GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 31 ~ ~ Psalm 97:6 ~ ~ “The heavensdeclare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory.”
Continuing excerpts from John Piper’s book, “The Pleasures of God” Chapter three
The bible says that both the Father and the Son were active in the work of creation (along with the Holy Spirit) The Father had not wearied of the Son and decided to create another enjoyment.
1 Corinthians 8:6 ~ ~ “For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”
Colossians 1:16 ~ ~ “By Him (Christ) all things were created.”
Hebrews 1:2 ~ ~ “In these last days He (God) has spoken to us by His son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through who also He created the world.”
John 1:1-3 ~ ~ “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the word was God. All things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.”
In other words, the work of creation is not merely the work of the Father, as though He had to satisfy a need that the Son couldn’t meet, nor was creation merely the work of the son as though He had t satisfy some need that the Father couldn’t meet. Instead it was the work of both of them together. And the impulse was not deficiency of delight but a spilling over of mutual joy.
Jonathon Edwards expresses it like this:
“Surely it is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain, that it is inclined to overflow.” If someone should ask whether God was less happy before the Father and Son released their joyful creative energy, Edwards answers,
“Though these communications of God (in creation)—these exercises, operations, and expressions of His glorious perfections, which God rejoices in—are in time; yet His joy in them is without beginning or change. They were ALWAYS PRESENT in the divine mind.”
So when the Bible teaches that creation expresses the glory of God, we must not think merely of the glory of the Father or the glory of the Son, but rather the glory that they have together, and the glory that they have together is that overflowing mutual joy in each other’s perfections.
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 30 ~ ~ Job 26:7 ~ ~ “ He stretches out the north over the empty place, and hangs the earth upon nothing.”
Continuing with excerpts from John Piper’s book, “The Pleasures of God”
Chapter 3—God’s Pleasure in His Creation.
Yesterday we talked about the angels watching and shouting for joy when God created matter and life.
Mr. Piper continues:
Now I admit that God does not say explicitly in this text that He Himself shouted for joy. But do you suppose that God sat by with a blank face and no emotion while millions of holy angels shouted for joy over His creation? Something would be very out of sync in heaven if that were true.
I think God told Job about the joy of the “sons of god’ because sons get their dispositions from their Father. (and Creator). If the finite sons were shouting for joy over the greatness and wonder of the Father’s creation, you can be sure that the Father’s delight both in the creation and the the sons’ joy was immense.
The Father rejoices in His works (another word for His creation throughout scripture) because His works express His glory. Psalm 19:1-2 says:
“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims His handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.”
It is clear that there is one main Message creation has to comunicate to human beings:
THE GLORY OF GOD.
Not primarily the glory of creation but the glory of GOD.
The glory of creation and the glory of God are as different as the love poem and the love, or the painting and the landscape, the ring and the marriage. It would be great folly and a great tragedy if a man loved his wedding band more than he loved his bride.
But that is what Romans 1:19-23 says has happened. Human beings have fallen in love with the ECHO OF GOD’S EXCELLENCY in creation and lost the ability to hear the incomparable original SHOUT OF LOVE.
“What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature, namely, His eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; for although they knew God THEY DID NOT GLORIFY HIM AS GOD or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and EXCHANGED THE GLORY OF THE IMMORTAL GOD for images resembling mortal an or birds, animals or reptiles.”
The message of creation is this:
THERE IS A GREAT GOD OF GLORY AND POWER AND GENEROSITY BEHIND ALL THIS AWESOME UNIVERSE;
YOU BELONG TO HIM;
HE IS PATIENT WITH YOU IN SUSTAINING YOUR REBELLIOUS LIFE;
TURN AND BANK YOUR HOPE OF HIM AND DELIGHT IN HIM, NOT HIS HANDIWORK.
(referring to Ps 19:1-2 above) Day pours forth the speech of that message to all that will listen in the day, speaking with blindingly bright sun and blue sky, clouds and untold shapes and colors of all things visible. Night pours forth the “knowledge” of the same message to all who will listen at night, speaking with great dark voids, summer moons, countless stars, strange sounds, cool breezes, and beautiful northern lights.
