Before the World Began

Posted on by korgrocker

“No, the wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God—his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began. But the rulers of this world have not understood it; if they had, they would not have crucified our glorious Lord.”
1 Corinthians 2:7-8 NLT

How is it possible that anything could be planned before Genesis 1? To think in this way though is to fail to realise who God is and His infinite capabilities. Mere humans are unable to get their minds around the fact that the Creator of the universe, God Himself, is not bounded by time and space. He has always been and will always be. Our scientists and philosophers also fail to appreciate that God exists, and so they dream up theory after theory about the origins of life and the universe, never considering, or deliberately avoiding, two basic questions – why is there not just nothing, not even an empty void, and where did all the matter that has formed the universe, and everything within it, come from. But unbelieving men and women will never be able to come up with a satisfactory answer, no matter how hard they try. Just by denying God will never mean that He doesn’t exist. Think about all those people in the Middle Ages (and even some today) who are convinced that the earth on which we live is flat. Just by denying the truth doesn’t make it go away. Genesis starts with four basic words –  “In the beginning, God …”, and that was the start of human knowledge. What was happening before the “beginning” is something we will never know in this life and I suspect we won’t care much about in the next because we will be fully occupied in the praise and worship of our glorious Creator.

The Old Testament says nothing about God’s mysterious plan devised “before the world began”, but it does contain over three hundred prophecies about the coming Messiah and His birth, death and resurrection. Psalm 22 even provides details of how He would die. But in the New Testament we find several references to when this mysterious and secret plan was put into place, before the foundation of the world. God knew what mankind would do and be like, and, because He is eternal, He could see the end from the beginning. Jesus made reference to the pre-creation relationship He had with His Father in His High Priestly prayer. John 17:5, 24, “Now, Father, bring me into the glory we shared before the world began. …  Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began!” Peter was there when Jesus was praying and He would have remembered what Jesus said and we find another reference in 1 Peter 1:20, “God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake”. Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:4-5, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure“. There is a more oblique reference in Revelation 13:8, “And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast. They are the ones whose names were not written in the Book of Life that belongs to the Lamb who was slaughtered before the world was made”. Of course, as we know, Jesus wasn’t crucified “before the world began”, but In God’s timeless plan, His death was planned long before it happened.

Is the phrase “before the world began” of any importance or relevance to us pilgrims today? It may be a nice conversation topic (or stopper!) when we talk about Jesus to our unbelieving friends, but apart from that should we be concerned? To believers, God’s eternal presence, His omnipresence, is a part of His character, and therefore something we should take note of. Before God all human history and more besides is laid out like the Bayeux tapestry, and we have a brief glimpse of a small part of it in the Bible and in our history books. Even the smallest details is there before Him, something we know because we read in Luke 12:6-7 that God knows all the sparrows and the number of hairs (or lack of) on our heads, “What is the price of five sparrows—two copper coins ? Yet God does not forget a single one of them. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows“. As an aside, someone once pointed out that God doesn’t just know how many hairs we have, but He has each one numbered. Really? But we mustn’t be surprised because God is also omniscient (all knowing). 

To turn things around, what would we think about God if he wasn’t omnipresent. That would introduce a limitation to our limitless God, destroying much of our faith in the process. Our God is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. Our world continues as mad and bad as it always has been since the Fall, but our eternal God is fully in control. Sin is allowed to take its course until the End of the Age, when God will finally bring His corrupted creation to an end, starting afresh with the new Heaven and Earth. But that is on the macro scale. There is also a micro impact, and that is with us pilgrims. Paul said “even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ”. Just imagine it. The omni-God thought about You and me with a love that is eternal, and he chose us. To add to that we read in Isaiah 49:16a, “See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands. … “. There are other verses too that expose how much God loves us. So we mustn’t be surprised about how God is implementing His Secret Plan. Instead we just need to apply our faith and believe. Believe that God loves us. Believe that God made us and everything else in this world. Believe that God wants our highest good. Believe that through Jesus He has provided a cloak of righteousness in response to our repentant hearts. Believe that one day He will call us home to the new life, planned before the creation of the world.

Dear Heavenly Father. As we try and get our minds around what we know about Your Secret Plan, we bask in Your love and forgiveness, assured of our future in the wold to come. We thank You. Amen.

