Because Mercy Glorifies God
Romans 11:30-32
April 22, 2018
Ok, last time we met we tackled (or attempted to tackle)
A very huge and difficult issue.
We looked back at the fall of man
And asked what God’s role in all of that was.
I want to briefly recap it to make sure we are back in the train of thought.
1) We agreed that God cannot fully glorify Himself apart from redemption.
• Obviously if God never reveals mercy or grace or redeeming love or patience
then there is a whole side of God we never know.
• If God is to be glorified for those things, then He must be afforded the
opportunity to save sinners.
2) We agreed that God is sovereign over all things and that He works all things after the counsel of His will.
Ephesians 1:11 “[God] works all things after the counsel of His will”
• So we choose not to limit His sovereign prerogative in any way or in any area.
• We recognized that He is sovereign even when a sparrow falls and even over
our very number of days and habitations.
Acts 17:26 “and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation,”
Psalms 139:16 “Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.”
So we get that God is in total sovereign control of all things.
Well, SINCE God can’t fully glorify Himself apart from redemption
And SINCE God is sovereign over all things
And SINCE works all things after the counsel of His will,
WE NEXT LOOKED AT THE FALL.
And as we said,
• This is such a difficult issue for us to swallow that
• Most of the time, in order to try and help God save face,
• People end up dumbing down God’s role in the fall and all of the suffering that now happens as a result.
We hear things like,
• “God doesn’t ordain suffering, it is sin that causes it.”
• “Sin did this, not God. God never wanted this to happen.”
I remember watching “Love Comes Softly”.
It is a story about a young woman who is tragically widowed very young
And ends up having to marry another man just to survive.
In the story, her new husband is trying to explain the presence of tragedy in our lives. Speaking about his daughter he says,
“Missy can fall down and get hurt with me standing right next to her, but that doesn’t mean I allowed it to happen. The truth of God’s love is not that He allows bad things to happen to us, but that He’s right here with us when they do.”
But again as we said, there is enormous problem found there.
To say that bad things happen to us which God did not allow
Is to strip God either of His omniscience or of His omnipotence.
The little girl walking beside her daddy may indeed fall,
• But that’s because the dad doesn’t know it’s about to happen. The dad is not omniscient.
• He is also not omnipotent and may not have had the ability to stop it.
But we say that God is both omniscient and omnipotent
So to use such logic regarding His role in our suffering doesn’t wash.
And that’s what we said it is commonly argued by antagonists.
God either can’t be all good or He can’t be all powerful
Because a good God with the power to stop evil certainly would.
That’s the logical conclusion that is reached
If you try to separate God from the fall.
Armenians who seek to absolve God of any role in the fall of man or human suffering find themselves in a theological dilemma.
This incidentally, as I was telling someone after the sermon, is where “OPEN THEISM” came from.
Open Theism is basically the belief that God does not know the future,
Nor does He ordain it. It is open.
• He’s just really good at watching trends,
• He has an uncanny ability to read and react like the greatest of super heroes to
run around and deliver us from peril.
Well the problem with Open Theism is obvious.
• There was no way to know with any kind of certainty that the cross would
occur.
• And there is no way to know with any kind of certainty that Christ will return.
• In fact, all of God’s prophecies are nothing better than educated guesses that
may or may not happen since He isn’t sovereignly causing anything.
Open Theism is obvious heresy, but at least it’s consistent.
Armenians aren’t consistent. They want an all-knowing, all-powerful God, but then want to absolve Him of any part when tragedy comes.
It’s a real dilemma, unless you understand
That God is sovereign even over the fall.
HE DIDN’T JUST ALLOW IT, HE ORDAINED IT.
And He did so that He might make His redemption,
And ultimately His glory, known.
And as we said last time,
• Not only are we now able to glorify God because of His mercy,
• But even beyond that, we as humans are even now in a more secure
condition after redemption than Adam ever was before it.
Adam was not secure in the garden, but we are secure in Christ.
Now, that is where we stopped last time. That’s a quick recap.
And now that we have a little more time tonight
I want to process a little bit more.
BECAUSE LET’S BE HONEST.
Look around the room.
• Everyone in here has a story of suffering.
• Everyone in here has a story of tragedy.
• Everyone in here has a story of some unexplained hardship that pushed you
beyond the limits of reason.
Loved ones lost, unexplained illnesses, tragically broken relationships, financial struggles.
If we took time tonight we could move this entire place to tears
If we just let everyone get up and tell their story
Of what was the hardest day of their life.
