Revelation 17:14
These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them:
for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings;
and they also shall overcome that are with Him, called and chosen and faithful.
Matthew 20:16
So the last shall be first, and the first last:
for many are called, but few chosen.
Matthew 22:14
For many are called, but few chosen.
Hebrews 11:24–27
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter;
choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;
accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he looked unto the recompense of reward.
By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing Him Who is invisible.
Dear Heavenly Father, we gather here in the name of Thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We do come to Thee with a spirit of worship. We ask Thee, Lord, that Thou wilt speak to our hearts through Thy Word; that Thy Word will truly become life and spirit to us; that Thou mayest get what Thou dost desire from Thy people tonight. To Thee be the glory. In the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Last night, we began this series of messages, and it is based upon Revelation 17:14. We know that this verse describes the last battle of this age. It is the battle of Armageddon. It is a battle between the Lamb and those who follow Him, and the beast and his followers.
Now, our emphasis is not really on the battle. Our emphasis is on those who follow the Lamb in that last battle. We have to remember that this is the last battle of an age-long war. As a matter of fact, that war was already won two thousand years ago at Calvary.
There our Lord Jesus defeated Satan and the principalities and authorities in such a decisive victory that He routed them and made a public show of them. But even though the decisive battle was already won two thousand years ago, the war continued on. Today, we are still engaged in that war. But let us remember: it is just small skirmishes.
The reason why the Lord allows the war to go on is because He wants to teach us how to walk. He wants to test our faithfulness. He wants us to be prepared for that last battle, that we may be qualified to be in that army of the Lord.
Those who have part in that last battle, the consummation of that age-long war, are those who are the called, the chosen, and faithful. So our burden for this time is that we may be among those who are the called, the chosen, and the faithful.
Last night we considered together the called. We mentioned at the very outset that God never asks for volunteers, because if He should ask for volunteers, no one is fit to volunteer. Everything has to begin with God Himself. He calls.
He calls us by His glory and virtue. He calls us by His glory. In other words, when He calls us, it does not depend upon our need; it depends upon His glory. When He calls, He will never be satisfied until He Himself is satisfied, because that is what glory means. Glory is what God is. Glory is God Himself satisfied.
So, brothers and sisters, we who are the called of God must remember that it is a tremendous calling, because it is a call not according to what we are, but according to what He is. We are called by His virtue. In other words, we have no virtue, but He has all the virtue. He has made all the preparation for us. Virtue means what the Lord Himself has done for us.
Paul said that God set him apart even from his mother’s womb and called him through His grace. We are all called by the grace of God. We are unworthy; we do not deserve it. But thank God that He called us by His grace. His grace is amazing grace. His grace is universal. His grace is free.
We are called according to His purpose. We are called that we may become part of His purpose, that we may be participants in the eternal purpose of God.
He has called us out, and He has called us into. He has called us out of our sins, out of the world, out of the power of sin, out of our flesh, out of the self-life, out of darkness, and out of the kingdom of darkness—into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
We have been called out of many things. Sometimes we do not realize how many things we are called out of, and because we do not know that, probably we are still in them. To put it simply, everything that is not of God, God has called us out of.
Then He has called us into Christ, our righteousness; into the light of life; into eternal life, resurrection life; to be the children of God; into the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ; to be the Body of Christ; and into His eternal purpose.
So we must remember that by the grace of God, we are the called—not because of what we are, not because we deserve that calling. It all begins with God. He calls us by His grace, and we do thank God that we are the called of God.
Now this evening we would like to continue with the second thing, and that is: chosen. Not only the called, but also the chosen.
The word chosen, standing by itself—that is to say, not within the context of Revelation 17:14—means something like this: “We are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4).
In other words, calling is now; chosen is eternal. When God’s call comes to us, it is now. But let us remember that even in eternity past, before the foundation of the world, before God laid the foundation of the world—before time began—God had already chosen us in Christ Jesus.
