Not One Nation
A Sure Evidence of the God behind the New Birth.
(2006)
“Now the LORD had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house,
to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing,”
Genesis 12:1-2.
And so began the nation the world would later call Israel, Genesis 17:5. What I have prayed to realize here is that Abram did not call on God; it was God that called on Abram. Please understand that well. I want to understand that it was not Abram’s goodness but God’s that began, sustained and fulfilled the coming of Jesus the Christ to bless all nations.
As we look back through the Old Testament (OT) we clearly see God’s choosing. I’ve heard no adamant arguers that God is malevolent for choosing the Jews and not the Egyptians, the Asians or the Russians. What I’m saying is that He did not appear to a Gentile man in ancient Egypt, Asia or Russia to begin the OT covenant. He chose Israel and Abram’s Gentilian decency surely had nothing to do with it. I say surely because it’s evident that no man’s goodness can merit Jehovah’s everlasting commitments and such a blessing. God first chose Abraham and his descendants; Abraham and his descendants did not first choose God. All other nations were excluded. We see this clearly in the “Israel” of the OT but in the Israel of the New Testament (NT) we somehow deny it though God never changes. Some have said God’s methods were once improper but that He has improved.
If you are in Christ today, you did not choose God but He chose you. You only chose Him because He first chose you. Here’s a proof:
No nation ever birthed a true religion, built an honorable altar, or even temporarily atoned for sin. Selah…
God must come to men!
We see that even the Israelites fought God and His prophets all along the way, Romans 10:16-21; Hosea 11:7; Matthew 21:33-41. This is the proven will of man in Adam, Romans 8:7. The very nature of man has to be changed! God even showed Israel that to be their God was like being married to a harlot, Hosea 1:2-11. But oh how He keeps His promises! He kept them for His name’s sake: “…Who is like Your people, like Israel, the one nation on the earth whom God went to redeem for Himself as a people, to make for Himself a name—and to do for Yourself great and awesome deeds for Your land—before Your people whom You redeemed for Yourself from Egypt, the nations, and their gods?” 2 Samuel 7:23; see also 1 Chronicles 17:21; Isaiah 63:14. A key to unlocking glorious Bible joys in Him is in green above. That is why there was an OT Israel. All other nations then outside the Jewish and now outside of Christian teachings produced only idolatry. Witchcraft, Islam, Buddhism, Animism, Baalism, Rastafarianism, Catholicism, Hinduism, word-of-faithism, Baha’ism, Scientology etc… All of these religions or religious moods find their source and authority on the words of men alone which is idolatry. These are what men invent. Just like those before us, Romans 10:3, we all in our demonstrated sin-enslaved wills produce systems (both simple and complex) to gather ourselves around diverse Babels. We never seek God rightly unless God appears to a man in the midst of a pagan people and shows Himself. That is the only way any of us has come to know God rightly! For from them came all the promises to the world, “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,” 1 Corinthians 15:3.
Can you catch the significance of this? The entire precedent for our faith is founded on an eternal promise to sinful men. Praise God for His immutably good and perfect promises!
“And as Isaiah said before: “Unless the LORD of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah,” Romans 9:29. God called and preserved His people then and now under different means.
It is the same with men today in the NT. Through preaching and prayer alone God appears to pagan men and reveals Himself. Without this man would exercise his sin-laden will into sin-loving destruction. “…Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” John 3:3. This is why grace is so amazing. God came to us. He justifies the ungodly. This is good news for the ungodly.
Guys, no one person’s will ever brought them to God. Isn’t that a fact when you see how the Christian faith has been built? It went to the Jews and the converted Jews of Christ’s choosing spread it to us. Jesus told those disciples, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you,” John 15:16. It is the same in the NT. We are all outside of the covenant unless God appears to us. God, who is the God of the whole world, has ordained salvation to the ends of the earth. He who has ordained those ends has likewise ordained the means. You and I are the means, Romans 10:14-15. We go to proclaim the Gospel to all the world knowing that God is still showing up to men and revealing Himself in them. Oh, go, go and tell every person on earth that they can be forgiven if they’ll only repent. Go and tell them about God’s love on the cross, point them to it and hammer home their sin until all that is clear is that blessed hope.
The fact that no man ever comes to God rightly is evident in this world and is most clearly evident in my own heart and mind. God has given me a new nature that I might love Him and His church. Without that I’d still love only myself. I’d still be a fornicating thief trying to be somebody I’m not.
This fact of the idolatry of all nations even to this day tells me that our whole debate on “free” will in the world is based on a constricted view disregarding the historically evident fact that God had to reveal Himself to the world before anyone could ever know or love Him.
Oh, how terrifying is our sin and the fact that it damns souls for eternity. How different does God see our sin than we? One solitary sin warrants the agony of hell for all men without end. God has rescued and ordained all things by a counsel so fixedly perfect that the wicked who once boasted, took pleasure in, and excused themselves of their own sin in this world will cry for condemnation when they appear to be judged and see sin in His light. God in His grace has withheld the true knowledge of our sin from us. If He had not we could never love one another or our children. We would never see them as precious. Thank God that He has withheld that sight from us to its hell justifying extent. God has also graced us to see it lightly now as that which keeps us in humility and yearning to be free, 1 John 1:9.
My conclusion is self evident – No man ultimately decides to see God. This is shown to me in the scriptures and I pray to realize it. No nation or man ever found God of a “free” will; it was founded by God in His free undeserved grace. God shows Himself to the heart of a man and the will is changed wanting nothing else but to be free from that which restricts that love. Our will just can’t get us there; our will is not willing. God Himself from the same lump of sinful flesh, Romans 9:20-21, has founded one nation and in and from that nation alone He has made and named the true Israel that He loved from before Abram began counting the stars, Genesis 15:5.
For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you.” And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.
“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek,” Hebrews 6:13-20.
Thank you for your attention to this letter.