Day and night are saying one thing: GOD IS GLORIOUS!!! GOD IS GLORIOUS!!!
(Do you see why satan loves to get people thinking about “save the earth”, “climate change”, “carbon footprint”, “evolution”? It’s a mocking of God as Creator, and a sure way to get people to focus on anything other than their Savior, and thereby, never be saved. THAT is satan’s ultimate goal—he knows he’s doomed to eternal hellfire, and he’s going to try to take as many with him as he can. When his followers focus on nature, it sounds good on the surface, but it’s a great deception, because it puts mankind in charge, and the whole thing is a lie.)
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 29 ~ ~ “Psalm 96:12 ~ ~ “ Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice”
Continuing with excerpts from John Piper’s book, “The Pleasures of God”
Chapter 3—God’s Pleasure in His Creation.
I love the picture that God paints for Job when He is interrogating Job about creation. In Job 38:4-7, God queries:
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding,
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together,
and all the sons of God—angels— shouted for joy?”
Do you see the picture? No man was there. So Job should humble himself and realize there are a few things he …and we…may not understand. But in making this point, god cannot resist, it seems, mentioning what the mood of heaven was like at the moment of creation. “All the sons of God shouted for joy” all the angels had evidently been created before the universe. And it is not hard to see why. God meant there tom be an audience when He created the world. I am sure He said, “Watch this!” When He spoke the galaxies into existence.
Imagine the awe and wonder that exploded among the angels. They had never seen or imagined matter. They are all “ministering spirits” (Hebrews 1:14) and have no material bodies as we do. ?When God brought material stuff into existence with all its incredible variety and utterly unheard-of qualities of sight and sound, smell, touch and taste, this was totally unknown to the angels. God had made it all up.
It was not like the unveiling of a new painting made of all the colors and paints we are all familiar with, It was ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY, UNIMAGINABLY NEW!!!
The response of the sons of God was (understandably) a shout of joy!!!!
(This is not something to read and forget. This is something to think about as we go about our lives in this world. His wonders are all around us, and, as He said in Romans chapter 1, His creation speaks for His existence.
Just as a painting has a painter, a building has a builder, so original creation of matter and life has a Creator.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 28~ ~ Psalm 104:31 ~ ~ “May the glory of the Lord endure forever, may the Lord rejoice in His works”
Taking excerpts from John Piper’s book, “The Pleasures of God”…..
beginning chapter 3—God’s Pleasure in His Creation.
(He begins with a long description of a vacation cabin and the nature around it where he writes, in part:)
Three or four times a day I stoop down to go under the barbed wire fence between the study and the cottage. The metal post holding the wire where we crawl through is hollow. To our amazement we discovered that a little gray frog lives in the post. There is a little water in the hollow and he goes up or down in the post according to the heat and the light. He will let us walk right up to him as he sits on the edge of the post in the evening. It is clearly his place, because he has been there for several weeks now and nothing we do chases him away. This has made me wonder about all the other tree frogs that at night produce such an incredible whirring and buzzing and scratching in these peaceful woods. I have wondered if all the tree frogs are as possessive of their turf as he is. If so, there are thousands of little knotholes and crooks and branches all staked out and claimed by their own little tree frogs. It just be an amazing world of turf and territorialism up in those trees that completely escapes us humans.
Where we swim, at the north end of the lake, the fish eat freckles and moles and chigger bites and other assorted blemishes on my back and legs, so I have to keep moving in the water or go out in the deep part.
The water is always moving peacefully. Early in the morning it catches the sun with ten thousand flashes and makes a constant display of crystal pieces moving on the surface. The leaves between me and the lake turn green-yellow-black-and-back-to-greenish-yellow as the breeze conspires with the reflections of the lake and the shadows to make the whole hillside burst with golden light and life.
The point of all this happy rambling is to say that real life is physical. It has to do with touch and smell and sight and sound and taste. It has to do with trees and stumps and fish and frogs and ants and birds and leaves and water and heat and slaw and iced tea and numb thighs and salty sweat and worms and daddy longlegs and ten thousand other creatures and sensations that come to us because God made a physical world.
