Thank you, brothers and sisters, for praying for me. I think some of you know I’ve been a little under the weather this week. Nothing too bad, but my throat’s a little scratchy and various things.
Anyway, thanks for praying for me, and I will try to be faithful to go through this time of fellowship together on this matter of the called, the chosen, and the faithful.
“Those who are with Him are the called and chosen and faithful.”
Wow, this is at the climax of history, when Jesus comes back to war with all those forces that were opposed to Him and to render them due. And look who is with Him: the called, the chosen, and faithful.
It is a very wonderful passage. It has to do with a lot of work that the Lord wants to do in our lives. So, again, we want to have a prayer before we share more on this subject together.
Father, we come to You in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ tonight, the Chosen One. We thank You that He was chosen before the foundation of the world. We thank You that He was the chosen Servant of God who came to earth, died on the cross, and rose again on our behalf. Even at Your right hand, He is the Chosen One. There is no doubt about that.
And yet You also have Your beloved, Your chosen ones, here upon this earth. We are so thankful that You are trying to reveal to us the wonderful mysteries of these things. We know we need the help of the Holy Spirit to interpret for us and to reveal things that do not make sense to the natural mind.
So we ask that You would open our hearts and our minds; that You would strengthen our bodies tonight. For those who are tired and sleepy, give them some reviving, that we could share in this time together for Your glory, for Your sake, for Your honor.
We come together and pray in the precious name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Amen.
Tonight we are looking at being chosen. As I said last night, I gave this real flowery thing. We will get to it at the end here: “Chosen to celestial heights of predestined appointments.”
Holy smoke. That is big. That is big-time, heady stuff. A lot of Christians do not understand this at all, but I think the Lord may help us tonight, by the Holy Spirit, to understand the preciousness of this matter of being chosen.
Last night we noticed that, one day in time, someday in our lives, we heard the heavenly calling saying, “Come unto Me.” This is the initial calling of our Lord Jesus. He wants to show us so much more, but it starts with our coming to Him and receiving forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and a new walk.
So we heard Him. Perhaps it was at a crossroads in your life. Even going from elementary school to junior high can be a crossroads. Whatever it was, you were waiting, you were wondering, and God came and spoke to you: “Come unto Me.”
When He did, God’s grace was so real that we trusted Jesus as our Savior. We just believed in Him. We cannot even explain the mystery of it.
At the time that I believed in Jesus, I was twenty years old, and frankly, I had a lot of questions about Jesus, the Bible, and salvation. God just bypassed all that stuff and said, “Look, you want to get saved?” Well, the answer was yes, and so I accepted Jesus, even with a lot of doubts and everything in my mind.
When God calls, it is like that amazing story of the guy who was lying on a bed for thirty-eight years. Now, the one thing he could not do was get up, and Jesus said, “Get up.” Think about it: that was the one thing he could not do.
But when Jesus calls us with His voice, if I could put it this way, His very voice is like that little round thing in a cartoon—the speech bubble. Even when Jesus said, “Stand up,” His speech bubble went like this, right around the guy, and boy—ai, ai, ai, ai!
Now, if Jesus had sent him a note that said, “Stand up,” probably it would not have happened. But under the power of His words, it happened.
That is why sometimes you are not ready to get saved at all, but then you hear somebody preaching the gospel, and for some strange reason, now you are ready. It is the power of His winsome word.
And when He speaks, “Come unto Me,” it seems as if it is irresistible when we respond. It was amazing grace when we got saved. Oh man, that is a wonderful time.
We enter the narrow gate—not the wide gate down below that leads to, “Ooh, look at that guy over there in the far right. He’s nasty.” And we go up to where Jesus is standing there with His bathing suit on, it looks like.
Once again, I feel like this picture does not quite do justice, but there we go. We go through it again to salvation, and little do we realize we start climbing Calling Mountain.
Wow, we had no idea when we got saved that Jesus was going to take us heavenward. Gradually, the world is going to lose its grip on us. We are going to start to smell clean air.
Boy, when I came to the Lord, my mind was so full of so many rotten four-letter words, I cannot begin to tell you. I was good at letting out a lot of curse words and everything. It is amazing to me when I look back on that now—I cannot even remember the words. Sometimes I am out in the street and hear somebody use them, and I am like, “Oh yeah, I remember that one.”
You know, as the Lord begins to lift you higher, it is amazing how He cleans things out and gives you higher, nobler motives. There you go through Salvation Pass and up to Koinonia Canyon, up to Saints Peak—whoop—over Ecclesia Ridge, up the Ministry Precipice, over the Kingdom Pinnacle, up the Glory Summit. And there is no crown tonight.
