These shall war against 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.
So the last shall be first, and the first last.
For many are called, but few chosen.
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, 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, on the one hand, and the beast and his followers, on the other.
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 called, chosen, and faithful. So our burden for this time is that we may be among those who are called, chosen, and 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, as we find in 2 Peter 1:3. 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 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; none of us deserves it. But thank God that He calls us by His grace—His 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.
Last night we mentioned a little about what that calling involves. 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 self, 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. 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 His 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 and 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.
This evening we would like to continue with the second matter, and that is: chosen. Not only the called, but also the chosen.
Now, the word chosen, when it stands by itself—that is to say, not within the context of Revelation 17:14—means something like this.
Ephesians 1:4 tells us that we are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
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 being chosen—this matter of divine election. There God said 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.
Put 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 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, “Show mercy to this one or to 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.
That is sovereignty. That is God. God is sovereign; therefore, He need not answer to anybody. He answers only to Himself, and He will do whatever He pleases—in other words, according to the good pleasure of His will. He has chosen us in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world.
People like to argue with God, so in Romans 9 He gives us illustrations. God says that even though the two boys were still in their mother’s womb, though 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 say, “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 further, 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?
In other words, 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.
D. L. Moody used a wonderful illustration. D. L. Moody was a great evangelist, and in teaching the gospel, of course, he encountered many problems in this area.
He used to say that when you hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel says, “Whosoever will.” Whosoever will can come. Whosoever will may come and drink the water of life. And “whosoever” includes whoever you think you are—that whosoever includes you.
If God had said that a particular person may come, perhaps only that person—and maybe someone else with the same name—could come, while all the rest would be excluded. But when God says, “Whosoever,” if you think that is you, then it is you, unless you reject it. Whosoever will may come.
Moody said that when you come, you enter through the gate of the gospel. After you enter in, you look back, and behind the door you find these words: “Blessed are you who are chosen by God.”
Brothers and sisters, we do praise and thank God. We look back and 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 that you are chosen.” As a matter of fact, they were among the fewest of the nations. But God said, “I love you. That is why I chose you.” It was up to Him. Therefore, they were not to feel proud about it.
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. They should have humbled themselves before the Lord and loved the Lord because they had been chosen.
The same is true of us today. The church 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.
Whom did God choose? If we read 1 Corinthians 1, we find that God chose the weak things in order to confound the strong. God chose the foolish things in order to confound the wise. God chose those who are ignoble, who are despised, who 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, encourage us to love Him more, and lead us 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, when it stands by itself, means that God chose us before the foundation of the world.
Personally, the more I live and the more I 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.
It is up to Him. There is nothing more comforting or 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 says, “called and chosen.” It does not say, “chosen and called.”
Time-wise, we would say it should be “chosen and then 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 the Holy Spirit reverses the order. He says, “called and chosen.”
When you see these two things placed in that order, you know there is something more. “Many are called, but few are chosen.”
There is something more than our being chosen before the foundation of the world. There is something here in this matter of being chosen in which we are greatly involved.
In Matthew 20, our Lord Jesus 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?”
You remember that 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. “Do you keep the commandments?” He said, “What commandments?” The Lord told him about the second table of the commandments, and he said, “All these things have I observed from my youth.”
The Lord looked at him and loved him. Then the Lord said, “If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow Me.”
This young man was very rich. He would not let go of his riches. The Lord knew that this was the hindrance preventing him from coming to follow the Lord. The Lord really wanted him to come and follow Him, but the Lord knew that unless he got rid of his riches, he would not be able to come and follow.
That 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 that 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 left all and followed Thee. What then shall we have?” It was in that setting that our Lord Jesus told this parable.
The parable concerns a householder who had a vineyard. Early in the morning, he went out to hire labourers. There were labourers standing there waiting to be hired. They bargained and settled on a wage: a denarius for the day. In those days, a denarius was a day’s wage. So they went into his vineyard and began to work.
At the third hour, that is, nine o’clock in the morning, the householder went out again and saw people still standing there. He needed more workers, so he told them, “Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you.” So they entered into the vineyard.
At the sixth hour, twelve o’clock, he went out and hired more people. At the ninth hour, three o’clock in the afternoon, he hired more people and told them, “Whatsoever is right, I will give you.”
At five o’clock, the eleventh hour, with only one hour remaining until 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.” So he said, “Go ye also into the vineyard.” They went in and worked for an hour.
After six o’clock, the owner told his steward, “Call the labourers, and pay them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.” Those who worked one hour received a denarius.