I sat down to watch the moon. It’s been making a lower and lower arc over the southeastern hemisphere these last nights. This night it was just above the power lines, and was almost full. The gray-orange face was pocked with beautiful gray blemishes. The constant caressing of the thin clouds could do nothing to cleanse the old man. His defects are too deep and too old.
I sat there and soaked again in the lavish beauty of the sky and the droning crickets and tree frogs, with the soft breeze on my face and the smell of pine; and I marveled that God, who is spirit and cannot be seen or touched, would make an ocean of physical reality that smells and shines and feels and tastes and sounds.
As C.S. Lewis said:
There is no use trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why he uses material things like bread and wine to put a new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not:
He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it…
I know some muddle-headed Christians have talked as if Christianity thought that sex, or the body, or pleasure, were bad in themselves. But they are wrong. Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body—which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on human body, and that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty and our energy.
Genesis chapter 1 describes, not only the fact of a well-ordered creation by
God, but also God’s response to His creation. Six times God stands back, as it were, and takes stock of His creation. Each time the text says that is was “good”.
And when all was finished and man and woman were created in his own image, it says, “ And God saw everything that He had made and behold, it was VERY GOOD.”
I take that to mean at least that God was delighted with His work. He approved of it. He was glad that He had done it. When He looked at it, it gave Him pleasure. It is as though He said, “Yes, that’s it. That will do just fine. That’s exactly right”
We get the clue early on in the story that the root of His delight in creation has to do with imaging forth His own glory, because only after He created man and woman IN HIS IMAGE did God as the word “very” to the word “good”.
The rock-solid confidence of the whole Bible is that the glory of the Lord will not only endure forever but that it will cover the whole earth like the waters cover the sea.
Numbers 14:21 ~ ~ “But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.”
Habakkuk 2:14 ~ ~ “ For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 27 ~ ~ Jeremiah 9:1 ~ ~ “O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people”
I just want to add some thoughts to what John Piper has written. There are many other verses that shed some light on this.
The book of Jeremiah presents God as a God who had repeatedly called to his people to return to Him.
Jeremiah 9:1 ~ ~ “O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people”
Correction comes in many forms. God did not take pleasure in judging his people. He was not pleased to bring judgment upon Judah, instead He had hoped his people would turn from their rebellion and cry out to Him for mercy. God was pained to have to deal so severely with his people.
His people were meant to be a blessing to the nations. But, because of their rebellion, God’s heart was grieving for them in quiet silence.
He was seeking their repentance so that the people could return back into a right relationship with him. Yahweh was not punishing his people for punishment’s sake. He was offering them a chance to turn and be saved, “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord GOD. Turn, then, and live” (Ezekiel 18:32).
Mr. Piper sights Romans 9:22-23 for this, but I’d like to go further, and read Romans 9:15-26 in the Amplified translation (which uses a more expanded meaning of the original language)
“For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I have compassion.” So then God’s choice is not dependent on human will, nor on human effort [the totality of human striving], but on God who shows mercy [to whomever He chooses—it is His sovereign gift]. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “I raised you up for this very purpose, to display My power in [dealing with] you, and so that My name would be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then, He has mercy on whom He wills (chooses), and He hardens [the heart of] whom He wills.
You will say to me then, “Why does He still blame me [for sinning]? For who [including myself] has [ever] resisted His will and purpose?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers [arrogantly] back to God and dares to defy Him? Will the thing which is formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does the potter not have the right over the clay, to make from the same lump [of clay] one object for honorable use [something beautiful or distinctive] and another for common use [something ordinary or menial]? What if God, although willing to show His wrath and to make His power known, has tolerated with great patience the objects of His wrath [which are] prepared for destruction? And what if He has done so to make known the riches of His glory to the objects of His mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory, including us, whom He also called, not only from among the Jews, but also from among the Gentiles? Just as He says in [the writings of the prophet] Hosea:
“I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ And [I will call] her who was not beloved, ‘beloved.’”
“And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people,’ There they shall be called sons of the living God.”
And Isaiah calls out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, it is only the remnant [a small believing minority] that will be saved [from God’s judgment]; “
What this boils down to is: GOD IS GOD AND WE ARE NOT.
