Part 5: A Loving Plan
Notes
Transcript
Shakespeare received no more than a grammar school education. But despite his lack of official education Shakespeare soon became the most popular playwrights of his day as well as a part-owner of the Globe Theater. His theater troupe was so well known the famed King James adopted Shakespeare’s theatre group and called them the King's Men (in 1603). Shakespeare left behind a legacy of 39 plays and over 150 poems and remains the most well-known and celebrated writer of the English language to this day. His plays confronted critical issues of his day like Christian anti-semitism in the Merchant of Venice. And a re-curing topic for Shakespeare was fate.
Who can forget the famous line in his play called the Tragedy of Julius Caesar where Cassius says to Marcus Brutus,
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Cassius throughout the play represents the voice of human freedom over fate. Cassius would be quick to say “I choose my future, my future does not choose me.” He is set in constant relief to the dictatorial Julius Caesar, the god on earth, who would say, “My future was chosen for me, I don’t choose my future.” For Cassius the struggle to make a way in this world is real and for Caesar the struggle to live out one’s predetermined fate is real. And the man caught in the middle of the tug-of-war over fate vs. freedom is Brutus. A man who will follow Cassius’s appeal to human choice and freedom and assassinate Julius but who in the end will wonder if it was really freedom or fate that brought all these events about. Brutus is disturbed by the deep complexities of life and the situations he finds himself in. He is disturbed by the relationship between the things in time that are fixed and the things that can be changed.
The play is a parable about our lives and God’s role in it. We are sometimes like Cassius taking the future into our own hands with no real concern for God’s predetermined will or plan. Sometimes we are riding high on life, things are good and feels like all of this was not just my choice but God’s plan for me. There is something about life going well that makes you believe divine providence is on your side, even if it may not be. Most of the time we are like Brutus caught in the middle, feeling like we are both making a plan and a plan is making me.
God’s plans for us and our need to know our part in His plan presents difficulties in the deepest part of our lives. This causes some of the biggest life questions to emerge in ourselves.
Could I have done more?
Was that marriage meant to be?
Did I choose the right spouse?
Is this all my life will ever amount to?
Is this really God’s will?
Is this it?
These are terrifying questions. The possibility of a closed, predetermined future is frightening but so is the possibility of an open and unknown future. We are anxious and insecure about what just happened and what might happen next. Whether or not we are walking in the will of God or outside of his will. That possibility that we are is joy unending but the possibility that we are not threatens us with future fears, anxiety, and confusion. Both being part of God’s plan and being outside of God’s plan presents difficulties in the deepest parts of our lives.
But we are in Ephesus, or rather Ephesians, not at a Theatre listening and watching Julius Caesar. Conventionally for us, Paul is also interested in these questions and matters as he sings about identical matters: God’s plan and our relation to it. And thank God, we have Paul as our song leader and guide in these complex matters. So let’s venture out with Paul onto the fateful waters.
Let’s prepare our hearts to receive God’s Word today:
Hafoke bah, Hafoke bah, Decolah-bah.
Hafoke bah, Hafoke bah, Mashiach-bah.
Turn-it and turn-it everything you need is in it.
Grow old and wax gray with it, do not depart from it
because the Messiah is in it.
In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus the Messiah, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has lavished on us in the Beloved One. - Ephesians 1:4c-6.
This is God’s Word for us Today.
Paul is the king of aphorism. An aphorism is a saying that concisely expresses a truth about God or an observation about the world, presenting it as a general or universal truth. The Rolling Stones are responsible for penning one of the most catchy aphorisms of all time: "You can't always get what you want." Paul gives us a sentence full of strong nouns that expresses the most vital truth in all of the Scriptures, “God, before time began, had a loving plan to bring you into His family through His Beloved Son Jesus.”
But he throws out a grenade of a word: Predestination. One mention of this word and some people scatter, others plug up their ears, and still, others get hit by the shrapnel. That is unfortunate. Just like our word Election that we talked about last week, this is a word that expresses a beautiful picture of God’s plan and our relation to it.
