God Does Things His Way for our Benefit...Part 2
From God Didn’t Create Robots: Commonsense Christian Apologetics
God doing things His way…displacing our way…is a uniquely biblical concept that will infuriate and enrage people committed to self-sovereign self-rulership according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
This conflict between self-sovereignty and God-sovereignty is in part what got Jesus Christ all the way to the cross. The religious leaders in Jerusalem did not want to do faith God’s way. They wanted to do faith their way.
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the most emphatic demonstration of this chasm separating self-sovereignty from God-sovereignty.
We need at this point a few more biblical examples before moving on to explain why this is the case…and why this is an important commonsense apologetic argument for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity and the Bible.
Joseph in Egypt appears…towards the end of his 13-year, God-composed MBA program in management and leadership…to be at the point just before the revelation of Pharaoh’s dream that propels Joseph to the top of Egyptian society as governor…to take matters into his own hands…to again like Abraham and Sarah attempt on his own to help-out God…a God who seems at that point in time to be asleep in fulfilling the two earlier prophetic dreams given to Joseph as a teenager back in his homeland Canaan.
In attempting to enlist the help of the butler and baker to speak to Pharaoh upon their release…on behalf of Joseph to plead his innocence (Gen. 40:14-15)…Joseph is revealing at this late period in his preparation…unknowingly to Joseph…to soon become governor of Egypt…to help-along the fulfillment of his earlier prophetic dreams by doing things his way…by gaining control of the course of his life.
I do not know what plans Joseph may have had in mind after successfully obtaining his release from prison through the positive intervention of the butler or baker…but this action would have totally spoiled the life-script purpose…the outcome that his God-composed storyline honed-in on…to become governor of Egypt and save a large number of people from starvation during a widespread famine…but also to create a regionally catastrophic context big enough to bring his family into Egypt according to the long-range plans of God…outside of the narrowly focused contemplation of Joseph at the time.
Here again, the outcome of a God-composed journey of faith required a supernatural solution beyond the reach of Joseph to imagine, contrive, or actualize into being.
Skipping ahead to the New Testament, Peter had his own ideas about preventing the religious leaders in Jerusalem from harming Jesus…a mindset completely admirable and commendable according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…but as off-course and misguided as is imaginable concerning Jesus Christ the Lamb of God “slain from the foundation of the world”…destined from time immemorial to be the Savior and Redeemer of mankind through the cross on Calvary Hill.
That Peter goes out from the courtyard of Caiaphas the high priest during the night trial of Jesus…and weeps bitterly over his failure to stand courageously alongside Jesus during this ordeal…only points out the stark difference between our ways and God’s higher ways…higher ways in total contradiction to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking (Mt. 16:21-23).
The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a clear evidence that God is going to do things His way…for the highest and best reasons…even if no one at the time understands what is happening (1 Pet. 1:3).
The calling and ministry of the apostle Paul has to be one of the most brilliant examples of this fork-in-the-road departure from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…validating by innovative originality and foresight its divine origin.
The entire conversion and subsequent ministry of Saul/Paul to become the Christian missionary evangelist to the first-century Greco-Roman world…is based upon the most radical transition from self-sovereignty to God-sovereignty…possibly recorded in the human history of the world.
Paul is persecuting the early Christian church according to his way…his ideas for the purity and survival of his Jewish religious tradition…totally unaware until Damascus that Jesus of Nazareth is in fact the Messiah and Savior…the divine Son of God.
In a split-second of time…God instantaneously flips the highly educated yet culturally prejudiced, rabbinical Pharisee Saul/Paul into a new, different person now having the deepest personal humility in relation to the polytheistic, idol-worshipping Gentiles he will soon be sent out to evangelize through the powerfully persuasive perspective of his own personal conversion experience.
By an ingenious stroke of God…Paul is now both perfectly suited and qualified to take the new gospel message of hope and deliverance…the real truth about Jesus Christ…both scholastically and experientially out to the larger Greco-Roman world.
From the time of Damascus onward Paul can no longer culturally look down his nose at…and reject along with many of his countrymen…these heathen Gentiles according to the social and religious prejudices of the time…because their false worship of dumb idols as Gentiles cannot possibly exceed Paul’s own, individually misguided persecution of Jesus and the early Christian church.
Paul sees the immense grace and forgiveness of God instantly applied to his own life…now available and being freely offered to the Gentiles through faith rather than the works of the law…like no other Jew of his time with the possible exception of Peter.
No human could or would invent this brilliantly original and innovative life-script for Paul…having the totally unconventional element of God doing things His way.
In this brief account, we have skipped over Joshua, Gideon, Hannah, Ruth, Job, Jonah, David, Jeremiah, Elijah, Esther and Mordecai, Daniel, and Moses…to name only a few…who would probably have preferred at the time to do things their way according to worldly conventional thinking…rather than God’s more risky supernatural way…in their adventures of faith.