But, the focus that Mr. Piper wants to show is this part: “
“What if God, although willing to show His wrath and to make His power known, has tolerated with great patience the objects of His wrath [which are] prepared for destruction? (unrepentent sinners) And what if He has done so to make known the riches of His glory to the objects of His mercy, (repentent sinners) which He has prepared beforehand for glory,”
As they say, diamonds show best on a black background. God’s glory shows best on a background of wickedness.
He cannot blur the lines between right and wrong. He wouldn’t be God if He did.
We are in no position to judge God nor to even come close to understanding Him. His signature is literally imprinted on our DNA. Scientists have found that recently. That’s for another writing, but suffice it to say that if we’re saved, we don’t need to worry about His wrath or judgment. Chastisement as a Father to His children, …yes, if needed, but even that is done in everlasting Love.)
We should consider that sometimes it’s referring to situations involving the very wicked, who have voluntarily joined the evil of satan, and sometimes it is those who have not heard of salvation.
Either way, He always would prefer that the person make the choice to turn to Him, rather than face the consequences. But that doesn’t mean that He can blur the lines. We must be holy to be with Him in heaven, and there is only one way to become that way—through Jesus.
When He destroys the wicked, His pleasure would be in knowing that they will no longer be convincing those who don’t know the Truth to follow the wrong path.
So, while we are merely the clay and He is the Potter, ~ ~ so far is He above us~ ~ we can rest assured that He will NEVER do anything that is not PERFECT IN EVERY WAY for all concerned.
He is Sovereign and never will make an imperfect decision.
Whatever judgment is made, it is just, and we can count on that, just like we can count on His eternal love for His own!!!
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 26~ ~ Hebrews 4:15 ~ ~ “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are,yet without sin.”
Continuing with excerpts from Chapter two of John Piper’s, “The Pleasures of God”
“The Pleasure of God in all He does” ~ ~ ( Anything in parenthesis are my comments.)
Who can comprehend that the Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers of 10 million Christians around the world, and sympathizes with each one personally and individually as a caring Father, even though among those 10 million prayers some are brokenhearted and some are bursting with joy?
How can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice when they are both coming to Him as the same time—-constantly.
Or who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the world every day (Ps 7:11– “God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day.”
And yet every day, every moment, He is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting!
Luke 15:10, – “I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Who can comprehend that God continually burns with hot anger at the rebellion of the wicked and grieves over the unholy speech of His people (Ephesians 4:29-30– Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.)
and at the same time take pleasure in them daily (Ps 149:4 “For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation.”) and ceaselessly makes merry over penitent prodigals who come home?
WHO OF US COULD DARE SAY WHAT COMPLEX OF EMOTIONS IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR GOD? All we have to go on here is what He has chosen to tell us in the Bible. And what He has told us is that there is a sense in which He does NOT experience pleasure in the judgment of the wicked, and there is a sense in which He DOES.
From this I conclude that the death and misery of the unrepentant is in and of itself NO DELIGHT TO GOD. When a rebellious, wicked, unbelieving person is judged, what God delights in is the EXALTATION OF TRUTH AND RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND THE VINDICATION OF HIS OWN HONOR AND GLORY.
When Moses warns Israel that the Lord will take delight in bringing ruin upon them and destroying them if they do not repent, (Deuteronomy 28:63) He means that those who have rebelled against the Lord and moved beyond repentance will NOT BE ABLE TO GLOAT THAT THEY HAVE MADE THE ALMIGHTY MISERABLE.
GOD is not defeated in the triumphs of His righteous judgment. Quite the contrary. Moses says that when they are judged they will unwittingly PROVIDE AN OCCASION FOR GOD TO REJOICE IN THE DEMONSTRATION OF HIS JUSTICE AND HIS POWER AND THE INFINITE WORTH OF HIS GLORY.
So let us stand in awe and wonder of God—eternally happy in the fellowship of the Trinity; infinitely exuberant in the wisdom of His work; free and sovereign in His self-sufficiency. “Our God is in heaven; He does all that He pleases.”
Let us humble ourselves under His mighty hand, and rejoice that His counsel will stand, and that one day all the families of the nations shall worship before Him; for dominion belongs to the Lord and He rules over the nations!