Now our life is no longer lived just under the sun—that is where you get up in the morning—but also in the heavenlies. That is why my picture of being chosen has to do with stars.
The calling is the mountain. The chosen is the stars.
Now we are living in a dual kind of citizenship, you see.
As we ascend Calling Mountain, we have noticed already three things.
First, our calling is more noble than we thought. I mean, we just thought we were called to salvation. But as we begin to climb, we begin to see how good, how right, this calling is—that calling to holiness.
I remember when God called me to holiness. Actually, to be honest with you, I hate to tell you this, but I had been a Christian for seven years when I was in a retreat of some sort or another, and I heard God for the first time distinctly tell me:
“Be holy, for I am holy.”
In the power of those words, I felt a sanctifying work begin in my life in earnest. Isn’t that amazing? Seven years I had been a Christian. But as we climb up, we realize this calling is more noble than we thought.
Here is Julia Corsica, and she was one of the martyrs who was killed when the Goths came in and tore up Jerusalem and Rome. She was one of those that Hebrews 11 says were those “of whom the world is not worthy.”
Now, it is not that we are noble, but the One who calls us is so noble that it makes us noble just to respond to the call.
No matter how much we may suffer or lose, it does not compare with the consolations of grace and glory, because we are realizing this calling is a noble calling.
Your friends who are not saved think becoming a Christian is just about the stupidest thing a person could do. From now on, you cannot do things you want to do, and for the rest of your life you are kind of hindered in a limited way while they are having a good time and you are not. That is the way the world looks at it.
But to you, you should realize how noble this calling is.
The second thing you notice is that our calling was really His choosing. Here is where calling goes into election, into chosenness.
As you are rising up, climbing through the precipices and mountain gorges, looking down and looking up, it is an amazing thing. You begin to realize, “Hey, you know something? I was called, but I think He has chosen me.”
That strikes you, the first time, as quite an amazing thing.
When the children of Israel came out of Egypt, they were slaves. They had been slaves for a good number of years. They were used to being slaves. They got across the Red Sea, came out to the other side, and God spoke through Moses and said:
“You are a chosen people,
a kingdom of priests,
a peculiar possession of Mine.”
They thought to themselves, “What? Us? Slaves? No good, unworthy?”
Yet God said, “You are a chosen race.”
They had to start chewing on this higher thing. When you look at the narrow gate as you were approaching it in the valley, it says, “Whosoever will may come.” Oh, I have to make a choice. I have to believe in Jesus to go through the gate. “Whosoever will may come.” What a wonderful invitation.
But when we cross through the gate and look down from the other side, we find that it says, “Chosen from the foundation of the world.”
It is funny. The gate, from the side where we were sinners, was an act of calling. We get to the other side and it says, “You are chosen from the foundation of the world.” I thought I made a decision. Turns out God made a decision about you before you made a decision about Him.
Ah, the mystery goes deeper.
A third thing we realize as we ascend Calling Mountain is the beauty of all things heavenly. Before, reading the Bible was kind of nasty business. Now you start to see holiness is a beautiful thing, righteousness is a beautiful thing, and God’s judgment is a beautiful thing.
God is beautiful. The Holy Spirit is beautiful. Jesus is beautiful. Things are starting to really look beautiful.
There is something glorious at the center of the universe.
This is a picture of the Milky Way from Mauna Kea. I do not know if any of you have ever been to Hawaii, but one thing I love about Hawaii is the stars at night. From up on Mauna Kea, which is a volcanic mountain, they have observatories there because it is so clear.
This is the Milky Way with the naked eye, on an especially good night, of course. But there it is. Can you believe it? Look at this whole thing, this whole heavenly realm. Wow, this is something.
If this world is so beautiful, there has to be something glorious at the center of the universe. Of course, I do not want to say what it is, because you do not have a clue what that would be at the center of the universe. It must be something really beautiful that emanates out all of this Milky Way.
But you also begin to realize that there is this secret something glorious at the center of our little universe. Ah, the secret something.
I love Colossians 3:1-2. Here is the New English Bible translation, which I like because it has to do with the realm of the stars:
“Were you not raised to life with Christ?
Then aspire to the realm above,
where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God,
and let your thoughts dwell on that higher realm,
not on this earthly life.”
There is your call, you see: aspire to the realm above.
Now, of course, you have to dwell on this earthly life. You got up this morning and combed your hair. You have to remember your keys. How many of you have forgotten your keys already? Some of you are almost chronic to forget your passports. It is because you are so otherworldly. You are thinking about things in the higher realm until you get to the customs guy, who is only thinking of earthly matters.
