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The Daily Word of Righteousness
I Can Do Nothing of Myself, #4
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalms 139:15,16—NIV)
"All the days ordained for me were written in your book." Notice the past tense—"were written."
What is your understanding of this expression? It sounds like our days were decided before they started.
One of my favorite verses is as follows:
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (Romans 8:29—NIV)
I know there has been an uproar about predestination because it is not democratic. Also, there have been excesses regarding this concept in time past.
But just because it is not democratic and there have been excesses does not mean we can just throw out of the Bible what doesn't suit us.
The verse does not say we have been predestined to be saved. It says we have been predestined to be conformed to the likeness of Christ. In fact, to be in the moral image of Christ, thinking as He thinks, speaking as He speaks, acting as He acts, is the rest of God.
How do we know whom God foreknew? We don't. In fact, we do not know for sure whether we ourselves were foreknown. This is why we have to be diligent to make our calling and election certain.
We are to preach the Gospel to every creature. If we do this, the Spirit of God will call forth those who have been ordained to eternal life. This is what the Bible states.
Jesus did not tell us to save everybody, He told us to preach the Gospel to everybody, to bear witness of the Kingdom of God to all nations. If we do what we have been commanded to do, following the Spirit closely, then God can work according to His predetermined purposes. But to rush around in our own strength and wisdom trying to build the Kingdom ourselves results only in Babylon, the realm of confusion and the murderer of the saints of God.
Our job is to present our body a living sacrifice that we may prove God's will for ourselves. God's job is to will and to perform in us His purposes. This is the rest of God.
The fourth chapter of Hebrews refers also to the Sabbath. The Sabbath day was a covenant of God with the Jews under the Law of Moses. The Sabbath covenant commanded us to refrain from working on one day of the seven.
The rest of God is an eternal Sabbath. We are to be in the rest of God at all times, not just on one day of the seven.
The following shows the heart of the Sabbath:
If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD's holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, Then you will find your joy in the LORD, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob. The mouth of the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 58:13,14—NIV)
To be continued.