God’s Secret Plan (3)

Posted on by korgrocker

“When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God’s secret plan. For I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified.”
1 Corinthians 2:1-2 NLT

“God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfil his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan.”
Ephesians 1:9-11 NLT

Perhaps we pilgrims have never considered God as a Being who has made plans. Why would He need to, because he created this world and everything in it? In Genesis we read that he created with a word, “Then God said, …”, so weighing it all up, God’s plan must be for our benefit. Through His grace He has allowed sin and evil to rumble on in our world, something that has impacted and corrupted every aspect of His perfect creation. Of course, He could have eliminated sinful humans at a stroke, as He did with the generation at the time of the Flood, but what would that achieve because no longer could God enjoy His human creation forever? He could have created a race of humans that never sinned, but what benefits are there in having robots praise Him with artificial intelligence creating the words of prayer and song? So God came up with the perfect answer. He made a plan that would eventually bring about the race of human beings that He wanted all those years ago, a plan that started with the creation of Adam and Eve. In those days in the Garden of Eden, God enjoyed spending time with Adam and Eve until the day when their sin ended the relationship. So God made a plan and it would require many centuries of grace, forgiveness and love, to redeem a people who were riddled by sin and evil and who rejected Him, their Creator, at every turn. And as the centuries stretch into millennia, the plan continues. God will never give up.

God’s secret plan has always been present in this world, but mankind generally has been unaware of it.  The prophets of old had the occasional glimpse, and with the benefit of hindsight we pilgrims can see parts of the plan coming to fruition. Jesus and His Message of the Cross was a significant milestone in the plan, and that act of love, offering mankind forgiveness for their sins, and righteousness in His presence, marked the beginning of the End Times, as the Second Coming of Jesus is awaited, His final appearance on the world stage. We don’t know when God will finally sign off the final milestone labelled “End of the Age”, and declare that the plan is complete, but one thing is for sure – we are much closer today than mankind was when Jesus walked on this planet. 

Paul wrote that God’s plan will come to fruition at “just the right time”. God’s plan is to “bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth”. A combining of Heaven and Earth is incomprehensible to us earthlings, but it is all in God’s plan. We see how the will happen in Revelation 21:1, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone“. In the next two verses, John received a vision so incredible that it had to be true. John wrote, “And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them“. In Revelation 21:6 we read, “And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true””. And who will be living in this New Jerusalem? Revelation 21:27, “Nothing evil will be allowed to enter, nor anyone who practices shameful idolatry and dishonesty—but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life“. 

That is God’s plan, and we pilgrims, believers who have put their faith in Jesus and the Message of the Cross, have been allowed access to God’s secret plan. Paradoxically it is only a secret to those who refuse to believe in God but it is not a secret anymore to believers in Jesus. He has gone on ahead of us and He is getting everything ready for that momentous day. What happens between now and then can be seen in the pages of Revelation, and in places the reading is uncomfortable. Many people, even believers, have dismissed the last Book in the Bible as irrelevant and more a fairy story, but it is there for a reason. It shows that God’s plan is still very much work in progress, and the Book of Revelation is in three parts. It starts with a warning to Christians everywhere, and then follows this with an age when living on Planet Earth gets more and more difficult and uncomfortable. Things get very bad, but then we see the turning point in Revelation 20 after which things get very much better – unless you are an unbeliever of course. But God isn’t fazed by people who rubbish His plan. They will find out what happens one day.

The good news for believers is that “we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan”. God didn’t just formulate a plan and then hoped it all worked out. His plan included all believers, each of whom God chose in advance. Peter wrote, “ … you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession … ” (1 Peter 2:9). Paul wrote in Romans 8:28, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them“. God is actively working out His plan in the lives of believers everywhere. We love God from the bottom of our hearts, secure in the knowledge that we are an important part of His plan, and He will one day enjoy our presence as we join him, first in Heaven and then in the New Jerusalem. John wrote, “No longer will there be a curse upon anything. For the throne of God and of the Lamb will be there, and his servants will worship him. And they will see his face, and his name will be written on their foreheads. And there will be no night there—no need for lamps or sun—for the Lord God will shine on them. And they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:3-5). So there we have it. If that is not Good News for us, then it will be if we consider the alternative. We note that there will be no opportunity for a lukewarm believer in God’s Kingdom. Instead we will entering a life so exciting, so complete, that is totally beyond human comprehension. But in His presence we will praise and worship Him, reigning with Him as He planned.