When we are talking about the fall and the suffering that has come as a result
• We aren’t talking about some small amount of suffering.
• We are talking about things harder than we could have ever imagined
• We are talking about scars that we carry to this day.
And so, to say that God not only allowed that,
But that He also ordained is A TOUGH PILL TO SWALLOW.
It’s a tough pill for me to swallow,
And I’m confident that many of you have suffered far greater than I have.
And so before we move on from this concept I do think it’s important
To BRING A LITTLE MORE PERSPECTIVE to the situation.
• We certainly believe God ordains all things.
• So we must believe that God even ordained the fall.
• And therefore we even have to believe that God ordained the suffering we walk through.
WHERE IS THE GOOD IN THAT?
Well let me tell you this one thing:
God’s sovereignty over affliction is the only reason you and I
Can have any hope at all that anything good will come from it.
Isn’t that what we bank on?
Do we not quote?
Romans 8:29 “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;”
Or:
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.”
How many times have we run to Hebrews 12 in our suffering?
Hebrews 12:11 “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”
All of those passages SPEAK OF A PROMISED GOOD
That will come out of our suffering.
But none of those promises are valid
If God is not sovereign over our suffering.
If God is not in control then we have no guarantee
That anything good will ever come from our tragedy.
Now think again about that hard day in your life.
• If God is not sovereign over that, if God did not ordain it, if it happened outside of God’s will,
• Then there is no hope whatsoever that anything good will come from it.
• It represents a day when God lost and who’s to say He won’t lose again?
• However, if God is sovereign, and if He did ordain it,
• Then we may not know why He did it,
• But we can rest assured that it will be for our good.
• BECAUSE the same God that ordained it is the same God that ordained good to come from it.
As children of God we do walk through some extremely hard days,
But we don’t walk through them without hope
Because we know God is sovereign over all things.
And we know that He ordains all things for our good and His glory.
Even in your tragedies I can’t tell you the number of times
I’ve heard even the people in this room speak of their hardships.
AND I NEVER HEAR YOU SPEAK ABOUT GOD’S CRUELTY.
What I continually hear is how faithful and how good
And how comforting He was during your trial.
EVEN IN YOUR TRIAL GOD WAS ABLE TO GLORIFY HIMSELF
BY REVEALING HIS GREAT COMFORT TO YOU.
Understanding God’s sovereign position
Over the fall and over human tragedy is a good thing
And a necessary thing for that is where hope comes from.
BUT, IF WE WANTED TO KEEP ARGUING
• Once could still say, “Yes, I see that God has been good to me in my affliction, but why bring affliction at all? Why introduce suffering at all?”
• After all, “If God never permits the fall then there is no need for hope in suffering because suffering would not exist.”
THAT WOULD BE THE ARGUMENT.
To which we answer.
That’s true,
• If God had stopped the fall,
• If God had never put the tree in the garden,
• If God had not allowed the serpent to enter
• It is true that we would be in a much more comfortable place right now.
But we would not be in a better place.
For we know more of the glory of God now
Than they ever did in the garden.
We now know God as a redeemer.
And as we said, “Redemption is more glorious than creation”
• I now sing about Amazing Grace that saved a wretch like me.
• I now sing Great is They faithfulness O God my Father
• I now sing Love lifted me
• I now sing mercy there was great and grace was free
And I couldn’t sing any of that if the fall had never occurred.
• Thanks to the fall I now know God as a redeemer.
• Thanks to the fall I know of God’s comfort in affliction.
• Thanks to the fall I know of God’s grace in trials.
In short, I know more of God’s glory now than Adam did.
And let me tell you why that is so good.
BECAUSE THE GREATEST THING GOD CAN EVER GIVE YOU
IS A REVELATION OF HIMSELF.
God is our glory
God is our desire
And to know Him fully is the greatest satisfaction we can ever have.
It is true that God indeed ordains hardship in our lives,
And some of those hardships are almost unexplainable,
But because God is sovereign they never come without hope,
And they always come with a greater understanding of who God is.
GOD GLORIFIES HIMSELF IN ALL THINGS.
Well, that hopefully gives a little more insight into the question of last week, but TONIGHT WE WANT TO MOVE FORWARD.
We are still discussing how God glorifies Himself in Redemption.
We saw how this made the fall necessary.
Now let’s look at how this REDEMPTION
That came in as a result DOES IN FACT GLORIFY GOD ALONE.
We are looking at Romans 11:30-32
Now the backdrop to this passage is extremely important.
• It follows the section which reveals that Israel, despite enormous spiritual blessing, has been broken off by God.
