Ultimate Security: Finding a Refuge in Difficult Times (5 page)

4. God Called Us

Now we move out of eternity and into time. There is a very important moment in each of our lives—it is the point at which the eternal purpose of God impacts us individually. As God calls us, His purpose comes out of eternity into time and into our lives.

Two of the meanings of the verb
to
call
are: “to invite” and “to summon.” God’s calling is an invitation; but it also carries with it all the authority of a king’s summons.

5. God Saved Us

The next stage is that we were invited to join God’s family through faith in Jesus Christ. When we responded positively to that call, God saved us, and we entered into salvation. We were saved from sin—from its guilt, from its power, and from its defilement. God has provided a total salvation through Jesus Christ.

6. God Justified Us

When we have been saved, God justifies us. The word
justified
is a somewhat technical theological term. It carries various meanings that all go together: “to acquit,” “to reckon righteous,” and “to make righteous.” Therefore, on the basis of the fact that we were saved through faith in Christ, God acquitted us of all guilt, He reckoned us righteous, and, in the process of time, He makes us righteous. However, justification is not the last stage we experience.

7. God Glorified Us

I believe that the thinking of most Christians stops at the concept of being justified. But God did not stop there. The seventh phase is altogether marvelous:
He
glorified us
.

The Bible says we are justified through the resurrection of Christ. But we are glorified through the ascension of Christ. You and I are identified with Christ in each of these aspects: His death, His burial, His resurrection, and His ascension. All these steps lead toward our goal—to share Christ’s glory and to take our place with Him on His throne throughout eternity. The destination of our journey is to share God’s glory on the throne with Jesus Christ forever.

Let us now consider each successive stage of God’s plan in detail.

7

FIRST STAGE: FOREKNOWN

The first stage of God’s plan is “He foreknew us.” We have seen that, in eternity, God foreknew, chose, and predestined us according to His purpose. His plan always begins with His foreknowledge. The apostle Paul wrote,

For those whom [God] foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son. (Romans 8:29 nasb)

The apostle Peter expressed the same revelation, but he applied it specifically to God’s choice of us:

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father…. (1 Peter 1:1–2 nasb)

These two Scripture passages affirm that God’s foreknowledge always comes first. Out of His foreknowledge proceeds His choice, and out of His choice comes His predestination.
Foreknowledge
simply means that God knows in advance. It is part of His total knowledge. I believe there is no attribute of God more awesome than His knowledge. When we contemplate the characteristics of God, we have to bow in reverence and worship.

God Knows Everything

Let us briefly summarize the extent of what God knows. First of all, very simply, He knows everything! We should never get away from that fact. John wrote,
“God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything”
(1 John 3:20).

Do you know what
“everything”
means? It means: everything. There is absolutely nothing in the past, the present, or the future—here on earth or in the remotest part of the universe—that God does not know. He knows the biggest things and He knows the smallest things. The following are several matters, large and small, that God fully knows.

God Knows the Stars

Earlier, we saw that God has intimate, personal knowledge of the stars. Psalm 147:4 says,
“He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name,”
and Isaiah 40:26
affirms
, “He…brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name.”
Although there are billions upon billions of stars, God knows each one exactly. He knows the name of each one. He calls each one by name, and they all respond to His call. That is a wonderful thought.

God Knows the Sparrows

Not only does God know the stars, but, coming down a little lower, He also knows the sparrows, which are among the commonest birds in creation. Sparrows can be found in almost all areas of the world. In my travels to many nations, I cannot think of a single country where I have not seen sparrows. These birds are esteemed very little; nobody thinks much about them. If a dead sparrow were found in a gutter somewhere, few people would give it a second thought. But what is God’s opinion of sparrows? Jesus said,
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father”
(Matthew 10:29). The above verse says that two sparrows are sold for one penny, but in another place, Jesus said,
“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God”
(Luke 12:6).

Notice the mathematics of these two statements. If you could get two sparrows for one penny, then, by the same reckoning, you should get four sparrows for two cents. But, apparently, when you invested two cents, you got five sparrows—the extra sparrow was free. Jesus said that even that fifth sparrow is remembered by God.

I once heard somebody make the following statement, and it brought tears to my eyes: “God takes time to attend a sparrow’s funeral.” We pay little attention to sparrows; we consider them to be very insignificant. But God knows each one of them, and not one falls to the ground without the Father’s knowledge.

God Knows the Number of Hairs on Our Head

Here is another fact God knows that we certainly do not know—the number of hairs on our head! Jesus said,
“Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered”
(Matthew 10:30; see also Luke 12:7). None of us could accurately count the number of hairs on our own head. Some of us have a lot of hair, and others have only a little; but even for those of us who have only a little, we still cannot count all the individual strands of hair. Yet this statement by Jesus attests that God knows the number of hairs on the head of every human being in the world today.