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 25 ~ ~ Ps 149:4 ~ ~ “For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation.”
Continuing with excerpts from Chapter two of John Piper’s, “The Pleasures of God”
“The Pleasure of God in all He does” ~ ~ ( Anything in parenthesis are my comments.)
In Psalm 135:8-10 it says that God’s sovereign freedom was shown most vividly in the Exodus when He delivered Israel from Egypt. “He is was who smote the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast…who smote many nations and slew mighty kings…”
This refers explicity to the destruction of rebellious Egyptians and nations and kings. This is the scope of what god does when he does all He pleases.
I n Ezekiel is says that God is NOT pleased with the death of unrepentant people, and in Psalm 135 it says that God does whatever He pleases including the slaying of unrepentant people, for example. The enemies of His people in Egypt. And the very same Hebrew verb is used in Ps 135:6, “He pleases” and in Ezekiel 18:32 “He does NOT have pleasure”
Deuteronomy 28:63 where Moses warns of coming judgment on unrepentant Israel. But this time it says something strikingly different from Ez. 18:32. It says:
“As the Lord took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the Lord will take delight in bringing ruin upon you….”
So, we are brought back to the inescapable fact that in some sense God does not delight in the death of the wicked, and in some sense He does. Even acts of judgment which in one sense do not please God, in another sense do please Him.
God’s emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to fully comprehend.
(We can’t completely understand His mind. All we have is His Word, knowing that He IS love, and just seeing creation makes it clear to us that His intelligence and scope of knowledge is far, far beyond us. That’s where faith comes into the picture. We need to:
“… know that allthings work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28
And rest in the peace that Christ promises to those of us who Trust in Him:
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 24 ~ ~ Psalm 33:4 ~ ~ “For the word of the Lord is right, And all His work is done in truth.”
Continuing with excerpts from Chapter two of John Piper’s, “The Pleasures of God”
“The Pleasure of God in all He does” ~ ~ ( Anything in perenthesis are my comments.)
DOES GOD HAVE PLEASURE IN THE DEATH OF THE WICKED?
This is a glorious picture of God in His sovereign freedom—to do whatever He pleases and to accomplish all His pleasure. But it would be a fuzzy picture, a bit out of focus, if we stopped here.
To bring it into focus and sharpen it, we have to ask this question: “How can God say in Ezekiel 18:23 and 32 that He does not have pleasure in the death of any impenitent person, (a person who isn’t sorry for his sins) if in fact He accomplishes all his pleasure and does whatever He PLEASES?
In Ezekiel 18:30, God is warning the house of Israel of impending judgment: “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, says the Lord.” And He is urging them to repent: “Repent and turn from all your transgressions.” At the end of verse 31 He says, “Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I do not have pleasure in the death of any one, says the Lord God; so, turn and live.”
This seems to be a very different picture than the one we saw in Psalm 135, where God does all that He pleases. This is the kind of text that causes people to jump to the wrong conclusions too quickly.
Here God seems to be cornered. It seems that He is forced into judging them when He really doesn’t want to. Is he going to accomplish all His pleasure or not? Is God really free to do everything according to His good pleasure?
If God controls the wind and makes it blow whenever and wherever He pleases—which is certainly true — “He makes the wind to blow and the waters flow” ~ ~ “Psalm 147:18; and remember Jesus’ “Peace! Be Still”—then God is somehow responsible for the destruction of thousands of lives by drowning because of the storms and hurricanes which God has “brought forth from His storehouses” over the centuries.
Do we charge God with wrong when we say this? Might it not be satan who makes destructive wind blow? This is a good question, and the answer is a complex one. Satan does have great power in this world to do harm. We know that he can cause sickness—Luke 13:16; Acts 10:38; and, since he is called a “murderer from the beginning.” –John 8:44; we may infer that he can indeed kill.
But I believe with all my heart that the biblical teaching of God’s sovereignty over satan is the greatest answer in the world when the very meaning of life is threatened by the horrors and tragedies of death and disease. It is the answer of Scripture and it is true and full of hope.