This matter of divine election is God’s prerogative. It is not something for us to argue; it is something for us to worship. Brothers and sisters, even before the foundation of the world, God sovereignly chose us in Christ Jesus.
In Romans 9, the Apostle Paul deals with this matter of divine election. God says to Moses:
I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.
Therefore, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy. Now, that is divine election. To put it simply, divine election or choice does not depend on us at all. It does not depend on the one who wills. You may will whatever you want to, but it will not happen. It does not depend upon the one who runs. You may run very fast, but you will never reach there. It solely depends upon the God Who shows mercy.
How does He show mercy? He says, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy.” In other words, you cannot tell Him to show mercy to this one or that one. God says, “It is up to Me.” If I want to show mercy, I will do it. If I do not do it, nobody can make Me do it. Now, that is sovereignty. That is God. God is sovereign. Therefore, He need not answer to anybody; He only answers to Himself. He will do whatever He pleases, according to the good pleasure of His will.
He has chosen us in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world.
People would like to argue with Him, so in Romans 9 God gives us illustrations. Even though the two boys were still in their mother’s womb—they had never spent a day on earth—God said, “The elder shall serve the younger.” Why? Because God said, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
We may say that this is very unreasonable. Why? Because these two boys had never lived a day. They had not proved who was the better one. Yet God said, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” Now, that is sovereignty.
If you want to argue more, God says, “All right, I will give you another illustration.” Look at Israel. I raised up Israel to be a vessel of mercy, but I raised up Pharaoh to be a vessel of wrath. How can you explain that? Divine election, or divine choice, is God’s prerogative. We cannot argue it. The only thing we can do is bow down and worship.
Thank God, somehow in His sovereignty, He has chosen us. We cannot explain why, but it happened.
I think the best illustration was used by D. L. Moody. D. L. Moody was a great evangelist, and in teaching the gospel, of course, he met many problems in this area.
What D. L. Moody used to say was this: When you hear the gospel, what is the gospel of Jesus Christ? The gospel says, “Whosoever will.” Whosoever will can come. Whosoever will, let him come and drink the water of life. “Whosoever” includes whoever you think you are.
If God should say, “Mike Graham may come,” then probably in this world there is only one Mike Graham—or perhaps there may be two with the same name—but all the rest would be excluded. But when God says, “Whosoever,” well, if you think that is you, it is you—unless you reject it. Because whosoever will, if you will, you can come.
And he said, when you come, you enter through the gates of the gospel. After you enter in, you look back, and behind the door you find: “Blessed are you who are chosen by God.”
Now, brothers and sisters, we do praise and thank God. We did look back, and we find that we are the chosen of God. God has chosen us, with no reason in ourselves. Now, He has a reason. Of course, God always has a reason, but we do not know what that reason is, and we do not need to know. We thank God that we are the chosen. That is divine election.
God chose the nation of Israel as His chosen people. If we read the Old Testament, we find again and again this term: “My people, My chosen ones.” Why did God choose the children of Israel? It was His divine prerogative—not because the children of Israel were better than anybody else. It was because God chose them.
Again and again, God had to remind them, “Do not think that because you are more in number than the other nations you are chosen. As a matter of fact, you are the fewest among the nations. But it is because I love you that I chose you. It is up to Me.” Therefore, they should not have been proud.
Unfortunately, the children of Israel became very proud of themselves. They thought they were better than anybody else. But actually, they were no better. It was God Who had chosen them, and they should have humbled themselves before the Lord and loved the Lord because they had been chosen.
The same thing is true with us today. The church today is a chosen race. God has chosen us out of every nation, every tribe, and every tongue. He has made us a chosen race, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation. Why did He choose us? That we may declare the excellencies of Him Who called us out of darkness into His marvellous light.
There is nothing for us to boast of. As a matter of fact, if we are the chosen, it should humble us.
If we read 1 Corinthians 1, we find that God has chosen the weak things in order to confound the strong. God has chosen the foolish things in order to confound the wise. God has chosen those who are ignoble, the despised, and the things that are nothing.