No, of course you have to think about earthly things. You live under the sun. But notice the key word: do not let your thoughts dwell on the lower realm. Let your thoughts dwell on the higher realm.
When you have some free time, do not think, “I wonder what happened for lunch.” Think, “I wonder what is in my Bible.” Good luck. I see you guys doing that right away.
When we are talking about God having chosen you, we know being chosen is a mystery. I am just going to mention it and pass on, because nobody understands this. Believe me, nobody. I think even people in heaven are a little confused, because why God would choose us always implies what? What is the motive behind choosing?
Love.
You choose what you love, right? There is somebody in our audience who has chosen a chick and is going to marry her in about ten days. He did not choose her because she is a millionaire. That would help; I do not know the details. But he chose her because he loves her.
It is a great mystery about being chosen.
Here are four points regarding the mystery, just so I can confuse you a little bit, because some of you think you know about chosen, so I am going to confuse you.
First, God chooses before time and for purposes beyond time. As an example, Ephesians 1:4:
“Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,
that we would be holy and blameless before Him.”
He made His choice before time, before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. That is the future.
That means He chooses before anyone has done anything good or bad. How can He love you? You have not even had time to be a jerk yet. It is very strange.
Reason number two: God is beyond time. Of course, God is eternal, so there is no beginning or end with God. Yesterday is tomorrow for God, and tomorrow was yesterday, and yes, that is now. You realize that, right? That is one reason He is so smart: He knew the answers before the guy gave the test.
God, being beyond time, has already prepared everything for the end. Listen to the Scripture:
“Then the King will say, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world.’”
Your kingdom rewards were ready before you entered the kingdom—before you were a globule, or whatever they call it in science these days.
Reason number three: being chosen is a mystery because God chooses men by looking at the heart, not the outward man. No wonder it becomes so complex, because we always look at the outward man, and we know who to choose.
Psalm 135:4 says:
“For the Lord hath chosen Jacob for Himself,
Israel for His own possession.”
Jacob—the worst guy in the Bible. The Lord has chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel for His own possession.
God must see the secret something. Every time you hear that, you should hear that little echo in the back: “The secret something, something, something.”
He sees the secret something in you which others do not. God saw something in Jacob that nobody else saw. Different perspective, you know.
Mystery number four: God’s love is the motive behind His choosing. Just try to figure that one out.
He says to the children of Israel—picture us now, after they had wandered in the wilderness for forty years and were about ready to go into the Promised Land—and Moses says, “I just have a couple of final words I want to tell you”:
“The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you
because you were more in number than any of the peoples,
for you were the fewest of all peoples;
but because the Lord loved you.”
I have a friend named Ed Miller, and he wrote a song. Here is the first line:
“He loves you because He loves you.”
Well, there you go. That is the truth.
He said to the children of Israel, “You know what? I love you guys because I love you. It is not like you are big, not like you are smart, not like you are above average. I just love you.”
Wow, this whole choosing thing is quite a mystery. But we know one thing from the Scriptures: God makes choices based on His foreknowledge. That is why His choices are always right.
God has never chosen the wrong color shirt to wear. He never makes wrong choices because He has perfect foreknowledge.
We know these verses, but listen:
“For whom He foreknew, these He predestined
to be conformed to the image of His Son.”
Or 1 Peter 1:1-2:
“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
to those who are chosen
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.”
He has perfect foreknowledge. Why? Because yesterday is tomorrow, tomorrow is today, and He knows. He can make choices.
God knows His final goals and purposes. He knows the end from the beginning. He has already read Revelation 21 and 22. He knows how it comes out. Jesus wins. The Lamb of God is glorified.
He knows who will be faithful in exercising their free will. Picture this: you have absolute free will. You can do whatever you want. But God has absolute foreknowledge, and He knows what you are going to do. He bases His choices on that, and He even uses your free will, even when it goes the wrong way, to get you to end up going the right way.
He knows everybody and what they are going to do—who is going to exercise their free will for Him and who is going to exercise their free will not for Him. So He says, “I have hardened your heart, Pharaoh, because I knew that you were going to have a hard heart.”
You get that? Nice. Part of the mystery.
He knows how to get His chosen to the goal. That is quite a mystery in itself, especially you, me, or Elizabeth Ann. How does He get us to the goal? He has to have a lot of foreknowledge on that one.
And He knows how to tap the secret something—ding, ding, ding—within each chosen vessel to fulfill His will and purpose. He just knows how to get at it.
We also know that God’s choosing is based upon another secret that is no longer a secret to Christians. Here it is: God really only has one Chosen One, and everyone else is chosen in Him.