Predestination in Paul’s dictionary means “an ancient boundary marker placed by God showing the full extent of His love.” Without Paul’s ministry and writings, we might not even have the word Predestination in our Bible. Five out of Six occurrences of this word come from Paul except for the one in the book of Acts - written by Luke who was influenced by Paul. It is never found in the LXX and rarely found in the ancient Greek Writings. Paul takes two Greek words
pro = before + orizo = horizon = “before the horizon”
(we get the word horizon from this Greek word) and makes a compound word that is a picture that means, “before the horizon.” For Paul, and other Jewish writers, the horizon is that line that separates earth from sky, the material from the immaterial. It was drawn up in the book of Genesis on days 1, 2, and 4. The horizon marked the boundaries that God drew up before time when He was giving birth to time.
It is like a fence line on a Texas ranch. It determines where that rancher's herds can graze. It determines where his work begins and ends. Without that fence line, the rancher would be paralyzed by the ocean of green grass his herds might go to, the endless possibilities before him and them - “Where should they graze? Where does my work begin and end?” When God predestines, he marks out the boundaries in which we live the purposed life He has for us in the Beloved. We are not saved and then just set loose. God has marked out boundaries in the Messiah for us. As David said,
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
The Lord Jesus does His absolute best to draw us into the realization of and the acceptance of God’s boundary markers in our life. He teaches us to pray this way, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). It is a daily request to live life within God’s marked-out plan, boundary. Jesus is not so immature as to ask you to do something that He was not willing to do (Matt 26:36-39).
Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and He told the disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.”
Taking along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed.
Then He said to them, “My soul is swallowed up in sorrow —to the point of death. Remain here and stay awake with Me.”
Going a little farther, He fell facedown and prayed, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.”
This moment was to show us that acceptance of God’s plan, his boundary markers would not always come with great ease or pleasure. Overwhelmed he prayed and Luke says as he prayed great drops of blood came from his brow (Luke 22:43-44). James, the Lord’s brother must have learned this from Peter or John because he makes it central teaching in his little letter when he says (James 4:13-15):
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.”
You don’t even know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like smoke that appears for a little while, then vanishes.
Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
Paul just creates a term that expresses something Jesus taught and lived and the early disciples taught and lived, “God’s will be done.” God’s plan for me will be what I want my plan for my life to be. His “yes” is my “yes” and His “no” is my “no.”
This plan of God is not written on cold stone. It is not a ranch trying to keep some in and others out. We said last week that God chose the Messiah to be rejected for us so we the rejected could be Elected in Jesus. He offers this to everyone. His plan is for everyone. And His plan emerges out of his great love.
Don’t miss this. Paul’s does not start with predestination but with love.
In love, he predestined us…- Eph 1:4c-5a
God’s plan starts with “love.” Now, this love needs defining. There are two other Greek words for love that bear on this word “agape” love. The first phileo brother love. This is mutual love, it is a give-and-take kind of love. Then there is eros love. That is the Song of Songs love. It is love that is driven by attraction and desire and seeks mutual eros in return. But phileo and eros are good forms of love in their proper context: friendships and marriage. Agape is different than these two because it is self-generative, comes from within, and seeks nothing in return. It is the mature love of a parent to a child or a grandparent to a grandchild. It is the love defined by 1 Cor 13 that lacks any selfish desires, deposits, or returns. Agape “love” is God’s unconditional and unchangeable love.
In love, he predestined us…- Eph 1:4c-5a
Don’t pass up the preposition, “in love.” What God planned emerged only out of his feelings of intense covenant love. Have you ever been so overwhelmed by feelings of love for your spouse that you planned an amazing date night with food, flowers, friends even, and gifts? All your planning was just to do one thing: express your deepest love for her or him? That is what it means when Paul says that all God's plans were done “in love.”
His loving plan is carried out by none other than His beloved son.
In love, he predestined us …. through Jesus, the Messiah, in accordance with his pleasure and will…the Beloved One. - Eph 1:4c-6
Everything about this sentence is screaming one thing, “God really, really wants the absolute best for you.” He wants it within Himself. He is not begrudgingly bringing you into His plan. It is according to His pleasure and His will. In other words, He delights in the prospect of you and of me and of millions and billions of others being a part of His plan. He is not moved by guilt or compulsion. He is not moved by angels nor demons. He is motivated out of His own love and His own will for you to be included in His Kingdom.
