Bible Talks - Family Church (9:45am)
Series: Christian Calling · Talk No. 8
Called to Rule
Sunday, 11 September 2005
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This morning we come to the final sermon in our series on the Christian Calling. So far we have looked at the fact that as Christians we are:
- Called to Love
- Called to Holiness
- Called to Service
- Called to Suffering
- Called to Fellowship
- Called to Obedience
- Called to Glory, and this morning we are looking at the fact that we are
- Called to Rule or as one author put it we are “Destined for the Throne”
If you were present at the L.I.F.E. programme a couple of months ago you may remember me saying that as people we have fundamental personal needs that can be grouped into the two broad categories that Larry Crabb calls Security and Significance. Security includes the need to be loved, to be accepted, to be protected or another way of putting it is that we have a fundamental deep need for relationship. The other category Significance covers the area of feeling worthwhile, being adequate, competent or having a fundamental need for meaning or purpose. One of the primary reasons that we reject the theory of evolution and other materialistic theories is that because if everything is the product of chance or purely mechanistic processes it takes away all meaning in life. If you are just an evolutionary accident then what’s the purpose of life? And as the teacher in Ecclesiastes tells us it’s all meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Unless that is you include God in the equation. He concludes the book saying, “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
Just as the writer of Ecclesiastes sees life without God as meaningless so most secular historians have no conception of there being any meaning or purpose in history. They record and systematize the characters and events that make up the fabric of life but have little or no clue to their interpretation or significance. The ancient Greeks considered history as a circle; what goes around comes around; going nowhere in particular, accomplishing no discernible purpose, having no identifiable goal. Each time you go around the loop, the names of the players change but little else. And this philosophy is still the background belief of modern historians. History is merely one senseless crisis after another with no purpose and no intelligent aim. The human race is seen as just the top dog on the evolutionary tree and our only destiny is to be supplanted by whatever rises to the top next – unless we all blow ourselves up or poison ourselves in the meantime.
It’s all rather depressing, isn’t it. We all want to do more than just leave our footprints in the sand to be washed away at the next tide.
However we do know better. We have the Bible. The infallible source book on what life is all about. To most, the stuff of history is the kings, the rulers, the politicians, the great empires, be they military, political or economic. But we know that the center of history is not its great empires. The centre of history is located on a tiny hill, outside a two bit city, in a tin pot backwater, where two thousand years ago a man named Jesus was lifted up to die. The cross of Jesus is the centre point of all history. The cross of Jesus is the singular event that makes sense of all that had passed before, all that has happened since, and all that is yet to be.
That man, hanging on the cross, amid the jeers and taunts of the passers by was according to the Apostle Paul in Colossians 1 “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”
According to the Apostle John he was the one who started history off, “3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”
History was begun in him and is fashioned by him and controlled by him as stated by the writer of Hebrews “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”
The universe, including this planet, was created for one specific purpose, to provide a suitable habitation for the human race, which was created in the image and likeness of God for the one purpose of providing an eternal companion for God's own Son.
The whole purpose, the whole intent, of history is to prepare the Bride of Christ. The Church, that is the called-out body of redeemed mankind, is the central object, the goal, not only of all earthly history, but of the very existence of the universe and of what god has been doing since the beginning of creation.
This means that all history is sacred. There really is no such thing as secular history. It is all HIS story, referring to Christ. From Romans 8, which we touched on last week, “28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”
It’s all working to prepare, to train, his Church to be his eternal companion. The entire universe is ordered by God for this purpose of bringing to maturity and eventually to enthronement beside his Son, not angels nor archangels, but the Church, His chosen Bride.
I’ve spoken previously about the fact that relationship is at the core of what life is all about, but this takes it one step further. It’s not just that through faith in Christ we are individually brought back into relationship with God, reconciled with him and with each other, but that through that reconciliation we are incorporated into the Church, the Bride of Christ, and that we are destined to rule with Christ when he returns.
In some regards, I find this all a bit scary and all a bit removed from the daily business of living this life here on earth. Yes it is comforting to know that God works all things together for my good, our good. Yes, particularly when death raises its ugly head, it is a comfort to know that death is not just the end, but there awaits that sure and certain hope of heaven. These things do impinge on the here and now. But this ultimate purpose of being the Bride, prepared for an eternity to rule with Christ, seems more than a bit too grand. How does my life, lived out in the daily trivial round, prepare me to be part of the bride of Christ, who will rule with him for eternity?
I believe that all too often our vision of the purposes of God in Christ stop at the redemption of fallen mankind. This is important and necessary but it is too simplistic, it’s not the complete picture. Jesus’ birth as a human, his life, his death, his resurrection did provide for the redemption of fallen mankind. As we are reminded in 1 John 2, “2He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” But from within the scope of the whole of mankind only a relatively small minority have accepted and will accept this universal provision, those who pass through the straight and narrow gate to life instead of taking the crooked, broad path to destruction. This small minority is being prepared as the Bride of Christ to spend eternity ruling with him. Now that’s scary, or mind blowing, or whatever because I think I’m like you and I find it difficult to comprehend how it is so.
The whole of history is working so that you and I, and a few others of course, who make up the true Church, the company of the Saints, the Redeemed Community, the Bride are fit, ready, trained equipped, to Rule with Christ. Everything that precedes the Wedding Feast of the Lamb is preliminary and preparatory.
How long has the universe been going? Some will tell us billions of years, others only 10,000 or so but whatever is the true figure that’s only the introduction. God’s programme for mankind doesn’t really start until the Bride takes her place beside Christ. Up until then the entire universe is under Jesus’ regulation and control with one purpose, to prepare and train the Bride.
This leaves one big, so far unanswered question. How are we being trained? What is there that we do as Christians that is equipping us to rule? And the answer is simply prayer. That’s right prayer.
Have you ever stopped to think about the mystery of prayer? Why should God want us to pray at all? God is almighty and self-sufficient, he doesn’t need us to pray in order for him to accomplish anything. He doesn’t need anything we can give him. He spoke and the universe came into existence. He continues to speak and the whole show keeps on going without any help from puny man. Yet the Bible tells us that he can do nothing in the realm of human redemption apart from human cooperation through prayer and faith.
God, as training for our ultimate rule has chosen to act through our prayer so that we might learn how to exercise that rule. There are many references to God not just encouraging us to pray, but commanding us to pray, entreating us to pray and even begging us to pray.
God, in some way, has delegated his authority to us so that he acts in response to our prayer. He commits himself to this system so much that he promises categorically to answer our prayers. It’s like us having a platinum credit card on God’s bank account. God has handed us his royal scepter and asked us to use it. Jesus said in his farewell discourse, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it”. And “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” And , “I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 24Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”
The conditions for us exercising this promise of prayers answered lies within our reasonable capacity. Remaining in him and his words remaining in us are possible for any , earnest, sincere, ordinary born-again believer. If our prayers don’t work it’s because of us not some failure on God's part.
Prayer is our on-the-job training for our future sovereignty. It is through us, through our prayers, that God's authority and will are exercised here on earth. We are in apprenticeship for our destiny of ruling with Christ. It is through our prayers that Satan is constrained on earth, it is through our prayers that the Gospel promoted, it is through our prayers that evil is overcome, it is through our prayers that people we love enough to pray for come into the kingdom.
Our main business here and now, as a church, as individuals is to pray. Not only so that God’s power may be released and his will be done but so that you and I will be equipped to properly take our place at Christ’s side on the throne and rule with him for eternity.
Let us pray.