You say, “Okay, God, would You make a choice? What is Your all-time favorite?” He says, “Jesus.” “Who do You want to live the rest of Your life with?” “Jesus.” “Who do You love more than anybody else?” “Jesus.”
This is what He said to the disciples:
“This is My Son, My Chosen One; listen to Him.”
You guys are chosen in Him. So listen to Him, because He is My Chosen One. Whatever He says goes. Whatever I choose for Him, you get as well if you are in Him.
So we are chosen in Him. That puts a new little wrinkle to the mystery, but we will not carry that any further tonight.
What is this secret something—ding, ding, ding—something hid deep within? Of course, this is any girl who is eight years old and thinks she is an angel. She has looked in the mirror for a long time, danced around, and put on little wings for the Christmas cantata.
What is that secret something hid deep within? It is part of your DNA code. Well, not really, but you understand. When you were created in the image of God—hmm, the secret something.
God has chosen you with a purpose. He has chosen you because He loves you, but He has also chosen you with a purpose. He has chosen you with something specific in mind.
He has specific good works for you to do—specific divine appointments. And He is going to get you there.
How will He get that secret something out in the open? Here is this little blob saying, “God made me special and unique. I am not like all others.” You look like a blob to me. But you have a secret something. How is He going to get that out?
Do you know what the secret something is in you? It is different from everybody else.
He relies on the Scientist. He relies on His environmental engineer, also known as the Holy Spirit, to mine the depths of your life and bring out the secret something.
Only the Holy Spirit has the degree from the University of Toronto to be able to engineer your environment and mine in your life in such a way that He brings out the secret something regarding your chosenness.
You are chosen to the celestial heights of predestined appointments. You have some work to do. You have some living, some praying, and some things ahead—predestined appointments in the celestial heights of your chosenness.
How do you know that? You know it because you sense the Holy Spirit beginning to engineer your life.
Have you sensed God paying special attention to your life lately?
Is the Lord digging around in your heart?
Sometimes we wish He would leave us alone. But you know He is after something, right?
Have your plans been scrapped, your desires unrealized, and now everything is in a mess? Aha.
A secret is being forged now for eternity and the realms above. The secret something is something the Lord will have in you as His chosen in this lifetime before you die, and He will also use it as part of the testimony in eternity.
There is something being mined that is a treasure. That is why you are worth a million bucks.
Paul says, “I wish you had the eyes to see the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,” because everybody has that secret something that makes you so, so valuable to your loving God, if you will just let Him mine it out of your life.
How wonderful it is going to be.
There is one part of this chosen process that we all realize is going to happen: we have to have a real makeover. You cannot be a virtual supermodel like that girl up there. You are going to have to be made into something. You cannot look like Mr. Potato Head there.
We are going to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus.
Whether you are Mr. Potato Head—that actually looks like somebody here tonight—or whether you look like nobody looks like that woman, we are going to have a real makeover.
“For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined
to become conformed to the image of His Son.”
You have been chosen to be conformed to the image of His Son. Now, that does not mean that some of you girls are going to start getting hairs on your chinny-chin-chin. It is not a physical likeness. It is a character likeness.
We are going to be conformed in character and in life to the Son of God, even Jesus. This is part of what He is doing and mining in your life.
This transformation is way beyond any reality television show. Some of those dudes they fix up on those extreme makeover things—woo—they look a little worse than they looked at first, as far as I am concerned. But anyway, I leave that to others.
The Bible shows us what happens when we are chosen by these many examples. I hear that in your groups some of your people have been using examples. Mac knows more people who were Christians than anybody else in the world. He is the king of trivia. You just say, “Who is Paula of Antwerp?” and he says, “Well, she was a woman.”
But what you are gaining from all of that is this: there is a secret something in everybody. We are chosen in Him with some kind of thing. Unless somebody else has told you, you have no idea what that is in you. The only way it happens is when it is mined out.
Let us take Abe. Abe was an idol maker and childless, but his secret something was this: he did not know it. All that time he had to wait.
God mined Abraham’s secret something by having him sojourn in a land he did not know and by having him wait, and wait, and wait. “Okay, I am going to have a kid.”
Abraham handed out so many cigars, saying, “I am going to have a kid by faith.” In America, people hand out cigars when they have a baby: “Hey, I had a baby boy. Here, have a cigar.” It has a little blue thing on it. If it has a pink thing, then you know he had a girl. They are always cheap cigars. You never want to smoke them; they will kill you.
Anyway, Abraham was handing out cigars for years. Ever since he left Ur of the Chaldees, it was, “Here, have a cigar. I am going to have a son.”
Nothing was happening. Nothing was happening. He and Sarah were just not connecting. I do not know what you want to say. There were the birds but not the bees. The stork had not arrived.
