A new order

Posted on Jul 17, 2016 in Faith Focus |

With all of us swimming in a sea of campaign slogans, promises, and stated intentions to change things for the better, I figured this is the right time for me to tell you how I would like things to go. Ready?

  • From here on in…..the Vice President will be over the president.
  • Bosses will be subservient to their workers.
  • Children will have authority over their parents.
  • Teachers will submit to the will of their students.
  • Inmates will now run the jails.
  • Players will rule over their coaches.

There…..how did I do? Will you vote for me for President? Would you like to live in the country I would rule? Do you think that I have gone stark raving mad? Of course you do, and of course you know that I would never propose such things. Imagine what our world would be like if we reversed the order of hierarchies so that those with less experience, compromised morals, and insufficient knowledge were in charge (please hold your political commentaries…..). Indeed the world would quickly descend into chaos.

God is a God of order. A student of His word will be quick to tell you that you can barely turn a page in the bible and not find God placing things in order. Yet…sometimes he places things out or order (or so it seems). Sometimes He will throw us the proverbial curve-ball and have a younger child rule over an older one. On several occasions you will see Him choose a weaker person or nation to have more prominence and a greater role in his eternal plan than a stronger one. How about all those stories where he topples rulers and established authorities, even from within His own people? Even today in the book or Numbers I was reading how God was ordering service in the tabernacle and He chose the sons of Kohath over the sons Gershon (who was most likely His older brother -see numbers 3:17) to have a more prominent role. For those new to the study of God’s word, I imagine about half-way through the bible they are thinking, “What is He (God) going to do next? He is not very predictable.” On top of all this, God is known for allowing things to come into the lives of His people in a way that really upsets the “apple-cart” of their lives. We can be chugging along…..everything nice and neat and 
ordered 
and then wham! God shows us that He has different plans for how things will go for us and we sit there saying, “Wait! Not now! This doesn’t make sense? Didn’t I tell you that I wanted things to go this way and that last time I prayed to you? Did you not get the memo?!”

Lately Pastor Kinzel has been helping us to think more about God’s glorious sovereignty. We often flinch at examples when we see God doing as He pleases because it upsets our “natural order” of things. But unlike you and I (and my silly examples from above), God knows exactly what He is doing and we are assured of that every time we turn a page of the bible. At first we consider God’s order of things in the pages of history and say, “That doesn’t make sense” and then a chapter or book or two later we are saying to ourselves, “Wow! Look how he ordered things! Didn’t see that coming.”

Beloved, God’s sovereignty has contained within it a call for us to trust Him even if we don’t understand His plans. He is calling us to have faith in Him and trust Him that He knows what He is doing. I am quite sure He has already demonstrated that He does.

8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways

    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9

God’s ways are higher. God’s ways are better.

For His glory,

Rob

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