“For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord’.”
To be sovereign is to be supreme in power; superior in position to all others.
In reference to the sovereignty of God, Thiessen determines, “The sovereignty of God is not an attribute, but a prerogative of God arising out of the perfections of His nature”.
In other words, God is sovereign in choice and action, and is not bound by some rules of office, heavenly policy manual, or church tradition and dogma. His sovereignty, says Thiessen, arises out of the perfections of His nature. That is, God makes His own decisions and they are perfect and righteous decisions, always.
This sovereignty is expressed best by God Himself in Exodus 33, where He agrees to show Himself to His friend, Moses, and declares, “…I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.”
As sinful men, we try to put all of God’s ducks in a row for Him. “Well, the Bible says not to do this, and to do that, and this is what an evil man looks like, and this is what a righteous man looks like, and so, staying true to Himself, God must punish this one and show mercy to this one, and bless this one, and withhold blessing from that one.”
Then all of a sudden God pours out mercy on the undeserving, and we jump back in shock crying ‘unfair! unfair!’
But God says, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.”
In His sovereignty, He can supercede the Law without violating it, because He is not the Law and He is not bound by the Law. He wrote the Law. Jesus demonstrated His preeminence over the Law when He said repeatedly, “You have heard that is was said…” and then quoting one of the ten commandments, then following it with, “…but I say to you…” and superceding the Law with His own words.
So although the decree of God is that the one who sins shall die, in His sovereignty He holds that Law in abeyance until the proper time, and then sends His anointed One to pay the penalty for all, so that out of His will to show compassion and mercy, the dead can now live.
Let’s take this to the Corinthian church now and see how God’s sovereign will was working in their lives, and also in ours.
GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY IN CALLING
Romans 8:28-30 Luke 10:21,22
Let’s look back briefly at the first half of this chapter in I Corinthians and remind ourselves of the manner in which Paul has been addressing his readers. He has said in verse 4 that he thanks God always concerning them, because of the grace of God he has witnessed being extended to them through the giving of knowledge and the exercise of the spiritual gifts among them, and for their obvious eagerness to see the revelation of Jesus Christ.
That would be a reference to the very thing we eagerly await; His return.
The true church of Jesus Christ has eagerly awaited His return ever since the apostles stood on the Mount of Olives and watched Him ascend out of their sight.
From that day onward, the heart’s cry of every true believer in Him has been, “Come, Lord Jesus, Come!”
Yet while we know that He could call His church to Him at any moment, our charge is to continue the work as though He will not come for many years.
When I was in Bible College we were in a class on Eschatology, which is just a fancy word for the study of the last days.
One student, in the course of class discussion, asked our Professor what he would do if he could have it on good authority that Jesus was coming back tomorrow.
Without pause the teacher said, “I’d plant a tree”. The class grew silent as we all had to let his meaning sink in. He was saying that the calling of the Christian is not to stand and sky-gaze, waiting for Jesus to break through the clouds; but to go about the work of ministry as though the salvation of future generations depends upon his proclamation of the good news.
Lest I get too far off our track I have to leave you to your own thoughts on that.
So here, in the Corinthian church we have a congregation of relatively new believers who have been richly blessed. God has poured out His grace on them and they have witnessed among their own number the exercise of spiritual gifts, as is alluded to in verse 7. This points back to what I was saying about working while waiting.
The gifts of the Spirit empowering the believer for ministry and kingdom building are to be exercised diligently and faithfully as good stewards of the grace of God, even while eagerly awaiting that future grace we all long for.
Therefore, in one sentence Paul mentions the fact that by the confirmation of the gospel in them, they are endued with the necessary talents for ministry, while their incentive for diligence is the imminent return of their Savior.
But there is a problem to address. There seems to be a sort of epidemic of pride creeping in and causing division. So let’s take careful note before we move too fast, that God uses, sometimes in very powerful ways, people who are fallible.
It seems to me that often in the church we witness the rejection and removal of spiritually talented people from ministry, simply because a group or even an influential individual in the assembly have discovered that person’s human frailty and used it in a power play to gain control.
People of God, if a man in ministry is being faithful to his calling, and there is evidence of spiritual fruit in his life and work indicating that God is using him, please be very careful to not dismiss him too easily if fault is found in him.
Admonish him according to scriptural instruction if you must, and pray for him, and love him to healing and wholeness if he’ll let you; but don’t tear down what God is building up.
These Corinthian believers had fallen into the trap of looking at the flesh and wanting the prestige of being seen as attached to their favorite hero.
This goes on today and I won’t spend a lot of time on that issue. We all see it and you all know what I mean. It wouldn’t be proper for me to start listing names, but we all know that when a man rises in the public eye as a result of his success in ministry or his charisma mixed with oratory genius, he will very quickly be surrounded by those who want to be known as a part of that ministry. “I am of ______” You fill in the blank.
Well, Paul goes on to exhort them not to let themselves be drawn away from the simple proclamation of the gospel, because therein is God’s power and wisdom to save.