• We found out that they all are not Israel who descended from Israel.
• And we learned that God broke them off and hardened their heart.
Romans 11:7-10 “What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened; just as it is written, “GOD GAVE THEM A SPIRIT OF STUPOR, EYES TO SEE NOT AND EARS TO HEAR NOT, DOWN TO THIS VERY DAY.” And David says, “LET THEIR TABLE BECOME A SNARE AND A TRAP, AND A STUMBLING BLOCK AND A RETRIBUTION TO THEM. “LET THEIR EYES BE DARKENED TO SEE NOT, AND BEND THEIR BACKS FOREVER.”
• Now, following that we learned that although Israel has been broken off, that God has a plan to graft them back in again.
• Even though they are currently in a state of rejection, God is going to once again save Israel because of the promises He made to the Fathers.
Romans 11:25-29 “For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery — so that you will not be wise in your own estimation — that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, “THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB.” “THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM, WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS.” From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”
So Paul has been talking about this great mystery of
How God HAS dealt and IS dealing and WILL deal with Israel.
And then in verses 30-32 Paul gives some added insight to the situation
And more importantly for our study,
PAUL REVEALS THE MOTIVE behind it all.
READ: Romans 11:30-32
There are 3 things we see here:
#1 THE SALVATION OF THE GENTILES
Romans 11:30
You will see clearly that Paul is making an analogy here.
We recognize the “just as” in verse 30
Directly corresponds to the “so…also” in verse 31.
Paul is making an analogy.
• In this case, Paul uses a previous event to explain a future one.
• Paul uses something God did in the past to explain what God is doing in the present.
And the first thing we do is look at THE PAST EVENT,
And from Paul’s perspective that is THE SALVATION OF THE GENTILES.
Now what we know is that
• Gentiles by in large were not always saved,
• Nor were they among God’s people.
• Certainly there are a few examples of proselytes or even those known as God-fearers,
• But the main point is that Gentiles by in large were not saved.
We were categorized as those who “once were disobedient to God”
Paul says it like this in his letter to the Ephesians.
Ephesians 2:11-12 “Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision,” which is performed in the flesh by human hands — remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”
The past state of Gentiles is obvious, we were lost.
And you cannot overlook the sovereign prerogative of God in this.
It’s not that God caused Gentiles to be disobedient,
But again, God used their disobedience as a means of glorifying Himself.
Consider Pharaoh.
Romans 9:17-18 “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH.” So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.”
There is that compatibilism on display again.
• God didn’t make Pharaoh sin, but God didn’t soften his heart either.
• Pharaoh did exactly what he wanted in oppressing God’s people and in ignoring God’s miracles.
• God used that disobedient man to glorify Himself through the plagues and through the Red Sea.
And that is really where Gentiles settled throughout the Old Testament.
• We are seen in those foreign nations whom God overthrew.
• We are seen in those pagan idol worshipers whom God destroyed.
• We are seen in those cruel peoples whom God used to discipline His people, and then punished for their cruelty.
• We were without God and without hope.
• We were disobedient and we were objects of wrath.
And then God opened the door for Gentiles to be saved.
Paul says in verse 20, “but now [Gentiles] have been shown mercy”
That is to say that God determined to be merciful to a people
Who had previously been destined for destruction.
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
GOD, BY HIS OWN SOVEREIGN DESIGN,
Chose to be merciful and to save pagan Gentiles who did not deserve it.
Paul even speaks of the catalyst God used to bring this salvation about.
He said that we “have been shown mercy because of their disobedience.”
What was the catalyst God used to save Gentiles?
JEWISH UNBELIEF.
Remember how it happened throughout the book of Acts?
At the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch:
Acts 13:46 “Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first; since you repudiate it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.”
At the synagogue in Corinth:
Acts 18:5-6 “But when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting himself completely to the word, solemnly testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ. But when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am clean. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”
In Ephesus:
Acts 19:8-9 “And he entered the synagogue and continued speaking out boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But when some were becoming hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the people, he withdrew from them and took away the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus.”