Then those who had come earlier—at three o’clock, twelve o’clock, and nine o’clock—and especially those who had come early in the morning and borne 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 only one hour. Why do You give them a denarius? Surely we should have more.”
The owner called them and said, “Did we not agree on a denarius? You have received what you agreed to receive. Take that which is thine, and go thy way. Do not be unhappy because I am generous to those who worked only one hour. If I want to give them the same, it is up to Me.”
In concluding the parable, the Lord said, “So the last shall be first, and the first last.” Now, do we understand what it means?
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 and handmaidens.
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 and to serve His purpose. In that sense, we are all involved in God’s work and 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 consider the last ones who came in. The householder never told them what he would give them, or even whether he would give them anything. These people simply came and worked for the householder. They did not work for themselves. There was no bargain.
They came because the householder said, “Come and work.” It was serving the Lord Himself, not serving for the Lord’s wages. That is the difference.
In God’s vineyard, many are called. We are called into God’s service. But many are called and few are chosen. The chosen ones are those who truly work for the Lord and not for themselves. Outwardly, all are working for the Lord, but in reality there is a difference.
In Matthew 22, the Lord used another parable, and He concluded it with the same conclusion. It is the parable of a wedding feast.
Here is a king who prepares a wedding feast for his son. His son is going to be married, and he invites guests to come.
When the time of the feast arrived, he sent his servants to call those who had been invited, but they all had excuses. They would not come. They were invited, but they did not come.
Not only that, but they even mistreated and killed the messengers. Finally, the king said that these people were not worthy of his son’s wedding feast, and these murderers had to be judged.
Then he sent servants to the byways, highways, and hedges—to everywhere—and told them to bring people in to fill the hall. So everybody came in, and the hall was filled.
Then comes the strangest thing. The king came in and looked around, and he saw one man without a wedding garment. He said, “Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?” 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 concludes by saying, “For many are called, but few chosen.”
Now, do we understand this parable? Sometimes we use this parable in teaching the gospel, and we can use it that way. But actually, we find that this is at the very centre of the gospel message.
What is the gospel? The gospel is that God is having a wedding feast for His Son.
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.
That is what it is. Just as in Matthew 25, we find the ten virgins—the five foolish and the five wise—but where is the bride? The wise enter into the marriage feast, and the foolish are barred from the marriage feast. Where is the bride? Individually, we are virgins; corporately, we are the bride.
Here, then, is the very centre of the gospel. God is calling people to come to the wedding feast, and 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 in their eyes. They do not want to have any part with the Son.
Thank God, those who are really nothing—those in the highways, the hedges, and the byways—are brought in by His grace.
In the early days, when a king held a feast, especially a wedding feast, he prepared wedding garments for all the guests. This 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 to her that she should be arrayed in fine linen, bright and pure. That fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
Brothers and sisters, we have to wear more than one garment. 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 that 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, we are clothed with Christ as our righteousness. That is the best robe.
We all have that robe. But we need more than that. We need not only Christ as our righteousness, which gives us our standing before God, but in our daily life the Holy Spirit is weaving a garment of embroidery into our lives.
In Psalm 45, the queen is ready. There you find that she is clothed in wrought gold, and over that garment of wrought gold is raiment of embroidery. 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. The filthy rags have been taken off, and we are clothed with Christ as our righteousness, which 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 righteous acts of the saints.
What does it mean? It means that day by day the Holy Spirit stitches and weaves Christ’s 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 therefore has every right to attend that wedding feast may find a surprise waiting for him, because he is not fit.
A helpmeet is a counterpart; there must be fitness. To be the bride of the Son of God, you must have His character and His life developed, incorporated, and wrought into you by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the divine Weaver. Embroidery is very patient work, and with such patience He is weaving Christ into our lives.
The wedding garment which the 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.
God had already chosen Moses. There is no problem with that.
When Moses was born, he was born in the worst of times. He was born under a sentence of death. Pharaoh had already issued a royal decree that every male child of the children of Israel must be cast into the river Nile and drowned. Moses was born to die.
But he was chosen by God even before the foundation of the world. In God’s sovereignty, God kept him.
He was raised in the palace of Egypt. We must remember that Egypt at that time was the empire of the world—the greatest empire in the world, the 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: that God had preserved him in a miraculous way for a purpose, and that he must 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 within him. He realized that God had kept his life with a reason and 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 was, at that time, a great general in Egypt and had the possibility of eventually succeeding to the throne.
When Moses was forty, he had to make a choice. Would he continue to be the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, eventually inherit the throne, and enjoy all the pleasures of Egypt? Or would he 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 fulfil God’s calling. But if he chose to be with the people of God, he would suffer, yet he would fulfil God’s calling.