But you know what happened in all of that waiting, all of that sojourning, and all of that? He became a friend of God.
You might not think that is particularly important, but I have to tell you something: there is a rarefied group of chosen people on this earth today who can be called friends of God. Every Christian is not a friend of God. No, no, no, no. Every Christian has the potential.
But are they waiting on God, talking to Him?
Abraham was walking along, saying, “God, what is going on? What is the story? You promised me this, and now I am about to die, and I have nothing. I have zip. Where are You going?”
He kept talking, and God kept talking to him. God said, “You know what? I love this guy. He talks with Me.”
Sarah thought he was a little nuts. She thought, “Maybe it is the heat of the day. Here goes Abe. He is talking again out in the woods.”
Abraham became a friend of God. This was so precious to God. It is such a rare title in the Bible: friend of God.
God mined that out of his life. He never knew it. Of course, his testimony was that he became the father of a chosen nation. The guy died with only one member of that nation—well, not really, because he saw the next generation—but Isaac was all he achieved. Yet he was the father of the chosen nation because he was faithful.
That is really something. How do you mine the friend of God out of somebody? Well, it takes a lot of waiting.
Isaac was Mama’s boy. He always hid in the tent. He was a tent body. I do not mean he liked to go hiking; I mean he liked to stay at home. He liked cable in his tent.
What was his purpose? Was he just to stay at home with his mama? Well, he got kicked out of his house, and he had to go and redig all of Abraham’s wells. That was a pretty tough thing, and it bothered him. He lost his mama. Then he was given a wife. He never had a choice. He saw this woman coming on a camel. For all he knew, she was the ugliest puss ever on the face of the earth. Of course, she turned out to be beautiful, but he did not have a choice in it.
As Isaac was going through all of this stuff, God said to him, “Do not go out of the Promised Land. You stay right here.” You know what he did? He stayed right there.
And guess what the secret something was about Isaac? Isaac is a testimony that if you are a child of God and you obey God, you will be blessed a hundredfold.
There is no sinner who gets saved at twenty years old, like me, who can ever be blessed as much as you who have grown up a child of God, if you let the Lord mine the stuff out of your life.
You know who Isaac was? He was a testimony: obedience brings blessing.
Man, you just look at Isaac and you can see that. That is why his testimony is of sonship. He just received everything from his father—received, received, blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing.
He received all of Abraham’s riches, and then guess what happened? He obeyed, and he got richer than Abraham ever thought about being. That is a testimony.
God had to mine it out. Isaac would have just sat and watched television all his life. He had no idea. But the one thing he did was obey. He obeyed.
Jake was a grabber. He was tricky, playing deals with his brother, playing deals with his dad, playing deals with Laban. Oh man, he was really tricky, and it did him in. It was his cross. Everything began to go wrong.
But the secret something about Jacob was this: when he got into that wrestling match with God, Jacob realized that God wanted him to grab Him.
Most Christians are so tentative about really going after God, laying hold of God. It is like you have to be desperate, like that woman who wanted a healing so badly that she actually grabbed Jesus’ tunic.
Are you that desperate? “Oh, I would never do that with Jesus.”
Well, the secret something in Jake was that he was a God-grabber. When he grabbed God, God said, “Now you are a prince.”
Oh, that God’s people would grab Him. But you are all chicken, so God has to work it and work it and make you desperate and desperate and desperate. Then you become a God-grabber.
That is the greatest testimony of Jacob’s life. At the end of his life, he was a God-grabber. When he grabbed God, he grabbed all the blessing of God. He grabbed the life of God. He grabbed the will of God. In the end, he was blessing everybody, even Pharaoh up in Egypt.
Wow. All you have to do is grab God—really lay hold of God.
Whenever you read the testimony of some of these people whom you and I do not know, but Mac does, you realize that most of these missionaries and people who did noble things grabbed hold of God. I mean, they grabbed hold aggressively of God—not passively, not with kid gloves.
They laid hold of God and said, “God, I cannot do this unless You do it. I grab You, and I will not let You go until You bless me.”
Ah, God says, “I love that. I love that.”
Some people never learn it, but that was the wonderful life of Jacob. He became the testimony of spiritual transformation—from Mr. Tricky to the God-grabber.
The name Israel has a double meaning, right? It means one who prevails with God. It is interesting that God allows somebody to be called one who prevailed with God.
Then there is Joe. We know Joe the dreamer with the special coat—spoiled rotten and all this kind of stuff. He had to be mined by years in jail, by his brothers betraying him, by being made a slave.
But there was a secret something in Joe that he did not realize. He did not know this as a kid. Here it was: no matter where you put Joe, he overcame and rose to the top.