God doing things His way…displacing our way…is a uniquely biblical concept that will infuriate and enrage people committed to self-sovereign self-rulership according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
This conflict between self-sovereignty and God-sovereignty is in part what got Jesus Christ all the way to the cross. The religious leaders in Jerusalem did not want to do faith God’s way. They wanted to do faith their way.
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the most emphatic demonstration of this chasm separating self-sovereignty from God-sovereignty.
We need at this point a few more biblical examples before moving on to explain why this is the case…and why this is an important commonsense apologetic argument for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity and the Bible.
Joseph in Egypt appears…towards the end of his 13-year, God-composed MBA program in management and leadership…to be at the point just before the revelation of Pharaoh’s dream that propels Joseph to the top of Egyptian society as governor…to take matters into his own hands…to again like Abraham and Sarah attempt on his own to help-out God…a God who seems at that point in time to be asleep in fulfilling the two earlier prophetic dreams given to Joseph as a teenager back in his homeland Canaan.
In attempting to enlist the help of the butler and baker to speak to Pharaoh upon their release…on behalf of Joseph to plead his innocence (Gen. 40:14-15)…Joseph is revealing at this late period in his preparation…unknowingly to Joseph…to soon become governor of Egypt…to help-along the fulfillment of his earlier prophetic dreams by doing things his way…by gaining control of the course of his life.
I do not know what plans Joseph may have had in mind after successfully obtaining his release from prison through the positive intervention of the butler or baker…but this action would have totally spoiled the life-script purpose…the outcome that his God-composed storyline honed-in on…to become governor of Egypt and save a large number of people from starvation during a widespread famine…but also to create a regionally catastrophic context big enough to bring his family into Egypt according to the long-range plans of God…outside of the narrowly focused contemplation of Joseph at the time.
Here again, the outcome of a God-composed journey of faith required a supernatural solution beyond the reach of Joseph to imagine, contrive, or actualize into being.
Skipping ahead to the New Testament, Peter had his own ideas about preventing the religious leaders in Jerusalem from harming Jesus…a mindset completely admirable and commendable according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…but as off-course and misguided as is imaginable concerning Jesus Christ the Lamb of God “slain from the foundation of the world”…destined from time immemorial to be the Savior and Redeemer of mankind through the cross on Calvary Hill.
That Peter goes out from the courtyard of Caiaphas the high priest during the night trial of Jesus…and weeps bitterly over his failure to stand courageously alongside Jesus during this ordeal…only points out the stark difference between our ways and God’s higher ways…higher ways in total contradiction to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking (Mt. 16:21-23).
The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a clear evidence that God is going to do things His way…for the highest and best reasons…even if no one at the time understands what is happening (1 Pet. 1:3).
The calling and ministry of the apostle Paul has to be one of the most brilliant examples of this fork-in-the-road departure from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…validating by innovative originality and foresight its divine origin.
The entire conversion and subsequent ministry of Saul/Paul to become the Christian missionary evangelist to the first-century Greco-Roman world…is based upon the most radical transition from self-sovereignty to God-sovereignty…possibly recorded in the human history of the world.
Paul is persecuting the early Christian church according to his way…his ideas for the purity and survival of his Jewish religious tradition…totally unaware until Damascus that Jesus of Nazareth is in fact the Messiah and Savior…the divine Son of God.
In a split-second of time…God instantaneously flips the highly educated yet culturally prejudiced, rabbinical Pharisee Saul/Paul into a new, different person now having the deepest personal humility in relation to the polytheistic, idol-worshipping Gentiles he will soon be sent out to evangelize through the powerfully persuasive perspective of his own personal conversion experience.
By an ingenious stroke of God…Paul is now both perfectly suited and qualified to take the new gospel message of hope and deliverance…the real truth about Jesus Christ…both scholastically and experientially out to the larger Greco-Roman world.
From the time of Damascus onward Paul can no longer culturally look down his nose at…and reject along with many of his countrymen…these heathen Gentiles according to the social and religious prejudices of the time…because their false worship of dumb idols as Gentiles cannot possibly exceed Paul’s own, individually misguided persecution of Jesus and the early Christian church.
Paul sees the immense grace and forgiveness of God instantly applied to his own life…now available and being freely offered to the Gentiles through faith rather than the works of the law…like no other Jew of his time with the possible exception of Peter.
No human could or would invent this brilliantly original and innovative life-script for Paul…having the totally unconventional element of God doing things His way.
In this brief account, we have skipped over Joshua, Gideon, Hannah, Ruth, Job, Jonah, David, Jeremiah, Elijah, Esther and Mordecai, Daniel, and Moses…to name only a few…who would probably have preferred at the time to do things their way according to worldly conventional thinking…rather than God’s more risky supernatural way…in their adventures of faith.
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