How far will He go to bring about His plan? He will do it through Jesus the Messiah… the Beloved One. Remember, He called Jesus the Beloved One before at His baptism by John in the Wilderness. He did so, so there would be no confusion that Jesus was the eternal Son and Savior of all the World. And when he says, “through Jesus” he means through His death on a cross, through His resurrection from the dead. It also means that what God determines for Jesus, He also determines for us. Jesus is our first-fruits. He died, Paul says in Romans 6 and Gal 2, “We must die daily.” Paul says is the first-fruits of the resurrection and that we will one day also appear with Him, just like Him in the resurrection. What God has determined through Jesus, He has also determined for us. A plan that includes our dying to sin but living for righteousness. A plan that includes the hope of eternal glory and resurrection in new bodies.
And it results in praise.
In love, he predestined us … through Jesus the Messiah, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has lavished on us in the Beloved One. - Ephesians 1:4c-6
When Paul says, “to the praise of His glorious grace” he is not expressing an idea, he is talking about a person, Jesus the Messiah. Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love, lavish grace, towards us. Grace is not a matter of words and concepts, phrases and sentences woven together to make a doctrine. Grace is flesh, grace tabernacled amongst us, grace is Jesus dying on the cross according to God’s predetermined plan so that we could enter into God’s good and loving plan for us.
I must introduce us to the 4th verb. The 1st was blessed, the 2nd was chosen, the 3rd predestined, and the 4th is “he lavished” on us. It is a verb that we don’t deserve. It is God’s love in its fullest display. It is lavished, love. Like the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her hair and tears and anointed his head with oil. It is the kind of love that makes you blush, the kind of love that holds you tight and feels like it will never ever let you go, the kind of love that melts away all of our insecurities and fears. It is the exact same love He gives to His Beloved Son. That is why Paul says it is “in the Beloved One.”
What I am trying to get across to you is the overwhelming flood of God’s love that motivates every part of his plan for you. This is a rushing stream of love that rises above cold fate and righteous laws.
Paul knew his history, his Bible very well. He knew Greek and Roman culture well also. He knew there were people at Ephesus who would wonder deeply, “Can this be true for me? I am not a Jew? I am not a good person. I have a past record that keeps me out.
In love, he predestined US … through Jesus the Messiah, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has lavished on US in the Beloved One. - Ephesians 1:4c-6
I am sure Paul would say did you not hear me when I said “us” not “you” not just “jews” not just “me” but he does this for all of us apart from the Law and apart from your past record. He says all of “US” received this love of God, this lavish grace in Jesus the Messiah. Paul knew that Abraham the Father of faith broke the Torah, Ancient Near Eastern Law, Tribal Law, and Family law when he went to murder his son as a sacrifice on Mt. Moriah. Fully pre-meditated murder in the name of God, yet he was declared righteous by faith apart from every law known to mankind. The Torah and the Law would have prevented God’s plan but by faith alone in the revealed will of God’s plan met Abraham’s faith and Abraham experienced God’s love.
Esther was faced with a harsh decree written by the cruel hand of Haman. The decree was absolute and could not be changed by Persian Law: all the Jews in the Persian Kingdom would die. Esther did not accept the decree as absolute fate but nor did she take fate into her own hands. Rather, she trusted that a loving God would never plan the destruction of the people he called by name and loves as the apple of his eye. A loving God would not write the decree for the destruction. A loving God acts on the pages of history on behalf of the people he loves. She threw herself into everlasting arms and those arms did not fail her and no cruel decree could end the Jewish people.
None in my opinion outshines Ruth. Everything was opposed to Ruth the Moabite being part of God’s predetermined plan. The Law, the Torah stood against her:
No Moabite may enter the Lord’s assembly; none of their descendants, even to the tenth generation, may ever enter the Lord’s assembly. Never seek their peace or prosperity as long as you live. - Deut. 23:3, 6
No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the Lord’s assembly; none of their descendants, even to the tenth generation, may ever enter the Lord’s assembly.
Never seek their peace or prosperity as long as you live.
This is why Naomi, her Jewish mother-in-law, tried to dissuade her from returning from the fields of Moab to Bethlehem. Naomi knew she would face harsh treatment according to God’s law for being kind to a Moabite but she also knew the Law called for the destruction of people like Ruth (Deut 7:1-7). And why was the Law so harsh? Two reasons, Deut 23:4
This is because they did not meet you with food and water on the journey after you came out of Egypt, and because Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram-naharaim was hired to curse you.
