Witnessing to Where Our Real Hope Lies

How God Calls His Covenant People to Make Their Calling and Election Sure

Good Morning,

This summer at Bethany we are working through some foundational sins that can shipwreck a person’s faith, or can be the stumbling block which prevents them from closing with Christ at all. It is good for us as Christians to take stock of our own walk, or to do as Peter says, making our calling and election sure. When we witness the Lord’s people in the Bible, those who are seen as the most worthy of example are always striving in assurance. What I mean by that is Hannah in all her glory is still in her prayer asking God to lift her up, recognizing her own unworthiness and her own weakness and noting her full reliance on the strength which alone can be found in Jesus. Isaiah thinks himself unworthy to speak the word of God, yet who else would we looking back twenty-five hundred years think was more ready to prophesy than Isaiah? This modesty is born not of some kind of false humility. It is a fear of the Lord, it is a recognition of the holiness and righteousness which belongs to God alone. He then looked at himself and knew the truth. It is only with this kind of mindset that we can understand passages like the Sermon on the Mount.

For today’s prayer and worship help we are going to think through exactly how we get to the point in our life that this kind of thought process becomes second nature. Galatians 5 tells us that we are to walk in the Spirit. In doing so we give no place for sin. Jesus promises the disciples in His going away speech that when He does ascend the Comforter will come and witness unto their hearts all that He has done. This grace-filled infusion of the knowledge of the mercy and love of God born of the Holy Scripture emphasis on the reconciliation won to us by Christ Jesus and His death and resurrection is what the Holy Spirit uses to keep us always in the mind of how we are to live, always in light of redemption, the renewal of the dead body into a living one who now strives toward holiness. When we get off the welcome wagon of faith and want to walk our way to the promised land under our own power, we often find ourselves drowning in the quicksand of our own understanding. How often do we see in stories of the bible men and women who are on their way to the house of glory only to get off the boat and sink in the ocean depths of worldliness and fleshly desire? The world opened and swallowed the Korahites.

Saul is king of the Nation. He dies on his own sword in the midst of a failed military campaign that God neither sought nor asked for. Saul thought he might prove Himself worthy in the face of his enemies born of his insecurity in the presence of David, and we see how these things went. For the believer then we see in the personal envy of a man who had everything this failure to humble himself in the making of his calling and election sure. In his arrogance he felt as if his place guaranteed his salvation. His unwillingness to submit himself to God witnessed that he had no ability to perceive what his actual role was as king of Israel. There is no hope in the preferring of yourself before the Lord. We do that when we seek not first the righteousness of Jehovah in all His glory and grace. We look at God at our peril if we do not turn our eyes away. Consider how willing we are to teach children to not stare at the sun, fully comprehend the danger, yet live in fear of the young people when we do not warn them to flee from the wrath to come, afraid that they might run away from the church if we hold them to any standard of holiness and obedience.

We miss the point of the gospel if we think that Jesus died for our sins on the cross so that we might continue in sin. We also miss the point of the gospel if we think that the word which is described as turning the world upside down can have no effect on our life. A Christian who does not worship is a contradiction in terms. Yet worship in itself is a perfect example of a rightly ordered life. We are coming into the presence of the Holy One, lifting His name on high, reading the word that He has given unto His people, granting all attention and focus to it. We are saying in our adoration of the King of Kings that He is worthy of such in a way we are not, in keeping with the Second Commandment. However, you cannot worship aright unless you humble your heart, and come seeking to receive something from God which He alone can provide.

When we read for example the wonderful words of Matthew 11 which say, “Come unto me all who are weary and heavy-laden . . . “ it includes the closing statement of taking Christ’s yoke upon you. Matthew Henry helps us to get the sense of this, “To take Christ's yoke upon us, is to put ourselves into the relation to servants and subjects to Him, and then conduct ourselves accordingly, in a conscientious obedience to all His commands, and a cheerful submission to all His works.” That next-to-last clause is worthy (no pun intended) of our time.

In closing, we cannot give conscientious obedience to all His commands unless we know them. To love Jesus is to be a lover of His word. To love His word is to love Him, for the word speaks of Him. We cannot be making our calling and election sure if we are not interested in what He has to say. These matters should be self-evident. We apply this same attitude toward all the things we love in our life. Those things which we give our time and energy, those things we prefer over and above the love of God, they are our idols, and if we want to serve them rather than the giver of eternal life, then we best hope they can save is in day of the trumpet blast, because if not?

It will make the difference between enjoying a day of rest, and sweltering in the heat.

Last word:

https://sb.rfpa.org/making-our-calling-and-election-sure-2/

Blessings in Christ,

Rev. Benjamin Glaser

Pastor, Bethany ARP Church