.
The intricacy of creation is truly amazing and good. But the Scriptures teach us that both for creation and for the redeemed, linked together in the glorious purposes of God, the best is still to come! But for now we and the whole of God’s creation are still experiencing the birth pangs. What if…?
If you have a question or a comment about this series please feel free to write to me, Brian, at
Click on next page to continue