When Paul was imprisoned in Rome:
Acts 28:23-28 “When they had set a day for Paul, they came to him at his lodging in large numbers; and he was explaining to them by solemnly testifying about the kingdom of God and trying to persuade them concerning Jesus, from both the Law of Moses and from the Prophets, from morning until evening. Some were being persuaded by the things spoken, but others would not believe. And when they did not agree with one another, they began leaving after Paul had spoken one parting word, “The Holy Spirit rightly spoke through Isaiah the prophet to your fathers, saying, ‘GO TO THIS PEOPLE AND SAY, “YOU WILL KEEP ON HEARING,BUT WILL NOT UNDERSTAND; AND YOU WILL KEEP ON SEEING, BUT WILL NOT PERCEIVE; FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE HAS BECOME DULL, AND WITH THEIR EARS THEY SCARCELY HEAR, AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR EYES; OTHERWISE THEY MIGHT SEE WITH THEIR EYES, AND HEAR WITH THEIR EARS, AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART AND RETURN, AND I WOULD HEAL THEM.”‘ “Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will also listen.”
It was Jewish unbelief that opened the door
For the Gentiles to hear the gospel.
Every time Paul preached to Jews, they blasphemed and rejected and every time he preached to Gentiles they overwhelmingly responded in faith.
You’d of preached to Gentiles too.
What we find is that God ordained all of that.
• He is the One who hardened the eyes and minds and hearts of the Jews,
• He is the One that softened and opened the eyes and hearts of the Gentiles.
He used the stubborn rebellion of Jews to show mercy to Gentiles.
Now that is the previous situation Paul first draws reference to.
And he uses it to reveal what God is going to do in the future.
So first: The Salvation of Gentiles
#2 THE SALVATION OF JEWS
Romans 11:31
Paul uses the connecting phrase “so these also”
Which is to say, “just like God did then, He will also do again”
“so these also now have been disobedient”
Paul now is describing why God would be willing to harden Israel
And to break them off and to put them in a place of wrath.
And according to Paul, He did it so that
They would understand the mercy that you and I understand.
It is easy for Gentiles to understand mercy.
• We were pagans
• We were idolaters
• We never kept the Law, we never had the Law
• We never attended the feasts, we never saw the need
• We were outcasts in every sense of the word and yet God did the unthinkable for us, He showed us mercy by drawing us to Himself.
Gentiles understand mercy.
JEWS DID NOT. (they should have, but they didn’t)
They worked for everything they had.
• They felt as though they had earned God’s favor and deserved God’s blessing
• Because they had kept the Law and kept the ordinances and kept the feasts.
They could glorify God but very few of them glorified God for His mercy.
Perhaps they glorified Him for His justice, but not His mercy.
They felt as though they deserved all the blessing they received.
But God deserves glory for His mercy, so what did He do?
He hardened them.
• He ordained their current state of rebellion and disobedience and blindness
and rejection.
Why did He do it?
So that “they also may now be shown mercy.”
God ordained their rebellion
So that He could also give them a taste of mercy.
What will the catalyst be that draws them back?
Paul says it is “because of the mercy shown to you”
God is going to use Gentile salvation
As the catalyst to draw the Jews home.
Paul said it like this earlier in the chapter.
Romans 11:11 “I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous.”
Romans 11:13-14 “But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them.”
God is going use Gentile salvation to make Israel jealous,
And to cause them to see that they are not deserving of salvation,
But rather that they are under God’s wrath.
I tend to think the rapture will be the event that will do this,
But that’s just a speculative guess.
Regardless of the event,
What it will do is open Jewish eyes to the fact that they killed God’s Son
And therefore DO NOT DESERVE His salvation.
Their heart is revealed in the Old Testament.
Isaiah 64:3-6 “When You did awesome things which we did not expect, You came down, the mountains quaked at Your presence. For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, Nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him. You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, Who remembers You in Your ways. Behold, You were angry, for we sinned, We continued in them a long time; And shall we be saved? For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”
Zechariah 12:10 “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.”
At one moment Israel will come to realize just how sinful they have been,
And what will God do then?
He will show them “mercy”.
So you have Paul saying essentially,
What God first did with Gentiles, He is now doing with Jews.
God ordained for them to walk in disobedience
That He might eventually show them mercy.
Now the question here that we are interested in is, WHY?
Because if you’re willing to see it,
It’s really no different than the issue regarding the fall.
Why even allow a period of disobedience?
Why even ordain a time of rebellion?
Because if there is no disobedience; if there is no rebellion,
THERE CAN BE NO MERCY.
So let’s look at the final point Paul makes as he explains this all.
#3 THE SOVEREIGN PURPOSE
Romans 11:32
There it is.
WHY WERE THEY IN DISOBEDIENCE?
“God has shut up all in disobedience”
WHY WOULD GOD DO SUCH A THING?
“so that He may show mercy to all.”
God did all of that so that He could make His tremendous mercy known.