The Bible does NOT teach that satan has the highest control in the world. God is shown indisputedly to be the controller of the wind in Genesis 8:1; Exodus 14:21; 15:10; Psalm 78:26; 107:25; 148:8; Isaiah 11:15 and Jonah 1:4 and 4:8.
In Job 1:11-12, God gives satan the freedom to attack all that Job has, including his family. Then in Job 1:19 “a great wind” levels the house where Job’s adult children are and kills them all. Job, in vs 1:21 says “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Apparently Job was correct in saying this because the very next verse –1:22—says , “In all this job did not sin or charge God with wrong. Neither did Isaiah, when he quoted God as saying, “I form light and create darkness, I make comfort and create calamity, I am the Lord who does all these things.” –Isaiah 45:7
Nor did Jeremiah err when he said, “is it not from the mouth of the most high that good and calamity come? (Lamentations 3:38) Nor Amos when he said, in vs 3:6, “Does calamity befall a city, unless the Lord has done it?”
So, when Psalm 135 says that the Lord does whatever He pleases, it has to include the taking of personal life through wind and sea which he alone controls. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. He is the source of all life –Acts 17:25—and He appoints the time for its return –1Samuel 2:6 and Deuteronomy 32:39.
James takes this for granted when he tells us that we should reckon with the sovereign control of God even in our ordinary business plans in James 4:13-16:
“come now you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain,’ whereas you do not know about tomorrow. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘if the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this or that’ As it is you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”
James assumes that it is the will of the Lord that determines whether anyone gets from one town or another. For Him it is a matter of humility to give God this right and a matter of arrogance to act, not to mention teach, that it is not to.
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 23 ~ ~ Psalm 135:6-7 ~ ~ “Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that He did in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places.
He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; He makes lightnings for the rain; He brings the wind out of His treasuries.”
Excerpts from Chapter two of John Piper’s, “The Pleasures of God”
“The Pleasure of God in all He does” ~ ~ ( Anything in perenthesis are my additions.)
Since God is not under constraint by forces outside Himself to act contrary to His good pleasure, …then all His acts are the expression of joy and He has pleasure in all that He does, and He cannot be kept back from doing what He delights most to do.
The point is that God acts in sovereign freedom. His acts do not spring from the need to make up deficiencies but from the passion to express the abundance of His delight. This is the meaning of freedom.
He is free in that He has no deficiencies that make Him dependent, and He is sovereign in that He can act on His delights without being stopped by powers outside Himself. “All that He pleases, He does” thus His freedom is a sovereign freedom.
The word translated “pleasure” is the same root word in Ps 1:2, “His delight is in the law of the Lord”
His delight is the joy that He has in the reflection of His own glory in the person of His Son. But part of that glory is infinite power, and the unique function
of His power is to make way for the overflow of His joy in the work of creation and redemption (salvation).
It is His power that removes –in God’s time and God’s way– any obstacles to the accomplishment of His good pleasure. Thus the declaration that God does all that He pleases is a declaration of His power. This is what we mean by sovereignty—God’s power always makes way for His perfections to be expressed according to His good pleasure.
I love the image that C.S. Lewis gives of God’s sovereign freedom in creation. It shows how the good pleasure of His heart to create and save is the happy overflow of His all-sufficiency, Lewis says,
“To be sovereign of the universe is no great matter to God….We must keep always before our eyes that vision of Lady Julian’s in which God carried in His hand a little object like a nut, and that nut was “all that is made.” God who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them”
This connection between power and pleasure is behind 1 Timothy 6:15-16 where Paul calls God “the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality”
We see that “blessed” means “happy” (1Timothy 1:11) Thus Paul is speaking of the “happy and only Sovereign” Notice what is stressed in calling God “blessed” or “happy.” God’s sole and unique power over all other powers is stressed. First, He is called the “only Sovereign—not just the Sovereign, but the ONLY Sovereign. In other words, He has no serious competitors for His power. He is the ONLY POWERFUL ONE.