Brothers and sisters, here we 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 fulfil that purpose.
This is where the matter of being 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 have the temporal pleasure of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. What a choice!
Why could he make that choice? He saw the invisible.
It was not a matter of weighing these two things and finally making his choice. Nobody can weigh these two things and make that choice. If you weigh them naturally, everyone will choose the pleasure of sin and the riches of Egypt, not the reproach of Christ and 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.
He said he would rather have the reproach of Christ. He saw Christ, just as Abraham saw the days of Christ, and that gave Abraham faith to continue. Moses saw the invisible.
Brothers and sisters, 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 truly see Him, brothers and sisters, what are the riches of Egypt? They are dross and refuse.
The thing is that you have to see the invisible. Oh, that God would allow us to see His Christ. If in our spirit we really see Him, then 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 fulfil God’s purpose in his 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 we find that God chose him to be an apostle because God considered him faithful.
In other words, Paul made the 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, to a point at which you make a choice. You choose God rather than the world.
If you make that choice, thank God, you are the chosen. He will use you to fulfil the calling into which He has called you.
This is 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!—after we have received all this, the Lord says, “Now, you need to make a choice.”
Present your bodies a living sacrifice. After you receive all the mercies of God, remember that those mercies have come upon you with a reason and a purpose. But for that purpose to be fulfilled, you must present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God.
You can receive all these mercies of God and 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 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 whatever He wants and as much as He wants in your life.
That choice has to be made. That is the reason why we often say that consecration is the first spiritual experience.
After we are saved, the first spiritual experience is consecration, because if that is not done, you have not begun your spiritual journey.
To be chosen, you have to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Then you will find that your mind is renewed, and you will begin to appreciate the perfect will of God. Otherwise, you will love the world and be afraid of God’s will.
We can illustrate this from Scripture in many ways.
When God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt and brought them to Sinai, at Mount Sinai He declared the reason why He had delivered them.
Sometimes we are saved, but we do not know why God saves us. We may think God saves us because He wants us to be free. But that is not good enough.
The children of Israel were delivered out of slavery. They were free people. Probably they thought, “Thank God, we are free. Now we can do whatever we want to do.”
But at Mount Sinai, God declared 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 kingdom of priests. The old and the young, the men and the women—the whole nation was to serve God as a priesthood.
But unfortunately, they worshipped the golden calf, and the whole nation was disqualified.
Many were called, but it seemed that none were chosen. Yet, 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.
Moses 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 we find that they chose God.
They chose God in spite of themselves. They went into the camp and executed judgment. 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.
Yet even so, we find God, in His desire for us to fulfil His purpose, opened a back door. That back door is found in Numbers 6.
All the children of Israel were disqualified from being priests and serving God. Only the tribe of Levi, only the house of Aaron, could serve in that way. But thank God, there were some whose spirit was 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 was the provision. Every person could do it—man or woman, everyone.
If you were constrained by the love of Christ and wanted to devote yourself to God, say for a month, you could take a Nazarite vow. A Nazarite vow has a time factor. During that month, you live for God. You no longer live for yourself; you live for God.
Or it could be for years. Samuel was a Nazarite for life. You could take that Nazarite vow, and in taking it, you were in God’s service.
The regulations governing the Nazarite vow were the same regulations governing the high priest. You could not touch a dead body, and so forth. These were the regulations governing the priests 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 fulfil our calling. If only we choose Him, we will be the chosen.
Again, in Deuteronomy 15, we find that if a Hebrew became poor and sold himself to another Hebrew, he would serve his master for 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 bondservant of love for life.
You can serve by obligation, or you can serve with love.
In the book of Judges, we find Gideon and the three hundred. Thirty-two thousand gathered together 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, “Whosoever is fearful and trembling, let him return.” Twenty-two thousand left, and only ten thousand remained.
God said, “There are still too many. Go down to the water and see how they drink.” Some knelt down and lapped, while others took the water in their hands and drank. Only three hundred drank in that manner.
In other words, they were in wartime, and they were alert. If you kneel down to drink and the enemy comes, you are finished. But when you take the water in your hands, you remain prepared and ready at all times.
These three hundred were used by God. They were the chosen ones.
So, brothers and sisters, thank God, we are the called. It 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.
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 fulfil 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 wouldst speak to each one of us.
If we have not chosen Thee, Lord, use Thy love to constrain us, that we may truly present our bodies as 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 called, chosen, and faithful. We look to Thee for Thy mercy upon us. In the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.