Joshua
When God sets His love, that is one thing. But when God sets His judgment, it is quite the other, but no less definite. The summarizing of Joshua's conquests is in the book by that name, chapter 11, verses 18-20.
First, there was a long war. Next, virtually no city was exempt from the judgment of God. And finally, the reason:
(v. 20) "For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that He might utterly destroy them, and that they might receive no mercy, but that He might destroy them, as the Lord had commanded Moses."
Yes, and as the Lord had spoken through Noah, "Cursed be Canaan (Genesis 9:25) ."
When men curse, the curses may or may not stick. When God curses, the end can be told from the beginning. One man, the son of Ham, sinned. All of his progeny cursed. Well, not all. Mercy was shown to the family of Rahab.
One man, the creation of God, sinned. All of Adam's race is cursed. Well, not all. God showed mercy, perhaps, to you? And to me. And many more.
Not that He owes it to anyone, you understand. God is in no man's debt. We are the debtors, for His amazing grace, a grace that in our day has become less amazing as we take so much for granted.
Judges
Choices, always choices. Not man's, but God's, and for God's reasons. Turn to Judges 7:3-7, read the story of how Gideon's men were chosen, and tell me if this is a standard military policy that ought to be sent to our generals in the wars they must fight in our own day.
Send home anyone who has fear in their heart.
Send home anyone who drinks water a certain way.
What's the lesson we must see hear? "His ways are not our ways," for one. And secondly we will see the pattern over and over repeated that God delights to take what is weak and through His own power and nothing else, make it mighty.
Who has bragging rights in this story? Gideon was so afraid of the odds that God had to send him to the enemy camp in the middle of the night to hear a dream a frightened soldier was having.
They were afraid. Midian was afraid of Israel!
Only God will receive the glory, and that is exactly what He wanted. See verse 2: "The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself against Me, saying, 'My own hand has saved me.' "
To me He speaks along similar lines: I didn't make you all that smart or all that strong or all that anything. I put you in a family that had no chance of raising you properly. I allowed you to walk in poverty, so that a simple bag of groceries from the local church would be enough to get you to attend a service. Once you heard about Me, you never wanted anyone else, though your utter lack of character has been a challenge..."
Guess who gets the glory in my life?
The Reformers claimed this point as a serious part of their creed. "To God alone be the glory." It was placed at the end of the list often, but the fact is, this was the beginning of the return of the church to its heritage.
God, and God alone, gets all the praise, all the glory, now and forever.
Ruth.
I was unable to withdraw a particular quote from this book, but certainly the unlikeliness of this story is a testimony to God's sovereignty. God here shows early on, once again, His love for the unlovely and/or helpless. The Gentiles. Women. The poor. A Gentile female is brought into the House of God by a series of awful circumstances. But the ending is happy.
Need I make the application? "We must through many tribulations enter the Kingdom of God," says Paul to his converts and us. Most of the time we have no clue what God is doing long term for us, as I am sure Ruth could testify, but He gets it done.
All according to plan. His plan.
I Samuel
Chapter 2, verses 6-7. Hannah is so happy. God has given her a son, and she has given that son back to God. In her rejoicing she reminds all future generations that it is the Lord who kills and makes alive... who makes poor and makes rich.
Why are some people poor and some not? Hannah believed it was a sovereign God who was behind all of this. When He wants to send poverty to a nation, for his own reasons, He can do that. When He wants to single out this or that family for poverty, or for wealth, for His own reasons, He can do that. You can say, some are lazy, some work hard. But what do you do with lazy rich people and poor hard-working folks?
Somehow it always goes back to the plan of God , the intricacies of which, having originated in the mind of that Wonderful Being, we cannot comprehend at all.
Saul. One thing we learn early on about the first legitimate king of Israel is that he was not a man who sought after God. God chose him. God arranged for the need of a miracle (the lost donkeys), the meeting of a man of God (Samuel) and the fellowship with a band of prophets whose ministry changed his heart.
None of this had anything to do with Saul. Saul, at first, was not even interested. And he never did get the point of why men should be lifted up over God's people. But I note him here as an example of God doing what He needs to do in the affairs of men, to get His own plan carried out.
One other interesting sidelight to the coronation of Saul is found in his visible selection. It's recorded in chapter 10. Lots were thrown. The tribe of Benjamin was chosen. Saul's very family is next singled out. Then Saul himself. Yet the choice had already been made in the heavenlies.
So you were convicted in a meeting. You came forward. You confessed Christ to be Lord. You were baptized. And all the people looked on you with favor, maybe even thinking you had done something to save yourself. You had made a "decision" for Christ, right? Let Christ look you in the eyes and say as he said to His 12, "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you."
Another choice to make, 16:10-12. Need a king for Israel, to replace disobedient Saul.
Conjecture: Saul is made king first to make the people understand that they need a man of the Spirit, not of the flesh. But then, they could say that God chose Saul, not themselves.
True enough. Choosing is His prerogative and He uses it, or rather has already used it, in manifold ways. And now He must choose the man after His own heart. He must be one who loves the Lord, one who is young and weak and unlikely in the eyes of men to amount to much. Musician. Low-class. Like Joseph, not too well liked by his brothers.