Brothers and sisters, that is what we are. The only thing we can understand as to why God has chosen us is because we are foolish, weak, despised, and nothing. If anybody thinks that he is wise, strong, or somebody, he disqualifies himself from being chosen.
So, dear brothers and sisters, knowing that we are the chosen of God should really humble us. It should also encourage us to love Him more and to obey Him more.
Now, that is not what I am going to share this evening. But I think I have to lay that foundation; otherwise, you may think that I am rather unbalanced.
I said at the very beginning that chosen, standing by itself, is what it is. God has chosen us before the foundation of the world. Personally, the more I live and follow the Lord, the more grateful I am for divine election.
Some people think that it is a horrible doctrine, a horrible truth. But to me, it is the most comforting truth, because I begin to see that it is all up to Him. It really does not depend on me. There is nothing more comforting, more strengthening, than to know that He has chosen you in Christ Jesus, that we may be holy and blameless before Him in love.
But when this matter of being chosen is connected with something else—especially when we come to Revelation 17:14—we find that it is “the called and chosen.” It is not “the chosen and called.”
Time-wise, we would say it is the chosen and then the called, because God chose us before the foundation of the world, and then in time He calls us by His grace. That should be the order. But here we find that the Holy Spirit reverses that order. He says, “the called, and then the chosen.” When these two things are put in that order, we know that there is something else there.
Many are called, but few are chosen.
There is something more than being chosen before the foundation of the world. There is something in this matter of being chosen in which we are greatly involved.
Our Lord Jesus, in Matthew 20, told us a parable. If you read Matthew 19, you know the background of that parable. A young man came to the Lord Jesus seeking eternal life. He was in real earnest. He was a good young man, very moral, and he came before the Lord and said, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
Our Lord Jesus said, “Why callest thou Me good? There is none good but One, even God.” The young man thought he was good, but not good enough. The Lord asked him about the commandments, and He told him about the second table of the commandments. The young man said, “All these things have I observed from my youth.”
The Lord looked at him and loved him. The Lord said, “If thou wouldest be perfect, sell everything, come, and follow Me.”
This young man was very rich. He would not let go of his riches. The Lord knew that this was the hindrance standing before his coming to follow the Lord. The Lord really wanted him to come and follow Him, but unless he got rid of his riches, he would not be able to come and follow. The young man went away sorrowful.
Our Lord Jesus said, “It is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” When the disciples heard that, they were horrified. They thought the rich could enter the kingdom more easily than the poor. If the rich could not get in, who could get in?
The Lord Jesus said, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” Then Peter came and said, “Lord, we have forsaken all, and followed Thee. What then shall we have?” It was in answer to that that our Lord Jesus told this parable.
The parable is about a householder who had a vineyard. Early in the morning, he went out to hire laborers. There were laborers standing there waiting to be hired, and they bargained. They settled upon a wage of one denarius a day—a day’s wage. So they went into his vineyard and began to work.
At the third hour, about nine o’clock in the morning, the householder went out again and saw people still standing there. He needed more workers, so he said, “Go into my vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you.” So they went into the vineyard.
At the sixth hour, noon, he hired more people. At the ninth hour, three o’clock in the afternoon, he hired more. Then at five o’clock, the eleventh hour—only one hour before the end of the day—he still saw people standing idle. He asked, “Why stand ye here all the day idle?” They said, “Because no man hath hired us.” He said, “Go ye also into the vineyard.” They worked for one hour.
At six o’clock, the owner told his steward, “Call the laborers, and pay them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.” Those who had worked one hour received a denarius—a day’s wage.
Then those who had come earlier—at three o’clock, noon, nine o’clock, and especially those who came early in the morning and bore the heat of the day—also received a denarius. Of course, they murmured. They said, “That is unfair. We worked the whole day, but these people worked one hour. Why do You give them a denarius? We should have more.”
