This lesson could change your life. Or not.
You can’t really predict when change will come in your
life. You can’t force change. People make resolutions all the time, and
most of them fail. Why? Because they weren’t ready for change.
When you think about the fact that God created the world,
you have to examine the world that He created.
You have to ask why He created things the way He did. Well, at least I do.
One thing I think about a lot is the idea of families. God created Adam and Eve as adults. Why would future generations depend on the
actions of other people? Why create new
life through sex? Why does it take so
long for a child to reach maturity? Most
animals reach adulthood in months or a maybe a year at most.
And, of course, you realize that God didn’t give human beings
the ability to control reproduction.
Humans developed that, and very late in human history. And it turns out that when humans control how
many children they’re going to have, it’s a lot fewer than what it seems God
had in mind.
It’s like God wanted people to go through things they never
would choose to go through on their own.
It seems too that God’s priorities are far different from
ours. Forget the part about how people
can’t afford to have a lot of kids today.
That’s for another lesson, and one on politics.
But throughout all of history, from the time of creation in
the Garden of Eden, almost every family was a large one, and that meant that almost
every woman was primarily raising families for much of her life.
Now I’m just making observations here and trying to think
about what they mean.
It’s like family and having a family is the most important
thing in the world in God’s eyes. And
why would that be? And what are these
things He wants us to learn?
Now this lesson is not actually about families as such, but there’s
a connection. Which I will tie together
at the end.
This lesson is still a work in progress. I’ve been a Christian most of my life, and I’m
just learning this stuff now.
Let’s begin in Exodus 19.
Moses had just delivered the Israelites out of Egypt where they had lived
in slavery. Moses was to lead them to a
land that God had promised for them.
Then God told Moses to say these words to them: 5 Now
then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be
My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; 6 and
you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’
God told them that if they kept this covenant with Him,
three things would happen to them: 1) they would become God’s own possession, a
kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.
”
I want to focus here on what it means to be God’s own
possession.
The Hebrew word is סְגֻלָּ֔ה (se-gool-lah'),
which would refer to a person’s private treasure.
We meet the idea again in Deuteronomy 7:6 “For you are a holy people to the LORD
your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession
(to be a private treasure people) out of all the peoples who are on the face of
the earth.
Again in Deuteronomy 14:2 “For you are a holy people to the LORD
your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for His own possession [to
be a private treasure people] out of all the peoples who are on the face of the
earth.
Deuteronomy 26:18
“The LORD has today declared you to be His people, a treasured
possession, as He promised you, and that you should keep all His commandments; 19
and that He will set you high above all nations which He has made, for
praise, fame, and honor; and that you shall be a consecrated people to the LORD
your God, as He has spoken.”
Psalm 135:4 For
the LORD has chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel for His own possession [for His private
treasure].
Now Christians who are familiar with these passages might
say, well, that’s all well and good, but God is talking about Israel here, the
nation.
Have you never read Ephesians 2:11–19?
11 Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the
flesh, . . . 12 that you were at that
time without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers
to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13
But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by
the blood of Christ. 14 For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one
. . . so that in Himself He might make
the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, 16 and might reconcile them
both in one body to God through the cross, . . 18
for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then
you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the
saints, and are of God’s household,
And then Ephesians 3:3
by revelation there was made
known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. 4 . . . when you read you can understand my
insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which in other generations was not made
known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and
prophets in the Spirit; 6 that
the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow
partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,
I don’t want to get into all the questions of the
relationship between Israel and the Church, but one of the new things that happened
in the New Testament in relation to the Old Testament is that the Gentiles are
now brought into the Israel of God.
I Peter 2:9 says But you [emphasized] are A CHOSEN people
[this is not a generic use of the word ‘people’. These are people all related to each other in
some way. Some translations say race.],
A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, so that
you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness
into His marvelous light; 10 for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now
you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have
RECEIVED MERCY.
Peter is quoting what God said to Israel in Exodus 19. All those titles that God gave to Israel, speaking
of His unique relationship with Israel, he applies to the Church.
In another New Testament passage, Titus 2:11, Paul says: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing
salvation to all men, 12 instructing us to deny ungodliness and
worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, 13
looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great
God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14
who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to
purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.
That last phrase ‘people for His own possession’ is an exact
quote from Exodus and Deuteronomy. We,
the people of God, the Church, Christians, are God’s own private treasure.
One more passage: Ephesians 1: 15 For this reason I . . . 16
do not cease giving thanks for you, making mention in my prayers 17
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to
you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.
18 that the eyes of your heart may be
enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what is the
riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
It’s not OUR inheritance that Paul is praying that we see,
but the riches of the glory of GOD’s inheritance. You can find numerous passages in the Old
Testament where Israel is called God’s inheritance.
So what am I getting at?
We are used to seeing salvation as something that God does
for us. He saves poor miserable sinners
like ourselves, because He is so loving and full of mercy. And that’s true.
But we also need to look at this from God’s point of view.
We are His private treasure, His inheritance. We bring joy to God.
Now this is where family comes in.
Family is God’s way, one of several, but probably the
biggest way, to teach people about love, both in giving it and receiving
it.
We talk about the greatness of God’s love in Jesus dying for
us. And that is an enormous demonstration
of that love. But it doesn’t convey to
us the enormous delight that God has in His people.
We’re not like a bunch of strangers who were rescued from a
sinking ship and brought safely to shore.
We are God’s children who bring joy to God. Like the father in the story of the prodigal
son, who was constantly looking to see if his son would finally return
home.
We need to see ourselves in God’s eyes as we see our own
children and try to picture the enormous love that God has for us. I have found this to be one of the hardest
lessons to learn, and I suspect that is one of the main reasons why God placed
such an emphasis on family throughout all of human history.
Hopefully you know what love is, either through the love you
have received from someone else, like your parents, or the love that you have
for someone else, like your children, or grandchildren. But hopefully someone.
God wants you to know His love now. It would be a shame to have to die and go to
heaven to learn of this.
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