David fits all of that. After awhile, it seems that God's choices start to make a little sense? Do we see a little of the mind of God now? The flesh would have chosen another Saul, Jesse's first-born, or let's by-pass Jesse's low family altogether and find a more dignified, noble clan.
Bethlehem? Smallest village of Judah? And why Judah? The last great leader of Israel was from Ephraim. The center of worship is there too. Ephraim, son of Joseph.
Anyway, the point keeps being made that every important - and we must assume all the unimportant too - decisions being made for Israel are being made in Heaven. God has chosen the seed of Jesse. David must be king. Period. Decreed. Live with it, Israel.
And church, live with the decrees of your own life. Acknowledge that it is all from Him, and not from you.
II Samuel
More of the choosing of David is discussed by David himself in 6:21, as he speaks to a decidedly disgusted Michal, his wife. She sees his utter abandon when it comes to praising His God. One wonders about her own god, a household idol she had used to fool her father, when the King was trying to kill David. David remarks in passing that the reason He is so delighted in God, and so willing to abandon self-respect, is that "the Lord chose me above your father and all his house."
There are those who are chosen who know they are chosen, and many, laboring perhaps under some false theology, who are chosen and do not know it.
David knew. You see what happens when you know. Ecstasy. Joy of the Lord. Singing. Dancing. Direction.
In the very next chapter, we see David in a more reflective mood, as God has just told him that his house and his kingdom "shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever."
How did God know this? Because He planned it. He decreed it from eternity that His Son would be of the seed and Kingdom of David.
So where is that Kingdom today? In waiting. In exile. But King Jesus did appear once and will appear again. No word of God can ever fail.
This is why we pray "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." Imagine how many have prayed those words since they were first given. This, added to the Decree, is the way, the means, by which God will act: our constant prayers.
I Kings
Elijah. The man himself is a study in God's Sovereignty. As James points out, he is a man who is a lot like us. Strong sometimes, weak sometimes, but God's man all the time. Chosen for God's purposes.
But fast forward his life to Carmel, and after. You recall that the great prophet is running for his life, is discouraged, is complaining.
Rather than coddle him, the Father gives him more work to do. Partly in response to Elijah's suggestion that he is the only man living who cares about the true God, that true God gives him a message to be delivered in person to two kings and a prophet. He is told that a great slaughter is coming, and that his successor will be a part of it. But as to Elijah being the only man of God in Israel, God quotes the number as seven thousand (19:18).
Seven thousand. And how did they get there, or how will they get there? There are as many versions of this verse as there are versions of the Bible, it seems. Some have it as a future action of God, some as a past. Some want to use the word "reserve", some "preserve", others just "left".
But the point I wish to make is that at some point, in ways known only to God, it was God who set aside those seven thousand men who had not bowed to Ba'al, and never would. When you see a remnant, it is God's remnant. Chosen by God. Elect, if you will. And the chosen by God, choose God. In that order.
Jesus will say it much later, but the concept is consistent: "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you..."
II Kings
It was before the foundation of the world that our salvation was secured. Fact is, there were quite a few other things settled at that time. Some argue that everything was fixed then. The more Scripture is piled upon Scripture, the more this conclusion is warranted.
Consider 19:25 of this book, for example. The prophet is Isaiah, of whom we will speak more when we come to his book. The message is being given to Hezekiah, but it is concerning one Sennacherib, King of Assyria many centuries before Christ.
He speaks of something that He made and formed long ago, "from ancient times." Something that He now brings to pass. What? A decree. A decision. A Pre-destination, if you will.
"That you [Sennacherib] should be for crushing fortified cities into heaps of ruins..."
Purpose driven lives, we love to speak of today. But the purposes for which men live are the purposes God has laid out. Sennacherib is not the only one who knew that from experience.
Verses 30-31, in this same prophecy, speak of a remnant who escape from the slaughter to come. By chance? By sheer will power? By luck? Karma? No, by "the zeal of the Lord of Hosts." That is how things get done in our earth. We must be His willing servants to do His will, or we shall be His unwilling servants.
I Chronicles
The two books of Chronicles repeat much of the history of Samuel and Kings, but there is still new territory when it comes to the subject at hand.
David in 16:13 and 29:12 is praising God. It was a habit of his. He never forgot the God who had singled him out so unexpectedly and raised him up to such heights, after first delivering him from the murderous intentions of Saul, and later his own son Absalom.
David certainly believed in a sovereign God who made sovereign choices, as Israel itself, the "children of Jacob, His chosen ones." He recognized Jehovah as the one from whom riches come, and honour. It was of God to give strength and "to make great."
But the ones that He "made great" continued to baffle David: "... who am I, and who are my people?... we are aliens and pilgrims before You, as were all our fathers..."
David had discovered, 1000 years before Jesus, amazing grace. Grace that loves because it loves and chooses because it chooses. This is the grace that exists to give pleasure to God, and it is the grace that has found its way to our own day, for which we rejoice.