By the way, the Moabites were also considered sexually deviant because when Balaam’s curse failed he hired Moabite cultic prostitutes to seduce Israel into sin.
Though the Law was against Ruth. History was against Ruth. Ruth knew that Israel’s God was fundamentally a God of covenant love. He was a God of mercy and grace and without fear and with great confidence, she joined herself to God’s people despite the Law and despite the past because she knew Israel’s God would have a loving plan for her life. A plan that was so loving that at the end of the story of the book of Ruth she is no longer called Ruth the Moabite. The label Moabite gets dropped and she becomes Ruth a matriarch like Israel’s great matriarchs:
The elders and all the people who were at the gate said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is entering your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built the house of Israel. May you be powerful in Ephrathah and famous in Bethlehem.
Ruth was a foundational part of God’s loving plan. She knew this about Him, though, I don’t think she knew that one day Israel’s greatest King, Savior, Beloved One, would come from this act of hers. Like Esther she did not take fate into her own hands nor did she accept the fate of the Law or History, she cast herself into the everlasting loving arms of Israel’s God.
Emily Dickinson once wrote, “The Truth must dazzle gradually, Or every man be blind.” Paul understood that God’s truth did dazzle gradually. Israel’s history was a gradual story of God welcoming in those that God’s law said could not come in. Israel’s history leaned more to the side of love than it did to judgment. That God’s plan was always bigger than anyone could have ever imagined. The Scripture says that we stand in God’s plan because we stand in His love.
We must ask one last question, “If this truth, about predestination, is so dazzling why does it cause so many problems? Why isn’t seen as a thing of beauty?” I think there are two reasons. One, a 4th-century monk named Augustine and later John Calvin created a doctrine around predestination that was horrible if not unbiblical. It was a doctrine that God predestined some to hell and some to heaven and you could not change that fate. It was cruel teaching. On a side note, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar might have been written to call that very doctrine into question since Calvin’s ideas were being published widely during that time. But, the other problem is that most people regardless of their knowledge of Calvin or St. Augustine ask the wrong question when it comes to predestination. Most people ask a “who” question? Who is predestined? Paul never really asks that question. He asks a “what” question. What are we predestined to in the Messiah?
We come back to Paul for the answer.
In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus the Messiah, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has lavished on us in the Beloved One. - Ephesians 1:4c-6.
The “who” is everyone. We already know that because everyone has the opportunity to be part of the Elect in Jesus. What is what really matters. What are we predestined to? Adoption to sonship. In Jewish and in Roman courts of Law when a child was adopted by another Father that child was free from all debts and associations with his old family, his former father. God’s plan is to bring you into His family and all that it means to be part of the family of the Creator of the Cosmos, the true God, only God, the King of All that Is.
I can’t tell you that means a mansion in this life nor can I tell you that it excludes it but I can tell you it means a mansion in His Kingdom. I can’t tell you that it means your going to be rolling large, experiencing all the comforts this American life can afford but I can tell you that you will ever go without the comfort of God’s Spirit nor His love at any moment in your life regardless of the good times or the bad. I can’t promise you a pedestal but I can promise you it means entrance into God’s presence.
I can also promise you this, you don’t have to look behind God’s Word to discover His daily plan for your life. The blessing of righteous living and of righteous living that can be blessed is no further than that Bible you hold in your hand. God’s will for your daily life is right there. Keep searching, keep turning, you will find it. Paul’s 3rd and 4th verbs (predestine/lavish) go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly. God has a plan rooted in his love to bring you home into his family.
Back to where we started. Who is right? Cassius who wanted to take fate into his own hands? Or Julius who thought his hands were bound by fate? Even more clearly now, “Does God choose our future?” Or, “Do we choose our future?” The answer is “yes.” You can choose a future apart from God and apart from His messiah. Though, He stands always ready for you to return to him. Or, you can choose to accept his eternal plan in the Messiah. And then you daily keep choosing his plan, his will over and over again.
I want to live this way, the Jesus way and I want to do it together with you.