You make him the least slave; give him a couple of years and he is the top slave. You put him in jail in the deepest part of the jail; give him a couple of years and he is coordinating the jail.
He had overcoming life. That is Joe’s testimony. His brothers came, and instead of killing them all one by one and slowly, he overcame and forgave them.
Oh, listen: to be able to overcome, what a wonderful testimony. What a secret something.
Joe had to discover it as he went through his life and the various trials and tribulations. There he was, and he became the testimony of ruling and reigning. In the Old Testament, the person who most matches Jesus in terms of ruling and reigning is Joseph as a type.
Moses grew up in the court of Egypt. He was proud and royalty. Then he went through times of failure as a fugitive, out in the wilderness, kicking sheep and wondering what was going on. He was eighty years old.
There was a secret something in Moses that he did not know when he was in Egypt. He had to learn it out there in the desert and then as he led the children through the wilderness. Something popped out of Moses that had always been brewing there. Here it is: he was a leader by humble intercession.
Whenever Moses was going through the wilderness with the children of Israel, and whenever they accused him of something, he just fell on his face and prayed. When God said, “I am going to wipe out the people,” Moses fell on his face and prayed.
He was a leader of leaders, and it was by humble intercession. Of course, Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords, and He leads by humble intercession.
We needed that testimony. What was really in Moses’ heart was that he was the most humble man on the face of the earth. What a great testimony.
Would you like the Christian newspaper to name you “the humblest person on the face of the earth”? That was the testimony about Moses. Secret something. See, it came out.
Then there is Gideon: Mr. Chicken, Mr. Selfish, hiding there and working out his own barley grain. “Forget about the rest of them. I am just working with my family here.” He did not know what else to do.
But then he had to go and knock down his father’s household idols. Then he had to go fight, so he laid out fleeces. When he got to the war, God said, “Hey, get rid of everybody. Just leave you three hundred guys.”
All that stuff. Gideon found out something: Mr. Chicken was fearless—a fearless leader for God.
He became a testimony of spiritual warfare. The guy always had a bit of a modest temperament, but boy, you get him in a spiritual battle and he jumps out like a lion. Fearless leadership: break those things and yell, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!” Then one hundred and twenty thousand Midianites are killed in the melee.
Wow.
I remember years ago I used to go to Halford House in England, where Lance used to be. I went to their Bible and prayer week in January for twenty-two years. It was for a week, and they would get together three times a day, have a little Bible study, and pray about things.
This assembly of people was basically middle-class people, blue-collar workers, who got off at lunchtime for the meetings and got off as they could. They were not intellectuals. Lance was so much more learned than most of the people in that place. They were actually quite modest and wonderful people.
But hold on to your seatbelts when they prayed, because they had learned how to be lions of God in prayer. They laid hold of things and did spiritual battle that would scare you if you heard it—except you realized how prepared they had been made through their life together in prayer.
You would never go to one of their prayer meetings and be bored. I had been to ten, probably, on their Thursday night prayer meeting. You would never, ever be bored in their prayer meeting. They were alive to God.
It is a secret something that they learned as an assembly together. Isn’t that interesting?
Then you have David—a shepherd and a pest, we know that. Through the travails of Goliath, Saul chasing him for years, and his sons going to the left and not following the Lord, the secret something came out.
Actually, in David’s case, the secret something came out pretty early, did it not? He had a heart after God. Boy, he wanted what God wanted.
He became king, and he wanted the city of God because God wanted it. He wanted the ark in the city because God wanted it. Then he wanted to build God a house. He just had a heart for God.
What an amazing thing that a shepherd boy out there in the fields, the least of the family of Jesse, turns out to have a heart for God that is a lion heart—so big.
We do not always realize that in people’s lives. There are some people who are perhaps a little awkward in this way and that, and you do not quite realize what they have going. But the Lord works in their lives and you see they have a heart after God. They are willing to give anything to please God.
That is why David was such a great songwriter, was he not? He was writing stuff to please God. Wonderful songs, huh?
Then we have Elijah. As we mentioned last night, he was kind of a loner—eccentric for sure. He had to deal with Ahab, whom he did not like, and Jezebel, whom he feared more than all, and the prophets of Baal.
But later on in the Old Testament, do you know what they talked about? The spirit of Elijah.
There was something hot about Elijah’s spirit. Elijah was an eccentric man, but when it came to his spirit, he had a zealous spirit for God.
He was one of those characters who would rather be by himself, but for God’s sake he would be zealous.
The very first thing really said about Elijah, after his name, is that he stood before the face of God. That is a great testimony for anybody who ministers:
“The Lord, before whom I stand,
hath told me that it shall not rain
for such a period of time.”
