SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/28/2018 8:39 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Method—Election”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
1:4-6a
Message of the verses: “4 just as He chose
us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and
blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through
Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the
praise of the glory of His grace,”
We
continue this evening to look at “The method is Election” which is the first
sub-section under the main section entitled “The Elements of the Eternal
Forming of the Body.” In our last SD I
said that we would begin looking in this SD by first of all talking about
Israel who was God’s elect, His “chosen one” as seen in Isaiah 45:4 and we will
also look at Isaiah 65:9 and 22). “4
"For the sake of Jacob My servant, And Israel My chosen one, I have also
called you by your name; I have given you a title of honor Though you have not
known Me.” 9 “I will bring forth
offspring from Jacob, And an heir of My mountains from Judah; Even My chosen ones shall
inherit it, And My servants will dwell there.”
“22 “They will not build and another inhabit, They will not plant and
another eat; For as the lifetime of a tree, so will be the days of My
people, And My chosen ones
will wear out the work of their hands.”
Now
I want to look at a passage from Deuteronomy 7:7-8 to show us why Israel was
God’s chosen one. “7 "The LORD did
not set His love on you nor
choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for
you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers,
the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of
slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” We see the reason why God chose Israel and
that was because of His sovereign love.
Next
we want to look at angels who are also elect.
“21 I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and
of His chosen angels, to
maintain these principles without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of
partiality (1 Tim. 5:21).” Next we will
look at 1 Peter 2:6 (KJV) “Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture,
Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that
believeth on him shall not be confounded.”
This verse shows us that Jesus Christ Himself was also elect, and in
John 15:16 we see the apostles were elect too:
“"You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you
would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that
whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.” John MacArthur writes that “By the same
sovereign plan and will the church is elect.
God ‘has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to
our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in
Christ Jesus from all eternity’ (2 Timothy 1:9). In Acts we are told, ‘And as many as had been
appointed to eternal life believed’ (13:48).”
Paul
tells us in 2 Timothy 2:10 “10 For this reason I endure all things for the sake
of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in
Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.” We can see from this verse and others that
Paul was driven, it was his heart’s desire to reach the elect, the ones who
were already chosen, in order that they might take hold of the faith that was
already granted them in God’s sovereign decree.
One
more verse for today and in this verse we will see that Paul gave thanks for
the church because it was God’s elect: “13
But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from
the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and
faith in the truth.”
I
will close with a little story that I kind of made up to give to our Sunday
school class to help them understand the truth about the sovereignty of God in
choosing a bride for His Son. Now you
will have to understand that this is a story that I made up and that there is
no disrespect to God, as I would never do that, in this story. God the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit were
having a morning coffee break in eternity past when the Father says to the Son
that He was going to give Him a bride, He was going to chose a bride for His
Son and that the Son was going to have to go to earth and pay the price for His
bride. Now this in a sense is what
happened, this was to give glory to the Father as He chose this bride for His
Son, and the best part about this is that all of those that He chose for His
Son would come to Him receiving Him as their Savior and Lord because the price
that He would pay for them was His own blood as He died on the cross for them.
I
hope to finish this sub-section in our next SD and at the beginning of it we
will look at a quote that was written by J. I. Packer from his book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. Some people have a difficult time with
this subject as they say if all that God chose will be saved then why do
Christians witness.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “John the Baptist and Jesus
Christ” (Matthew 3:2; 4:17).
Today’s Bible question: “The name of what place means the place of
the skull?”
Answer in our next SD.
10/28/2018 9:15 PM
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