I am going to tell you a comic book story. It's an Avengers story- you all know the Avengers- but they don't really figure in. The villain of our story is a time traveler. From a future of peace, he goes back and becomes a Pharaoh in ancient Egypt. Eventually he is driven out by a series of time-travelling heroes, and ends up in HIS future- an all-but-dead world fighting with weapons they don't understand anymore. He becomes a conqueror, and fights the heroes many times- including one where a future version of himself stops him. At last, he decides that his conquests have been like a drug- and he's burned out. He goes back to Egypt, breaks his time machine, and settles in with a happy people for a happy retirement. But then he starts to remember- and he knows he has to go back. So he has himself entombed in suspended animation; and remembering how an Avenger stumbled through his pyramid trying to defeat his past self, and in a panic sets in motion the things that will revive him, he sets up a series of mirrors in seemingly random spots. The point of my story is what the elder villain says about this: "Therefore, what was a random panic to him, was a completely reliable part of my plan".
Hold that sentence. Now last week, we saw how finding God was a choice between valuing God and hating Him. But, DO we have a choice? I have been listening to John McArthur this past week- who I understand self-identifies as a "leaky Calvinist"- And he has been step by step-ping through the concept that EVERY part of our salvation is God's choice, God's control. In fact he came to a point of, "So, what do we do? Just sit around?" His answer, citing verses, was that 2 things are ours- to believe in Christ as God and Savior, and to trust in the certain Hope of His promise- "And even that, we could not do without the power of the Holy Spirit."
So now, does that mean I was wrong in what I said? Not at all, but it bears explaining. When I questioned this myself, God set in my mind a scenario- He is the good Father, I'm the toddler on a bike with training wheels for the first time. His hands are on the bike all the time; I'm helping supply foreward motion, but if he wasn't in control, I'd be on the ground crying over a skinned knee. I am doing "it" but without Him, I can do nothing. Which of course made me want to dig deeper.
See, God is beyond time, so His relating to us is, as well. Look here: He has saved us:
Eph 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
Eph 2:9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Eph 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
We are being saved:
1Co 1:17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
1Co 1:18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
Note there that Paul included himself, who might have been the most "saved" person of all time. And, we WILL be saved:
Rom 5:9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
Rom 5:10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
Catch there that "Now that we are reconciled" part. Salvation was and is an ongoing thing in us.
But I'm next asking, "Why?" If God knows how we'll end up, why put us through this earth at all? Here, God gave me a partial answer. Not partial of my NEED, but partial of my WANT.
He took me to the Garden of Eden for this answer.
Gen 2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
Gen 2:9 And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
God planted a garden. Then what?
Gen 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
So why does man need to work and keep it? There was no sin yet; toil was not the curse it would become; there was no thorns, no famine. Because God wanted us to have a sense of contributing. Sure, God could have made a self-tending garden for His perfect people. But then they would have been fat and lazy, and God would have been less a Father and more the maitre d' That some people want to make Him out to be. See, that is a good, solid answer, and all we really need. But sometimes we want to seek too much, and I had to go on and ask the next question: "So, why the fall? why the sin? why all the other things that we go through- the cancers, the floods, the hate?"
I pray every day that God 'standardize' me- let my answers to life come from His Word. And that's just what I got for this question:
Rom 9:19 You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?"
Rom 9:20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?"
Rom 9:21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
Rom 9:22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
Rom 9:23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory--
In other words, our Father has said, "BECAUSE I SAID SO!" and q and a time is over! And I can accept that, because I know the answers are too great for my intellect.
So perhaps, that is what it means to be a "leaky Calvinist"- to realize that every decision, every step, every choice we make is, in the words of our comic book villain above, "a Completely reliable part" of God's plan. And after all, didn't we learn last time that God is forever linked to His plan?
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