Finally, I am picking just a corporate thing to let you see. The remnant that came back from Babylonian captivity—boy, what a weak and oppressed lot they were. They were still under the gun of the Persian government. They had been in captivity. They had sacrificed everything.
But what they discovered was this: sure, they were weak. They did not have a lot. But what they learned in this whole process was that their secret something was this:
“Not by might, nor by power,
but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.”
They became a testimony of overcomers. These weak people who came back and sacrificed—they all, for God, ended up being overcomers, building a temple that could not be built and building the walls of the city that could not be built. They did the impossible after the impossible because they were mighty in spirit. They trusted God and not just themselves.
My whole point is the secret something. I do not know what your secret something is, but I see, and I believe it is true to the Word of God, that there is a mining process in your life that God uses to get out that secret something.
You are saved. I wonder if you know what your heart is really like toward the Lord. I wonder if you know what your spirit is really like. I wonder if you know what that precious thing is that God is trying to mine.
Probably in your early days you do not know. That is part of the reason you have been chosen.
Of course, you have been chosen because you are in Christ, and He has chosen His Son. He has chosen you because He loves you as well—and He does love you. But He has also chosen you because there is a purpose that secret something is going to enable you to do in your lifetime.
It is going to make a difference in the kingdom of God and the body of Christ in eternity. There is something that He wants to mine out of us. He has chosen us; He has something in mind.
Three final things about being chosen, and that is it. This is a great mystery. There is so much that could be said, but let us end it with these three things.
What do we mean by “chosen to celestial heights of predestined appointments”? Just think about it. It means that you and I, just regular human beings, have been given these kinds of glorious destinies.
You are destined for glory, destined for sonship. You have an eternal destiny. You are destined to reign with Him. You are destined for rewards. You are destined for an inheritance.
This is heady stuff. This is celestial heights of predestined appointments.
Just regular human beings, saved by grace. It is like God says to us, “Listen, psst, let Me tell you something. You are going to be part of the kingdom of the King of kings. You are going to enter into stuff.”
You might say, “All this glory stuff, what is going to happen after I die, when Jesus comes back, and all this—it does not seem very important to me.”
Oh, you wait until you get older and start to realize: what is your life worth if all you have is this lifetime? You are going to die. You are going to make some money, or give it to your kids. Fine. What is your life worth?
If we go the way of our chosenness, this is our destiny. This is heady stuff. This is celestial stuff.
Have you seen how big the Lord is? At some point in your life, I think you have. His plan for you is just as big. Big plans.
They might start out small. They might seem small to you.
I told Jim about that guy, John Kitto, who was completely deaf and could not get along with people. He was sort of a bookworm, just reading and reading and reading. Old Groves, that wonderful missionary, took him out to Baghdad, and they spent about ten years there.
During that time, all Kitto did was draw sketches of the life of the people who lived there in Persia and Baghdad, and write notes about how they did things. He got back and wrote one of the first Bible dictionaries that explained all those terms in the Gospels people did not understand.
He showed how the widow beat out the flour and had actual illustrations that he made. He became famous for this book. He never made a nickel off the thing, but it is a famous book.
He never would have thought that he had a tremendous something in store.
Look up. You are chosen. He loves you.
You look at the stars and realize this huge God has a purpose and a plan far beyond what I can understand. That is part of understanding that we are chosen. When we realize who has chosen us, it is truly amazing.
Paul puts it this way when dealing with these matters of predestined appointments:
“Momentary, light affliction is producing for us
an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,
while we look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are unseen;
for the things which are seen are temporal,
but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
At some point in our lives, we stop just looking at things that can be seen, and we start looking at unseen things—these precious promises that we have. We realize our lives are slated for things much greater than just what we experience in a short lifetime.
Number two: why would God tell us that we are chosen? Just supposing you are chosen—why would God bother telling you that? Maybe He should not tell you. Leave you thinking you are called and it is still kind of iffy. How come He tells you?
As an example, He says this in Isaiah 41:
“But thou, Israel, My servant,
Jacob whom I have chosen,
the seed of Abraham My friend;
thou whom I have taken hold of from the ends of the earth,
and called from the corners thereof,
and said unto thee, Thou art My servant;
I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away.”
Why does God tell us we are chosen? I have listed two reasons.
First, to encourage those struggling in their calling.
We are called by God to go up the mountain, to learn about holiness, body life, ministry, and all these things. Sometimes it is pretty discouraging, and to tell you the truth, sometimes we falter and even fail.