This finally brings us to verse 26, where he says “For consider your calling brethren…”
So they are called. And don’t let it escape your notice that this letter is not addressed to any of those aforementioned leaders. The great guys. He didn’t address this letter to Apollos or Cephas or any other prominent name. It is to the congregation of believers in Corinth, and they have a calling.
In His sovereignty, God has called these often immature, frail, failure prone believers, to bring glory to His name.
“Are you getting puffed up about being identified with some man?” Paul seems to be asking, “Everyone trying to be eloquent in speech, arguing the philosophical pinpoints of doctrines you hardly know and wanting to look wise and learned and important? Well, take a look around, at yourself and those around you. You ain’t much!”
That’s what you need to keep in mind, because as soon as you begin thinking you are something, you cease to be useful to your calling!
How many churches and Christian service organizations have slowly turned from their calling and morphed into something worldly and ineffectual for the Kingdom, yes, even while still active and producing and growing and drawing followers, because the attention and acclaim poured out on the man or men in leadership got them thinking THEY were something and THEY did this?
God is sovereign. God calls. He has called you, fellow believers in Christ. What were you that he called you? Were you wise? Were you mighty? Were you noble?
No. None of you were. None of us.
Most of us were nothing in the world’s eyes anyway. But even those highly esteemed in the world’s eyes are neither wise, nor mighty nor noble in God’s.
“For what is man that Thou dost take thought of him?” (Ps 8:4a)
But in His sovereignty God takes us in our nothingness and gives us the highest calling. Why not the great men? Why not the clever and strong ones?
We’ll go on to talk about that now. But as we go, consider your calling. It is a simple one. Proclaim the gospel in its simplicity, remembering whom you serve, and go as one boasting only in this; “I am of Christ”.
GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY IN CHOOSING
II Thessalonians 2:13 Revelation 17:14
In II Thessalonians 2 Paul writes to them that God has chosen them from the beginning. The beginning of what? Of the church? No, it goes a bit further back from that.
The debate over free will vs. divine election continues to rage, and I have to tell you that I’m a little puzzled by it. Maybe I’ve missed something. Maybe I’m just too simple-minded to understand its depths, and that’s why in my thinking it’s a no-brainer… because I don’t have the brain to think it through as deeply as the scholars.
I really mean that. I’m not speaking from some false humility here, and I do not mean to sound sarcastic either. Perhaps I just don’t get something, and that’s why I don’t understand the need for the debate.
One side is called Calvinists, and the other, Armenians. I’m not going to give them time. They’ve had enough.
I simply find it very easy to accept that God, knowing all of eternity at once, and fully knowing all there is to know about all there is to know, made His plan and His choices accordingly. Is that hard?
Furthermore, I have no problem whatsoever, conceding that God, being the Sovereign of the universe and beyond (whatever is beyond), can make the choices He wants and no one can debate Him.
Is that too simple?
It’s difficult to find a human, worldly illustration for what I’m saying, but see if this helps.
If I have had contact with an individual over a period of many years, and I have never known him to be anything but an unrepentant thief, then when it comes to choosing who I will hire to guard my valuables, it will not be him.
If I have known another man for many years, and he has proven himself time and again to be honest and noble and courageous; a gentleman and a true friend in good times and bad, then when it comes to needing to trust someone with the temporary care of my very children, he will probably be my first choice.
Now I’m not now saying that I think God chose us according to our merit or lack thereof. The simple point I want to make with those illustrations is that if God knew from eternity past, eternity future and all in between, and He had perfect knowledge of every individual who would ever be born and all of the choices they would make, then it wouldn’t make sense that His plan would include those whom He knew would reject Him forever.
Yet Paul told the Ephesians (1:4) that they were chosen by God in Christ from before the foundation of the world.
So here’s the whole picture as I understand it. None of us had His knowledge of these things, not even concerning ourselves. So the responsibility was on us, when we were shown the truth, to make our own decision to believe and be saved, or reject and go our own way. Therefore, God is perfectly right in holding us accountable for sin, and He is perfectly right in considering us responsible and holding us accountable for our choice to believe the gospel or not.
At the same time, He already knew what we did not, so when an individual hears God’s call and responds in faith, he enters, by the regenerating power and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, into the plan that God has already established for his life.
Does he somehow thwart that plan by rejecting God? How could he, if God already knew he would reject Him?
We don’t catch God off guard, folks. No one has ever made Him bat his eyelids in astonishment.
Ok, so let this sink in. God chose, deliberately, in His wisdom, what the world calls ‘nothing’, so that the glory would all be His, and uses the nothing to shame the something.
Therefore, in God’s economy, you are something. You are extremely special to Him. You need to hear that.
Listen again. God is sovereign, and His decisions and choices arise out of the perfection of His nature. So if He can do no wrong, and make no wrong choices, but all that He thinks and plans and does is perfect, then He made the perfect choice when He chose you. He made a perfect plan for you, and no one can call Him on it, not even you, because He is sovereign.