(In these times, many people believe in a “higher power” “some kind of energy” They even believe the universe itself –a part of His creation—as a form of “god”. Many believe that mankind itself is a god, or that each of us is our own god. Some believe in Jesus, but it is their own version—one who will wink and smile at every sin they commit. They will even read the Bible, but their jesus came from their own mind in deception. These are the false Christs that Jesus warned us about in Matthew 24:23-24. It won’t be necessarily a person, but many times it’s a false and fatal idea. They all come from satan, but everyone who believes in these will be in hell with the demons who taught it, because God must judge. He is Sovereign~ ~Mt 24:23-24~ ~ “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” There is only one Sovereign God, and you can only connect with Him through His Son Jesus Christ described in the bible.)
Then Paul says that this happy God is “King of kings.” Again the point is that He is over all other royal authorities that might seem to challenge His power and His freedom to act as He pleases.
Then Paul says that He is “Lord of lords.” If there are any lords or gods —and there are!—Paul emphasizes that there is none that can successfully overthrow the power and freedom of the Lord of lords (1Cor 8:5-6~ ~ “ For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.”
Finally, Paul says that “He alone has immortality” God is in a class by Himself. All other beings depend upon His creative power for existence and life (Acts 17:25 ~ ~ “ Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.” ) He depends upon no one.
To sum up, He is the ONLY Sovereign. Therefore He is the HAPPY Sovereign, because there is none that can frustrate what He aims to do according to His good pleasure. C.S. Lewis put it like this:
“The freedom of God consists in the fact that no cause other than Himself produces His acts and no external obstacle impedes them—that His own goodness is the root from which they all grow and His own omnipotence the air in which they all flower.”
(WE CAN TRUST HIM WITH OUR OWN LIVES AND THE EVENTS WE SEE AROUND US.)
GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 22 ~ ~ Psalm 97:5~ ~“The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the wholeearth.” Excerpts from Chapter two of John Piper’s, “The Pleasures of God”“The Pleasure of God in all He does” ~ ~ ( Anything in perenthesis is my addition.) In chapter 1 we focused on the pleasure that God the Father has in His son. The most important lesson to be learned from that truth is this: God is and always has been an exuberantly happy God. From all eternity, even before there were any human beings to love, God has been overflowingly happy in His love for the Son. He has never been lonely. He has always rejoiced. A second lesson to learn is that God is not constrained by any inner deficiency or unhappiness to do anything He does not want to do, in order to become happy. This is what distinguishes us from God. We have an immense void inside that craves satisfaction from powers and persons and pleasures outside ourselves. Yearning and longing and desire are the very stuff of our nature. We are born deficient and needy and dissatisfied. We come into this world knowing almost nothing, and have to spend years and years learning in the school of hard knocks in order to fill up a little of this void of ignorance. Parents and teachers tell us to do things that we don’t like to do because we need to do them to overcome some weakness in ourselves—to increase our knowledge or strengthen our bodies, refine our manners, or sharpen our intellect. But God is not like that. He has been complete and overflowing with satisfaction from all eternity. Romans 11:34-36“For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid?To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen”(what every person needs to know) ~ ~ Whatever you or I or anyone or any circumstance offers to God, it is only the reflex of something He has already given or already done. The source of all things cannot be enriched or tempted with angelic or human service. Acts 17:25~ ~ “He is not served by human hands as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all men life and breath and everything” If anyone offers to God anything, and aims to offer it rightly, he must say with David, in 1 Chronicles 29:14 and 1 Cor 4:7 ~ ~ “Who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from You, and we have given only what comes from You?” In other words, all that is, including the ability to offer willingly, is a gift from an overflowing, all-sufficient, every-happy God. (This is why God said in Isaiah 64:6 ~ ~ “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” We can do nothing to please God because we have nothing within ourselves to benefit God. It’s only by salvation through Christ that we become anything that the Father could love, because He loves us through the righteousness and beauty of His Son) (with that background, we come to the) focus of the second chapter. God does what He does, not begrudgingly or under external constraint as though He were boxed in or trapped by some unforeseen or unplanned situation. On the contrary, because He is complete and exuberantly happy in the fellowship of the Trinity, all He does is free and uncoerced. His deeds are the overflow of His joy. This is what it means when Scripture says that God acts according to the “good pleasure” of His Will, in Ephesians 1:5. It means that nothing outside God’s own pleasure—the pleasure He has in Himself—has constrained His choices and His deeds. More about all God does tomorrow