Have you ever recognized this in the Bible? It is at those moments when people fail, stumble, or begin to doubt that the Lord comes to them and says, “My son, you are chosen.”
If you are just going to walk through this life and never have any idea of your chosenness, it is a pretty hard road to hoe. But at a time when we need it, as in the case of Isaiah, when the Lord was getting ready to take the children of Israel basically into Babylonian captivity, He says, “You are going to go through a tough time. You are going to go through waters and you are going to go through the fire. But do you know something? I have chosen you. I love you. I have not rejected you.”
Many times when we fail God, we think He is now going to reject us. But as our brother Jim said this morning, He counts so much on the effect of the precious blood of Jesus that He could never consider that.
When we fail, the Lord says, “Look, I am not rejecting you. I have chosen you.”
It is a great word of encouragement. As you get older and have your bumps and failures, you will appreciate more and more that wonderful promise from our Lord.
The second reason He tells us that we are chosen is to help us see, believe, and accept such an unbelievable truth.
Even when He told the children of Israel, “You are My chosen,” they had no idea what He meant. They could not believe it. They did not really believe it. As soon as God stopped speaking to them, they started doing stuff wrong as if they were still all on their own.
So God had to come back to them and say, “Now you are My chosen. You are My chosen race.”
God has to speak to us and say, “I have chosen you.” When God comes to you, dear saint, and says, “You are chosen,” do you accept it? Do you believe it?
Is it something that maybe you capture for a nanosecond, and then it sneaks away and you wonder after that if God even loves you?
Oh, listen, this matter of being chosen is big stuff. He has to come to us at various times and reassure us that He has chosen us. He will not let us go.
Number three: calling and chosen are interrelated. Of course, we see that they are. They are often put together in various sentences in the Bible.
We intuitively sense glory and chosenness only as we ascend Calling Mountain.
In 1 John 3:21, it says:
“Beloved, if our heart condemn us not,
then have we confidence toward God.”
Let me make the point this way. Do you know the song?
“When we walk with the Lord
in the light of His Word,
what a glory He sheds on our way.”
Now listen: when we walk with the Lord, what a glory He sheds on our way.
Let us make it negative: when I stop walking with the Lord and I go against His Word, I sense no glory, and I am cooked.
This is what happens to Christians. That is why calling and being chosen are irrevocably knitted together.
If you are walking with the Lord, you get little glimmers and intuitive sensings that you are chosen. You are the children of God, and you have confidence before God if your heart does not condemn you.
But if your heart condemns you, and you are not walking with God, and you have just gotten lazy or rebellious or something like that, feeling chosen is not going to happen.
All that gobbledygook down at the bottom is Hebrew. Some of you could probably read the little black thing there where it says:
“I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”
For those who cannot read Hebrew, this is the way you say it:
Ani l’dodi v’dodi li.
I thought maybe you would like to know that. We could even sing it.
Ani l’dodi v’dodi li,
Ani l’dodi v’dodi li,
O Yeshua, v’dodi li.
You are learning Hebrew, you know. Maybe that is the only Hebrew you know besides hallelujah and shalom.
Only somebody who really knows they are chosen says, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”
The woman said that because Solomon said, “I have chosen you, and I love you.” She said, almost drunken with love, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”
Ani l’dodi v’dodi li.
Lord, we pray that everybody here in this room, despite the great mystery of their chosen celestial appointments, may sense something of Your great love wrapping around them, drawing them toward the Lord Jesus.
“I have chosen you. I have drawn you to Myself.”
So great is Your love, beyond our understanding. But we realize we have been chosen in Him from the foundation of the world.
O Lord, we pray that we could rest in that chosenness, realize that we are Yours and You are ours. We pray that we could give You permission and allow You to do that mining work in the circumstances of our lives, to produce that unique ingredient—a testimony in our lives that adds to the glory of Jesus in the eternal kingdom.
We pray while we are upon this earth that we may find, as we do those deeds appointed for us to do, as we have been saved by grace, that as we climb the mountain of calling, we may also look to the stars and see amazing love—chosen by God, living in a mystery, things being mined in our lives to which we know very little.
But we are so thankful that we have a high destiny. There is no way we ever deserved such a thing. But being found in the Beloved, we suddenly have a noble destiny.
Thank You, Lord.
Point us, Lord, skyward, as we live now with Christ in the heavenlies. Help us to find ourselves more and more at home in this chosen place.
Lord, as long as we live on this earth, we are always distracted by things of this world. We pray more and more that we would be like Paul, to see those invisible things that have eternal value and not just always be concentrating on temporal things.
Oh Lord, how great is this chosen vessel that You have right here—Your people, chosen for purpose. May it be accomplished to Your glory.
We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.