Abstract
Survival, Service, Salvation
Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be His (Eph.1:4)
God has chosen us—firstly for survival. John Gray, a fine minister to whom I was assistant long ago, told a story of his early ministry. He visited an old, blind gentleman who lived in a city tenement. The war had just begun, and there was much alarm about the risk of air raids. ‘Would it not be better for you to move out of the city?’ wondered the minister. ‘No!’, said the old gentleman, ‘for a man’s immortal till his work is done’.
He had been a site engineer who had worked on all sorts of projects all around the world and had encountered all manner of dangers. Cranes had toppled; quarries had caved in, revolutions had broken out, malaria had threatened. Through it all he had emerged unscathed, and he was blithely certain that the whole Luftwaffe couldn’t harm him—until his work was done. ‘And when it is done,’ he went on, ‘all the physicians in the kingdom will not keep me alive!’ He could not visualise what useful work he had to do, frail and blind as he was—except impart some wisdom to inexperienced parsons; but till his work was done, his role played out, he was to all intents and purposes anointed. A man’s immortal till his work is done.
There is no explanation we can offer from our worm’s eye viewpoint for the glaring inconsistencies of human lifespan; for the anomaly—to put it no more strongly—that leaves some ancient crone in vastly expensive geriatric care, incontinent, unvisited, incoherent and demented; and takes a gifted heart surgeon in his prime, or a needed breadwinner, or a gifted youngster. We have no explanation; all we have is trust that in the providence of God, their time was right for them and for the purpose they were chosen to fulfil. He has chosen you and me who are here, for survival until now—which shows that he has something for us to do, whether we’re fit or frail, razor-sharp or amiably forgetful, active or passive. We have been chosen for survival.
Of course, He hasn’t chosen us for mere survival. He has chosen us for service. The chosen way His work can be accomplished in the world is by our hands. There are a lot of things that God can’t do. There is a story often told about a statue of our Lord that suffered damage in a wartime air raid. The damage amounted to the loss of His hands, and as soon as conditions made it possible, proposals were made and funding sought to have the statue properly restored; and then wiser counsels prevailed, and those responsible decided that the damaged statue should be left exactly as it was, a vivid reminder that He has no hands but our hands for his gracious work. Some people have great work to do for Him—those in whose hands, humanly speaking, are held the mighty issues of peace and war, of law and order, of justice and compassion. But even hands that wield no special power can yet be vital to God’s purpose.
For want of a nail, says an old piece of wisdom, for want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; for want of a horse, the rider was lost. Even though we and our like are no more than a nail in the whole mighty structure of God’s world, we are yet vital to its effective functioning.
We all exert an influence continually. You wake up feeling liverish, and those around you get the sharp edge of your tongue, and take a bad mood with them to their place of work—and who can say what consequences might result? Or else you do an unconsidered kindness, and set off a chain of kindnesses, its cumulative impact quite incalculable. Everybody matters. Everybody matters all the time.
We survive in the purpose of God; we serve by the grace of God; and we are saved by the mercy of God. He has chosen us for salvation. Even before the world was made, we had been chosen to be His.
We who are gathered here for worship came into the company of Christ for a variety of reasons—out of family loyalty, perhaps, or through an admiration for some saint of God, or in a search for company or with a wish to help society. We’re conscious, all of us, of motives that are mixed; but God can use all sorts of motives to achieve His purposes; and we are here not only at the urging of our complex motives; we are here primarily because before the world was made, God chose us to be His.
Paul offers this mind-blowing vision to his fellow Christians in Ephesus, and to you and me across the centuries, that before the world began, before the universe, the constellations, the stars, the sun came into being, our God deeply brooding on His sovereign purpose saw your birth and mine, our lives and gifts and skills and flaws, and chose for us our individual roles. Breathtaking as it may seem, unimaginable aeons ago God planned that each of us should be here this morning at his hour in this place—and plans that we shall stay consistent in our faith and constant in our allegiance till the end of our allotted span. He has a place prepared for every single one of us in His eternal kingdom, and He will do whatever can be done to bring us to that earmarked place.
What He will not do is to compel us. He will not so coerce us as to make us puppets. We must consent; we must respond in our free will to the appeal of sheer and undiluted love. My deep belief is that in the long reaches of time all humankind will so respond; but my conviction that all souls will finally be won into the Presence doesn’t in the slightest dent my sense of urgency to win souls now. I want folk to experience the blessing now, immediately; not at the grand finale of our history.
So, walk tall when you leave this place. God has chosen you to survive, to live as long as He needs you for His purpose in the world—and nothing can deflect Him from that purpose, or deny to you the time He has appointed. And God has chosen you to serve, yes, you and me. We may be realistically humble with regard to character and qualities; we may be written off by neighbours and acquaintances, as unimpressive, ordinary, dull—but we are chosen people, God’s hand-picked elite; and not least, He has chosen us to be with Him for ever.
You have not chosen me, said Jesus, and of course, we haven’t. How could we who are so self-centred and so greedy and unclean, how could we choose one who is purity and selflessness and love? We have not chosen Him; we never would; but He has chosen us. Blessed be His holy name! Inexplicably, amazingly, unbelievably, even before the world began, He had already chosen us to be His own. Let’s walk tall—and walk worthy of that calling and that choice.