The owner said, “Did we not bargain for a denarius? You got what you asked for, so go. Do not feel unhappy because I am more generous to those who only worked one hour. If I want to give them this wage, it is up to Me.”
In concluding the parable, the Lord said:
So the last shall be first, and the first last:
for many are called, but few chosen.
Do we understand what it means? Here we find that all these people were called into the vineyard. In Scripture, the vineyard speaks of work—God’s work and service. We are all called into God’s service.
Brothers and sisters, do not think that only a few serve God. As a matter of fact, all God’s children are called into His vineyard. We are all God’s servants. When God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt, He said, “Let My people go, that they may serve Me.”
In other words, we are freed not to live for or serve ourselves. We are freed to serve God, to serve His purpose. So, in a sense, we are all involved in God’s work and in His service.
But you see a difference. Some people, when they enter into the vineyard, bargain for a price. In other words, they are working for God, but actually they are working for themselves. They work for their own gain.
God, in His mercy, will give you what you deserve to have. But then you find the last ones who came in. The householder never told them what He would give them—whether He would give them anything or not. These people came in and worked for the householder. They did not work for themselves. There was no bargain.
They simply came because the householder said, “Come and work,” and they came and worked. It is serving the Lord Himself, not serving for the Lord’s wages. Now, that is the difference.
In God’s vineyard, many are called. We are called into God’s service. But many are called; few are chosen. The chosen ones are those who really work for the Lord and not for themselves. Outwardly, they are all working for the Lord, but in reality there is a difference.
Then, in Matthew 22, the Lord used another parable, and He concluded it with the same conclusion. It is the parable of a wedding feast. A king prepared a wedding feast for his son. His son was going to be married, and he invited guests to come.
When the time of the feast arrived, he sent his servants to ask the guests whom he had invited to come to the feast. But they all had excuses. They would not come. They were invited, but they did not come.
Not only that, they even beat and killed the messengers. Finally, the king said, “These people are not worthy to attain My son’s wedding feast, and these murderers must be judged.” Then he sent his servants into the highways and byways, the hedges, and everywhere, to bring people in and fill the hall.
Then the king came in to look around, and he saw one man without a wedding garment. He said, “Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?” Now, we might say, “These people came from the street. Where would they have a wedding garment?” But the man was speechless.
The king said, “Bind him hand and foot, and cast him out into the outer darkness,” because he was not worthy of the feast. The Lord concluded by saying, “Many are called, but few are chosen.”
Do we understand this parable? Sometimes we use this parable in preaching the gospel, and we can use it. But actually, you find that this is at the very center of the gospel message. What is the gospel? The gospel is that God is preparing a wedding feast for His Son.
Now, where is the bride? Nowhere in this parable do you see the bride. You see only those who come to attend the wedding feast. But that is where the mystery is. Individually, you are those who are invited to the wedding feast; corporately, you are the bride.
It is just like Matthew 25, where you find the ten virgins: the five foolish and the five wise. Where is the bride? The wise enter into the marriage feast, and the foolish are barred from it. Individually, we are virgins; corporately, we are the bride.
This is really the center of the gospel. God is calling people to come to the wedding feast. If they respond to that call and come to the wedding feast, they will find that they are the bride of the Son of God.
But many are called; many are invited. The invitation is universal, but they do not come. They despise the King. They despise the occasion, because the Son is not precious in their eyes. They do not want to have any part with the Son.
Thank God, those who are really nothing—the people in the byways and highways and hedges—by His grace, we are brought in.
In the early days, when a king had a feast, especially a wedding feast, he prepared wedding garments for all the guests. That was the custom in those days. If you were invited to the feast, when you came in, you put on the garment that he had prepared for the guests. That made you fit to sit at the feast.
Here was a man who came, but he thought his garment was good enough. He did not see the reason to put on the garment that the king had provided for the occasion. Because of this, he was cast out.