God Knows Us Fully

Moreover, God knows each of us in totality. There is a beautiful passage in Psalm 139 in which King David expressed his wonder at God’s knowledge of him. David began with what I would call a gasp of astonishment:

O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? (Psalm 139:1–7 nasb)

Think of what David was saying.
God knows our thoughts at a distance.
I once heard a man who had this revelation from God: “Men’s thoughts sound as loud in heaven as their voices do on earth.” That revelation was a shock to me. But that is what David was indicating here:
“You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down.”
In other words, “You know the way I walk; You know where I am to be found at any moment.”
“You…are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue,…You know it all.”
God knows what we are going to say before we speak it.
“You have enclosed me behind and before”
—“You are all around me.”
“You…laid Your hand upon me.”

Surely, when we consider all these truths, we have to echo the words of David:
“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it.”

Then David said,
“Where can I go from Your Spirit?”
God’s Spirit is the key to how God knows everything in the whole universe. The Spirit of God permeates the entire universe. There is no place where the Spirit of God is not present; and, through His Spirit, God knows every item that is on this list we have been examining.

“Men’s thoughts sound as loud in heaven
as their voices do on earth.”

God Knows Us Personally

Further on in Psalm 139, we see that David spoke about God’s personal knowledge of him:

For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. (Psalm 139:13 nasb)

David said that before he was born into the world, God was forming him in his mother’s womb.

I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. (Psalm 139:14–15 nasb)

Seeing David’s response to this fact, I have to confess that I feel the same as he did. When I consider God’s knowledge, I am overwhelmed with a sense of praise and awe.

It is amazing to think that God made man out of the dust. (See Genesis 2:7.) But it is even more amazing to realize that He formed that dust in the depths of the earth before He ever used it to make man. God did not just begin with the dust—He began with the chemical processes in the earth that ultimately produced the dust with which He made us.

Continuing his commentary on this amazing process, David said,

Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them. (Psalm 139:16 nasb)

David was saying to the Lord, “You’ve known every process that my body would pass through. You’ve known when each of my members was to be formed. You’ve known what day every event would take place in my life. There is nothing that You haven’t known—not merely now but in advance.”

God’s Knowledge Is from Eternity

If we combine David’s revelation with the words of Paul and Peter at the beginning of this chapter, we see that God’s knowledge is from eternity. Through His Spirit, God knows the past, the present, and the future; the small and the great; the important and the insignificant; what we are like on the inside and what we are like on the outside—our physical nature and our emotional makeup. God foreknows and knows it all. Everything in God’s plan for us and for the universe is based upon His foreknowledge. Every aspect of His purposes proceeds from His foreknowledge.

8

SECOND STAGE:
CHOSEN

The second stage in God’s plan is “He chose us.”
First He foreknew us, then He chose us. As we pick up our discussion from prior chapters, let us review some Scriptures.

The Responsibility Is God’s

First, let’s recall these words from Ephesians:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. (Ephesians 1:3–4 nasb)

Everything in those verses centers on the fact that God chose us and that His plan is being worked out in us based upon His choice. According to Paul, God chose us
“that we would be holy and blameless before Him.”
I have to say that if God had not chosen us, I would have no faith that the holiness Paul speaks of could ever happen. My faith is based on the fact that God, not I, made the choice. If God made the choice, then, in a certain sense, I can say with reverence, “It’s His responsibility to see that it happens.”

The Initiative Is God’s

For our next point, let’s look once again at the following passage from 1 Peter 1:

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father…. (1 Peter 1:1–2 nasb)

As I pointed out, God foreknows, and then He chooses—and His choice is always based on His knowledge. These facts should relieve us of a lot of anxiety! If God has chosen us to do something, He has done so because He knows it is by His grace that we will be able to complete the task for which He chose us. It is very important to understand that, in all God’s dealings with humanity—as a matter of fact, with the whole universe—He always retains the initiative. In fact, the initiative never passes out of His hands.

I want to illustrate this truth from various aspects of God’s activity recorded in the New Testament. It is important to dwell on this reality because, today, many Christians scarcely ever leave the initiative with God. Instead, we are inclined to think that everything depends on what
we
do—even to the point of thinking that if we do not do something, nothing will happen. In a certain sense, that is true. However, it is not the total, or real, truth.

The real truth is that God set everything into being. For instance, in the new birth, or salvation, the initiative is with God. Many people think they were born again because
they
decided it. However, that is not really the truth.
We are born again because God decided it.
We have to
respond
to God’s decision, but without His decision, it never could have happened by us alone.

In the exercise of His will [God] brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures. (James 1:18 nasb)

Notice the first part of the verse:
“In the exercise of His will
[God]
brought us forth by the word of truth.”
We were born again because God chose to make it so. The
New International Version
translates this portion of the verse, “
He
chose
to give us birth through the word of truth.”
Always remember that the new birth proceeds not from our choice but from God’s choice.