Can you deny yourself blessing by disobedience? Can you put a wall between yourself and fellowship with God in the Spirit through sin? Yes, you can.
But He knew about all of that also. And He can put you back on track with His plan when you repent of your sin and disobedience and step back into the shelter of His grace.
Well, He called you and chose you according to His perfect nature and by His sovereign will. That’s encouraging, to say the least. But there is security included in the package.
He is able to preserve whom He has called and chosen, because He has placed you in the most secure position of all.
GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY IN PRESERVING
Col 1:17 Heb 1:3
Let’s talk some about God’s power to preserve. In Colossians 1:17 Paul said, “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together”. Then in Hebrews 1 we see that He, being Christ, upholds all things by the word of His power.
I’ve shared with you in the past concerning my scripture-based theory on the end of this world. Taking into consideration these passages I’ve just mentioned from Colossians and Hebrews, and then going to II Peter 3:10-12 where Peter says the “…elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and it’s works will be burned up…”, and then considering modern science’s claim that some mysterious ‘superglue’ holds together every atom, which, according to laws of physics should fly apart rather than staying together, my theory is that in the end Christ will simply remove the word of His power from every atom, and the universe will literally become one immense atomic bomb. Then He will create His new heavens and new Earth, where righteousness dwells.
Here is the application to our text. In His sovereignty, God has called us and chosen us, then secured us in Christ Jesus. He preserves us there, in a place where nothing can touch us or take us away.
Paul says, “But by His doing…” By His doing, we are in Christ Jesus.
Who preserves us in Christ? Listen to Nehemiah 9:6
“Thou alone art the Lord. Thou hast made the heavens, the heaven of heavens with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. Thou dost give life to all of them and the heavenly host bows down before Thee.”
This describes the sovereign God, irresistible, unchangeable, incorruptible, and in the perfection of His nature He calls you, chooses you, preserves you in Christ; and for what?
To justify you, sanctify you, and glorify you. It’s here in our text.
“But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness (justification) and sanctification, and redemption (glorification).
When I was in the Air Force and stationed in Alexandria Virginia, my apartment was about a mile’s walk from the facility I was stationed in. It was a country road, bordered by beautiful New England forest on either side, and was over a rolling countryside. It was usually a peaceful walk home from work each day and helped me unwind from the day’s work.
Except for one day. As I walked along this quiet road a car came along, and right behind it, another car which was gaining rapidly. I looked behind me, reacting to the sound of the racing engine, and seeing that he was going to pass the first car, I moved off the side of the roadway to give him room.
After passing, the second car came to a screeching halt in front of the first car forcing him to stop. Four guys in their 20’s jumped out of the second vehicle and surrounded the one they had forced to stop. I then noticed that there was a guy in the driver’s seat, a girl passenger, and at least two people in the rear seat.
One of the men from the second car walked back and started punching the driver of the stopped car, and then lifted his leg and kicked the man through the open window.
Well, I would have loved to help, but I would have been defenseless against four very angry guys, and it was over in just a few seconds anyway. The one who was doing the pounding turned and saw me watching. I was still in my military uniform, and in anger he said, “What are you looking at, fly-boy? You gonna do something about it?” I wisely kept my mouth shut. “You ain’t nuthin’!” he shouted. “You ain’t nuthin’!”
I didn’t feel at all insulted, since I wasn’t really concerned with what this guy’s opinion of me was, one way or the other. I was only concerned that the kid in the car was ok.
He seemed to be, and as quickly as it had all started, everyone piled back into their vehicles and drove away, and I was left to continue my walk home, alone.
Well, the world, at its worst, is often like that isn’t it? Aren’t we told in very many ways, some subtle and some not, that we’re nuthin’?
I remember thinking that if that guy thought I was nuthin’ and he was sumpthin’, I’d rather be nuthin’.
But God, in His wisdom, chose the simple, base, weak, despised, and put us in Christ Jesus, so that as eternity rolls all the glory will go to Him as we sing His praises for making us something.
BOASTING IN HIS SOVEREIGNTY
Jeremiah 9:23,24
“But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.”
It’s time we did some righteous boasting, friends. We have been preserved safely in the bosom of the sovereign God who, as the One who is perfect in nature and cannot err, called us, chose us, preserves us.
There is a new song out that you may have heard by now, called, “You Raise Me Up”. It was written and first sung by Josh Groban, but now it’s getting popular so everyone is singing it.
The chorus goes like this:
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up: To more than I can be.
“…but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God.”
But you may boast in Him, believer. Jeremiah gave you permission to. You may rejoice openly that by His doing you have received the wisdom that leads to salvation and wisdom to understand Godly things. You may rejoice openly in your justification and your sanctification and your certain hope of future glorification, because He has made you more than you could be.
“But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world”. Galatians 6:14
Ever feel like ‘nuthin’? To God you’re ‘sumpthin’! And He never calls anything ‘sumpthin’, that He doesn’t go on to make it that way. “LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD”.