When you connect this with Revelation 19, you see that the marriage supper of the Lamb has come. Who are those who are invited, and who is the bride? The bride has made herself ready, and it was granted unto her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
Brothers and sisters, we have to wear a number of garments. When we come to the Lord Jesus and accept Him as our Saviour, God puts upon us the best robe. The prodigal son came back, and he had to be clothed with the best robe, because without the best robe he could not sit at the table. It speaks of Christ, our righteousness.
When we come to God, the first thing He does is take away our filthy rags, because our righteousnesses are all as filthy rags. Instead, He puts on us Christ as our righteousness. That is the best robe, and we all have that robe. But we need more than that.
Not only do we need Christ as our righteousness, which gives us our standing before God; in our daily life, the Holy Spirit is weaving a garment of embroidery into our lives.
In Psalm 45, the queen is ready. She is dressed with a garment of wrought gold, and over the garment of wrought gold there is raiment of embroidery. Now, that is the wedding garment.
The garment of wrought gold speaks of Christ as our righteousness. The raiment of embroidery speaks of the righteous acts of the saints.
We have no righteousness of our own. That righteousness has been taken off, and we are clothed with Christ as our righteousness. That gives us our standing before God. But that is not enough to go to the wedding feast.
To be merely saved is not enough to attend the wedding feast. In your daily life, you must allow God to put upon you the wedding garment, and that is the righteousness of the saints.
What does it mean? It means that day by day the Holy Spirit will stitch and weave Christ—His character—into your life. That is transformation: to conform you to the image of His beloved Son. That, of course, makes you fit to be His bride.
Whoever thinks that because he is saved he has every right to attend that wedding feast may find a surprise waiting for him. You have to be fit to be His counterpart. To be the bride of the Son of God, you have to have His character and His life developed, incorporated, and inwrought—woven by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is a divine weaver with such patience. Embroidery is very patient work, and how patient He is in weaving Christ into our lives.
The wedding garment which these guests put on is the wedding garment of the bride—the same garment. Corporately, we are the bride; individually, we are the guests, or the wise virgins.
Many are called, but few are chosen.
Here you find that this matter of being chosen has something to do with our response to God’s grace. The call is universal, but the chosen is specific. The call is unconditional, but the chosen here is conditional. Now, that is conditional.
Thank God, we are called by His grace. But, brothers and sisters, whether we are the chosen is in question.
Let us use Moses as an illustration. Of course, even before Moses was born, God had already chosen him. There is no problem with that.
Moses was born in the worst of times. He was born to die. He was born with the sentence of death upon him. When he was born, Pharaoh had already issued a royal decree that every male child of the children of Israel must be cast into the river and drowned. Moses was born under the sentence of death.
But he was chosen by God even before the foundation of the world. In God’s sovereign hand, God kept him, and he was raised in the palace of Egypt.
We must remember that Egypt at that time was the greatest empire in the world—most civilized and cultured. Moses was brought up in the palace.
As he grew up, he knew in his heart. Evidently, when his mother was nursing him, she must have imparted to that young child a sense of destiny: “God has preserved you in a miraculous way with a purpose. Do not forget that purpose.”
From his childhood, he understood. When he grew up in the palace and learned all the learning of Egypt, that inward sense grew with him. He realized that God had preserved his life for a reason and with a purpose: to deliver his brethren.
But when he was forty years old, he had to make a choice. He could choose to continue to live in the palace and enjoy all the luxuries of Egypt. It was all within his reach.
We are told by secular history that Moses, at that time, was a great general in Egypt. He had the possibility of becoming Pharaoh himself, succeeding to the throne.
Moses, when he was forty, had to make a choice: whether he would continue to be the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, eventually inherit the throne, and enjoy all the pleasures of Egypt; or whether he would choose to identify himself with the children of Israel in bondage as slaves.
It was a very difficult choice. If he chose to remain the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, he was called, but he would never fulfill God’s purpose. But if he chose to be with the people of God, he would suffer, yet he would fulfill God’s calling.
