God’s Eternal Plan
A compilation
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God’s greatest creation is not the flung stars or the gorged canyons; it’s his eternal plan to reach his children. Behind his pursuit of us is the same brilliance behind the rotating seasons and the orbiting planets. Heaven and earth know no greater passion than God’s personal passion for you and your return. Through holy surprises he has made his faithfulness clear.
Noah saw it as the clouds opened and the rainbow appeared. Abraham felt it as he placed his hand on aging Sarah’s belly. Jacob found it through failure. Joseph experienced it in prison. Pharaoh heard it through Moses. “Let my people go.”
But Pharaoh refused. As a result, he was given a front-row seat in the arena of divine devotion. Water became blood. The day became night. Locusts came. Children died. The Red Sea opened. The Egyptian army drowned.
Listen to these seldom-read but impassioned words of Moses as he speaks to the Israelites.
Nothing like this has ever happened before! Look at the past, long before you were even born. Go all the way back to when God made humans on the earth, and look from one end of heaven to the other. Nothing like this has ever been heard of! No other people have ever heard God speak from a fire and have still lived. But you have. No other god has ever taken for himself one nation out of another. But the LORD your God did this for you in Egypt, right before your own eyes. He did it with tests, signs, miracles, war, and great sights, by his great power and strength.—Deuteronomy 4:32–34
Moses’ message? God will change the world to reach the world. God is tireless, relentless. He refuses to quit. … Noah’s God is your God. The promise given to Abram is given to you. The finger witnessed in Pharaoh’s world is moving in yours. God is in the thick of things in your world. He has not taken up residence in a distant galaxy. He has not removed himself from history. He has not chosen to seclude himself on a throne in an incandescent castle. He has drawn near. He has involved himself in the carpools, heartbreaks, and funeral homes of our day.
It was this love that pursued the Israelites. It was this love that sent the prophets. It was this love that wrapped itself in human flesh and descended the birth canal of Mary. It was this love that walked the hard trails of Galilee. … And it was this love that Jesus was describing on his last Tuesday. The same love that, on Friday, would take him to the cross. The cross, the zenith of history. All of the past pointed to it and all of the future would depend upon it. It’s the great triumph of heaven: God is on the earth.—Max Lucado
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“Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse.”1 The heavens are yet declaring the glory of God; the skies are yet proclaiming the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display the love of one who invites us into the story of life itself.—Stuart McAllister2
Amazing grace
The gospel of grace begins and ends with forgiveness. And people write songs with titles like “Amazing Grace” for one reason: grace is the only force in the universe powerful enough to break the chains that enslave generations. Grace alone melts ungrace…
At the center of Jesus’ parables of grace stands a God who takes the initiative toward us: a lovesick father who runs to meet the prodigal, a king who cancels a debt too large for any servant to reimburse, an employer who pays eleventh-hour workers the same as the first-hour crew, a banquet-giver who goes out to the highways and the byways in search of undeserving guests.
God shattered the inexorable law of sin and retribution by invading earth, absorbing the worst we had to offer, crucifixion, and then fashioning from that cruel deed the remedy for the human condition. Calvary broke up the logjam between justice and forgiveness. By accepting onto his innocent self all the severe demands of justice, Jesus broke forever the chain of ungrace.—Philip Yancey3
In His name
By instructing His disciples, and ultimately all of us, to pray in His name, Jesus was telling us that we have the right to come boldly before God’s throne of grace, because we are members of God’s family through the acceptance of Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins.
While God did speak and interact with specific individuals throughout the Old Testament, and performed amazing miracles to protect and provide for His people, generally people didn’t have the level of direct access to God that we have today. They were not yet the sons and daughters of God through faith in His Son.4 They didn’t have the same personal relationship that we can have today through being fully reconciled to God by receiving Jesus as our Savior and having the Spirit of God dwelling within us.5
Prior to the new covenant established by Jesus’ death on the cross, the faithful had access to God and redemption of sins through the sacrificial system of the temple. God was considered to be dwelling in the Holy of Holies, the innermost part of the temple, which was divided from the rest of the temple by a thick curtain. Only the high priest was allowed into the Holy of Holies, and only on one day of the year.
Upon Jesus’ death, that veil was torn in two. Since His death and resurrection and the imparting of the Holy Spirit, we have the privilege of accessing God directly.—Peter Amsterdam
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Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.—Hebrews 10:19–22 ESV
Published on Anchor November 2016. Read by Jason Lawrence.
Music by Michael Dooley.
1 Romans 1:20 NRSV.
3 Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing about Grace?
4 John 1:12.
5 2 Corinthians 5:18.
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