II Chronicles
The Lord has no delight in the death of the wicked. He has made that known to us. But He has made other things known that we do not want to proclaim so loudly. That millions were put to death anyway at the deluge of Noah. That millions more were not called out as was Abraham, to a plan of salvation. When God gave man his free will in the Garden of Eden, man promptly used it to choose against God. That is not what God "wanted" to happen, but when man chose death, death he got, and he has been inheriting it ever since. In Adam all die. He cannot even choose life any more in this fallen nature.
Like these people recorded in II Chronicles 15:13. As a part of the great reform of Asa, a reform which God liked so much that He "gave them rest on every side," a covenant was entered by which "whoever would not seek the Lord God of Israel should be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman."
The classic Chronicles story of Micaiah should have let us know how God deals with Satan and sinners. We'll see this again echoed in Job.
You'll recall that the King of Judah (Jehoshaphat) has unfortunately allied himself with Ahab of Israel. Needing direction, Ahab lines up all his prophets, who with one voice urge him to the battle, with God's blessings.
These were not prophets of God, and Jehoshaphat knew it. He asked for a true man of God to come forward. Ahab then summons Micaiah. To our amazement at first, we see Micaiah lining up with the false prophets.
But he knew something they did not know. He knew from whence came their wisdom.
Micaiah then tells of a dream he has had, in which he saw the Lord asking who would entice Ahab to go to battle. A spirit volunteers to be a deceiving influence in the mouth of all Ahab's prophets.
The Lord accepts the offer and says that not only will he deceive, but he will prosper: Ahab will believe every word of it. Why? Because God has ordained that it will happen.
Predestinated is a better word. Ahab's destiny has already been decided.
Since person after person of interest in the Old Testament is used in this way, does it not begin to occur that God has so ordained all lives to fulfill HIs will?
Ezra
"Who resists His will?" asks the one who complains against God's fore-ordination. No one resists His will. World rulers line up through the centuries awaiting His call, though unwittingly. We have already seen Pharaoh as clay in the Potter's hand. God raised Him up to show in him His glory. Later we will see Nebuchadnezzar, though we have passed him historically for the present.
For now it is Cyrus of Persia. How will God keep His promise to Israel that He is going to bring them out of bondage to their own land? How many nations return after they have been destroyed? How old are the oldest nations of earth, the greatest empires?
Israel is from eternity. It began on earth with the call of the chosen one Abraham and the chosen one Jacob and the chosen one Moses.
My redundancy is for my own hearing. For so long I have seen history as just "happening." God knew about it and worked in it, of course. Now it is clear that history is planned. For God to know the future there must be in existence a future to know. That future is either left up to chance and the will of man, or to intelligent Design, that Being we have assigned as the opposite to Evolution. He is also the opposite to un-intelligent historical design.
In 1:1-4, Cyrus lets the world know that our God has chosen him to build a house for the people of God. Again, where in history has a people been released from bondage and been supported by the government to rebuild its nation within the boundaries of the Empire?
The predestination does not end there. We must have some willing people to go back. Believe it or not, many Israelites were totally happy in their new situations. Why go back to that cursed Canaan land that had only brought them misery? Here our crops are growing, our house is secure, our children have friends...
Sounds rather modern.
So God would have to put His own desires in His people, a practice he has done throughout time, and does today. Yes, that is what it says. The record is clear (v.6): "Then the heads of the fathers' houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, with all those whose spirits God had moved, arose to go up and build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem."
Only through the Spirit of the Lord is the House of the Lord built. Later in the book (7:12-27) we read a letter from Artaxerxes fully bolstering the plan, giving support to Ezra and his reestablishment of the reign of the Israelites in the midst of the Persian world.
Ezra's conclusion: "Blessed be the Lord God of our fathers, who has put such a thing as this in the king's heart, to beautify the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem."
God is all, and is in all.
Nehemiah
The fascinating story of Nehemiah's return to his land with the blessing of his adopted government is told by Nehemiah himself. In the first chapter of his book we see him weeping for Israel, confessing national sin, making himself available. Chapter two relates his being sent to Judah, and his personal viewing of what he had up until now only heard.
What strikes me as I begin to see the workings of the Almighty Designer in everything is verse 12:
"Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me; I told no one what my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem..." God? God put this in his heart? It doesn't mention that in chapter one. There we see a hurting man. But chapter two tells us that it is a hurting God who is at work. Oh that His people could see this today. "It is God who works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure..." How He truly loves His own!
Nehemiah 9 records the great works of God and the evil works of the people He had chosen. It mentions specifically the choosing out of Abram, how God made a Name for Himself in Egypt, the miraculous sustaining in the wilderness, the multiplying of Israel's children, the bringing of His people into their new land, His deliverance of them into the hands of the enemy, the almost but not quite destruction of this people after their hard hearts rebelled...
A clear picture of a God Who has made up HIs mind to love a people, and who refuses to relent in that love. Can we not trust that He will do the same for us, who also are His people, and have been grafted into the tree called "Israel"?
Esther
As the story of Ruth, so Esther. The entire episode is so unlikely that we know it was a God event. The climactic moment in 5:2 where she takes her chance and gains favor can only be viewed in the light of the power of God to determine the outcomes of this nation Israel.