Now, brothers and sisters, here you find a tremendous choice. God has chosen you, but have you chosen Him?
He has chosen you with a purpose. But if you do not choose Him in your lifetime, you will not fulfill that purpose. This is where the chosen comes in. If you choose Him, then you are the chosen.
Moses chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the temporary pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. What a choice!
Do you know why he could make that choice? He saw the invisible One. That is why.
It was not a matter of weighing these two things and finally making a choice. Nobody can weigh these two things and make that choice. If you weigh them, everyone will choose the pleasure of sin and the riches of Egypt—not the reproach of Christ, and not the suffering of God’s people. Nobody is foolish enough to make that kind of choice.
But Moses made the right choice. Why? He saw the invisible One. In his spirit, we may say, he saw Christ.
Brothers and sisters, he said that he would rather have the reproach of Christ. He saw Christ, just like Abraham. Abraham saw the day of Christ, and that gave him faith to continue on. Moses saw the invisible.
Our problem is not that we do not know. In a sense, we do know. But we do not see. That is our problem. We do not see Christ. We do not see Him.
If we really see Him, brothers and sisters, what are the riches of Egypt? They are nothing. The thing is, you have to see the invisible One.
Oh, that God will allow us to see His Christ. If in our spirit we really see Him, then we will find that even the reproach of Christ is better than the riches of Egypt—not to speak of the glory of Christ.
That makes all the difference. Because Moses chose God, he was chosen by God to fulfill God’s purpose in this life.
The same thing is true with Paul. God had chosen him and set him apart even from his mother’s womb, though he did not know it.
Then, on the road to Damascus, God called him by His grace. But here you find that God chose him to be an apostle. Why? Because God considered him faithful.
In other words, he had made a choice too. Brothers and sisters, in our lifetime, sooner or later—and it is better if it comes early in your Christian life—you must come to a crisis. You must come to a point where you make a choice, and you choose God rather than the world.
If you make that choice, then, thank God, you are the chosen. He will use you to fulfill the calling into which He has called you.
That is Romans 12. In Romans 12, the Apostle Paul says:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual service.
After we have received all the mercies of God that we see in Romans 1 through 11—what compassion, what mercy, what grace, what love God has poured upon us—what should happen? After we have received all of this, the Lord says, “Now, you need to make a choice.”
Present your bodies as a living sacrifice. After you receive all the mercies of God, those mercies come upon you with a reason and with a purpose. But for that purpose to be fulfilled, you have to present your body as a living sacrifice to God.
You can receive all these mercies of God and still keep your body for yourself—that is, you can live for yourself. You can do that. But that is unreasonable.
If you are reasonable, or if you are spiritual, then what you need to do is present your body as a living sacrifice. That is to say, you choose God.
A living sacrifice does not mean that you do anything for God. A living sacrifice means that you are at His disposal. You allow Him to do anything He wants to do, and as much as He wants to do, in your life.
That choice has to be made. That is why we often say that consecration is the first spiritual experience.
After we are saved, the first spiritual experience is consecration. If that is not done, you have not started your spiritual journey.
To be chosen, you have to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Then you find your mind will be renewed, and you will begin to appreciate the perfect will of God. Otherwise, you will love the world, and you will be afraid of God’s will.
We can illustrate this from Scripture in many ways. For instance, when God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt and brought them to Sinai, there at Mount Sinai He declared the reason why He had delivered them.
Sometimes we are saved, but we do not know why God saved us. We may think that He saved us because He wanted us to be free. But that is not good enough.
The children of Israel were delivered out of slavery. They were free people, and probably they would say, “Thank God, we are free. Now we can do whatever we want to do.”
So, at Mount Sinai, God declared to them why He had delivered them. He said, “I want to make you a kingdom of priests.” You are saved to serve Me.
The whole life of a priest is not for himself. He does not have any inheritance among the tribes of Israel, because God is his portion. He serves God throughout his life. God is his only life.