• If Gentiles had never been disobedient…
• If Jews had never been disobedient…
• If Adam had never been disobedient…
THEN WE WOULD NEVER KNOW THE GLORY OF GOD’S MERCY
God has chosen to ordain even the difficult things in this world
That He might make His great mercy known.
Romans 9:22-23 “What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory,”
Did you catch that?
“He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy”
God is revealing who He is to us.
You couldn’t know Him otherwise.
Now the FIRST THING we must realize about this whole concept is this:
GOD IS BRILLIANT!
Notice the doxology that Paul pens after he comes to this inspired revelation:
Romans 11:33-36 “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR? Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”
When Paul realized that God ordained the disobedience of every human so that He could demonstrated His great mercy to humanity, Paul just had to sit back and say, “Wow! God, there is no one like You!”
He was overwhelmed at the wisdom of God.
And let me just be emphatic here for a moment.
THIS MUST BE OUR RESPONSE AS WELL
Anyone who comes to a revelation of God’s sovereign control over all things,
And that He does all things that He might reveal His glory
Must first and foremost submit that God’s wisdom is far beyond ours.
We would have never devised a plan like that.
Only the wisdom of God could devise such a thing.
And let me tell you furthermore.
That painful tragedy in your life which you may not to this day understand.
The Bible says one day we will know fully just as we are fully known.
One day, we will stand in God’s presence and these things will be explained to us.
Currently we accept our tragedies by faith that God is good.
But one day our faith will become sight and you’ll know exactly
Why God ordained that horrible day of suffering in your life.
And I promise you as boldly
As I’ve ever promised anything in my life.
On that day when God reveals His purpose to you,
I ALREADY KNOW WHAT YOU WILL SAY.
You will say:
“Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR? Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”
You will cry at the top of your lungs, “Oh God that was brilliant! Oh God thank you for doing that! Oh God I am so amazed at You!”
Some day when we see the full effect of why God ordained the fall,
We will praise God for the fall
As surely as we praise Him for the cross.
Of that I am supremely confident.
BUT THAT’S NOT THE ONLY THING WE MUST REALIZE.
Certainly grasping God’s wisdom is important.
But Paul goes on to say there is another thing that should occur
When we come to a realization
That God did what He did to make His mercy known.
And it is this:
Romans 12:1 “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”
WHY DID GOD ORDAIN A PERIOD OF DISOBEDIENCE?
So that He could reveal His mercy
WHY DID GOD FEEL THE NEED TO REVEAL HIS MERCY?
So that He could be glorified because of it.
• So that you and I would not only be overwhelmed at the wisdom of His sovereign prerogative,
• But also so that you and I could gather before Him and praise Him for His mercy,
• And so that you and I could submit our bodies before Him in service because of His mercy.
Last week I told you that God ordained the fall
“Because redemption is more glorious than creation.”
Tonight I tell you that God ordained disobedience
“Because mercy is more glorious than justice.”
What did Jesus teach us about the proportion of our love for God?
TURN TO: Luke 7:36-47
• I feel certain there were days when you experienced the justice of God and
you felt compelled to honor Him for being just.
• But I am also certain that there were days when you experienced the mercy
of God and I don’t even have to ask which day resulted in greater praise.
Do you see what we are saying?
GOD ORDAINS ALL THINGS FOR HIS GLORY
And this is why things like even the fall or the Jewish rejection of Christ
Or even your great tragedies make so much sense.
Because God is not at work just seeking to make your life comfortable and happy.
GOD IS SEEKING TO REVEAL HIS GLORY TO YOU.
He ordained disobedience that He might show mercy.
And He shows mercy that He might be glorified.
Listen to Paul:
1 Timothy 1:16 “Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life.”
And by the way, nothing makes us happier than a revelation of God.
Consider these passages in closing:
Psalms 16:11 “You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.”
Psalms 21:6 “For You make him most blessed forever; You make him joyful with gladness in Your presence.”
Psalms 43:4 “Then I will go to the altar of God, To God my exceeding joy; And upon the lyre I shall praise You, O God, my God.”
Psalms 84:1-2, 10 “How lovely are Your dwelling places, O LORD of hosts! My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the LORD; My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God…For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God Than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”
I bring all this up to make one main point to you.
• There are events in this world…
• There are tragedies in this life…
• WHICH HAVE NO OTHER EXPLANATION
The ONLY POSSIBLE REASON they can occur
Is because God is ordaining them to reveal the glory of who He is to you.
And what God knows is that
There is no level of loss which you can face in this life
That the resulting presence of His glory
Will not fully and overwhelmingly satisfy.
This whole thing is about SOLI DEO GLORIA
The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