Dear Father God. All this is too difficult for us to get our minds around, so we ask that You help us stay close to You as You bring all things together in accordance with Your plan. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

God’s Secret Plan (1)

Posted on by korgrocker

“When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God’s secret plan. For I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified.”
1 Corinthians 2:1-2 NLT

Paul continues into chapter two with thoughts about wisdom, “impressive wisdom” at that. And there was no doubt that Paul had plenty of that. Here was the man who planted churches everywhere he went and provided for us much of the theology on which our faith is based through his letters to these churches. He never forgot his friends in the churches he had established. 2 Corinthians 11:27-28, “I have worked hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights. I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm. Then, besides all this, I have the daily burden of my concern for all the churches“. But we mustn’t forget that Paul was an educated man and was able to debate with the best of the people he met. In Thessalonica we read, “As was Paul’s custom, he went to the synagogue service, and for three Sabbaths in a row he used the Scriptures to reason with the people” (Acts 17:2). Paul’s wisdom and knowledge of the Scriptures (which would mostly have been the Hebrew Bible in those days) was sufficient to convince many and we read, “Some of the Jews who listened were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, along with many God-fearing Greek men and quite a few prominent women” (Acts 17:4). 

But in the case of the Corinthians, Paul reminded them that he “didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell [them] God’s secret plan”. All he preached to them was about Jesus and His crucifixion. The Message of the Cross is a powerful message and is the only gateway to eternal life. Jesus said, “And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life” (John 3:14-15). But Paul also mentioned “God’s secret plan”. This plan of course was a secret for many years before Jesus came to this world. Apart from a few hints from the old prophets, the Jews had no idea when or how their Messiah would arrive, and their expectation of His mission was related to the political situation in which they lived. They hated being under the rule of the Roman occupying forces and longed for the day when the Messiah would come and throw them out, allowing Israel to be an independent nation in its own right once again. But there was that day when Jesus was crucified for the sins of man, and God’s plan was revealed to everyone who believed in Him. 

“God’s secret plan” was in the making right from the beginning. Ephesians 1:4, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes”. But God’s plan is still a secret to most people today because they don’t have the key. Imagine a door into a locked room. We pilgrims long ago would have had no idea what was behind the door, even if we knew that it existed, but we didn’t really care anyway, being lost in our sins, unbelievers through and through. But one day someone gave us the key, when we became believers in Jesus, helping us to finally realise that we had indeed been chosen by God. And imagine our tentative steps as we open the door, exposing “God’s secret plan” right before us. A veritable treasure trove of goodies awaiting us, but, amazingly, the treasure was different for each one of us. And as we venture further and further into the space behind the door we find out more and more about “God’s secret plan”, tailor made just for you and me. Jesus said, “ … I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6); the only way the door can be unlocked is through Jesus. Unbelievers don’t have the key, and because of that they have no idea of what “God’s secret plan” was all about.

God has provided for us an inventory of the treasure located behind the door, and we call it the Bible. This Book, God’s only written work, is packed full of precious nuggets, spiritual treasure designed to equip us for a life to be spent with Him in Heaven. Earthly treasure, precious stones and metals such as diamonds and gold, is just that, contained on earth. But we know that one day it will all be burnt up, so we won’t find anything of human value behind the door. In Heaven, there will be what seems to be like earthly treasure, as we can read in Revelation 4:3, “The one sitting on the throne was as brilliant as gemstones—like jasper and carnelian. And the glow of an emerald circled his throne like a rainbow“, but this was John trying to describe a sight so wonderful that he could only explain it in a form that could be understood. Spiritual treasure, such as we will find in Heaven, is very different, and of infinitely more value, because it is all about God. The wonderful thing about the treasure we will find there is that it is available for us today. God in His grace and love has provided for us the Heavenly things of spiritual value for us to access in our lives today. 

So we pick up this Book and open its pages. We find not just printed words on a paper page, but a sparkling treasure trove that describes “God’s secret plan”. And as we read and read, His words leap out of the page right into our very souls. These words may be difficult to understand at first, but God is patient, and to His persevering saints, fellow pilgrims like us, with open hearts and minds, His grace flows into our lives, making us more like Jesus, “to be holy and without fault in his eyes”. What an amazing God we serve; He gives and gives and keeps on giving because He loves us and wants us to spend eternity with Him. And in deep gratitude we embrace all that He has for us, as we plod on in our journey to Glory.

Dear Father God, thank You for the treasure trove containing the details of Your secret plan that is Your Word. Please help us to understand as we mine the nuggets contained within in our daily lives. In Jesus’ name. Amen.