Israel was to be a nation of priests: the old and the young, men and women—the whole nation was to be unto God a priesthood. But unfortunately, they worshipped the golden calf, and the whole nation was disqualified.
Many were called, but it seemed that none was chosen. But thank God, some were chosen. How? Moses stood at the entrance of the camp, because the camp was defiled. God was no longer in the camp.
From that time, Moses moved the tent outside the camp because the camp was defiled. He stood at the entrance of the camp and said, “Who is on the Lord’s side?” The tribe of Levi came out.
The tribe of Levi was as guilty as the other tribes. They were also disqualified with the other tribes. But here you find that they chose God.
They chose God in spite of themselves. They went into the camp and killed whoever they met. In a spiritual sense, it means that they denied themselves, took up their cross, and followed the Lord. In doing that, they were chosen to be priests.
There is a reason for it. Many are called, but few are chosen.
Even so, you find that God, in His desire for us to fulfill that purpose, opened a door. That door is in Numbers 6.
All the children of Israel were disqualified from being priests to serve God—only the tribe of Levi and the house of Aaron could serve in that way. But still, thank God, there were some whose spirits were moved by God’s love, and they wanted very much to serve God.
How could they do it? They could take a Nazarite vow. That is the open door. Everybody could do it—man or woman, everyone could do it.
If you were constrained by the love of Christ and wanted to devote yourself to God, you could take a Nazarite vow for a month, for a year, or for life. A Nazarite vow has a time factor. During that period, you live for God. You do not live for yourself anymore.
Like Samuel, you could be a Nazarite for life. In taking the Nazarite vow, you entered into service. The regulations that governed the Nazarite vow were the same regulations that governed the high priest. You could not touch a dead body, and so forth. It was the regulation of those who served God.
It shows how much God desires that we, who were chosen before the foundation of the world and called by His grace, may fulfill our calling. If only we choose Him, we will be the chosen.
Again, in Deuteronomy 15, if a Hebrew became poor and sold himself to another Hebrew, he would serve his master six years. After six years, he could go free.
But if that slave said, “I love my master. I do not want to go out free,” they would take him to the doorpost and pierce his ear. With that mark, he became a love-slave for life.
You can serve by obligation, or you can serve with love.
Every instance in the book of Judges—Gideon and the three hundred—illustrates this. Thirty-two thousand gathered with Gideon to fight against the Midianites. But God said, “I cannot deliver the children of Israel with that kind of people, because they may think that they did it.”
So Gideon said, “Whoever has fear in his heart, you may return.” Twenty-two thousand left, and only ten thousand remained. God said, “That is still too many. Go to the river and see how they drink water.”
Some knelt down to drink, and others put the water in their hands and drank. Only three hundred did it that way. In other words, they were in wartime, and they were alert. If you kneel down drinking and the enemy comes, you are finished. But if you take the water in your hands, you are prepared all the time, ready all the time.
These three hundred were used by God. They were the chosen ones.
So, brothers and sisters, thank God we are the called. That is unconditional. But are we the chosen? God has chosen you, but have you chosen Him?
On the basis of your response to Him, you will become the chosen one.
Here again, we need to be before the Lord and let His love constrain us, so that we may really choose Him instead of choosing anything else.
When you do that, you are the chosen ones. You will be the people whom God can use to fulfill His purpose.
Dear Heavenly Father, we do want to thank and praise Thee because Thou hast chosen us in Christ Jesus, even before the foundation of the world, that we may be holy and without blame before Thee in love.
We thank Thee that Thou hast chosen us, but now Thou art calling us to choose Thee. Lord, we ask that Thou wilt speak to each one of us. If we have not chosen Thee, Lord, use Thy love to constrain us, that we may really present our bodies a living sacrifice and allow Thee to work out Thy purpose in our lives.
Lord, we pray that none of us here will one day find ourselves not among those who are the called, the chosen, and the faithful. We just look to Thee for Thy mercy upon us. In the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.