"(for) I am the LORD (your) God."
"...keep all my commands by putting them into practice."
"I am the LORD who makes [you] holy."
"You must be holy because, I the LORD, am holy."
"I have set you apart from all other people to very my very own."
*His purpose in everything is clear...His holiness + glory!
The last two days in reading I exalt You, O God have been so great. I'll just let Jerry Bridges do all the "talking":
"If creation is the theater in which God displays His glorious wisdom, and if the various outworkings of providence represent the drama played out, then the redemptive mission of Christ is the climactic act. God's intention, Paul wrote, "was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Ephesians 3:10-11).
The church, as the object of Christ's redemptive work, is intended to display God's manifold wisdom. This word manifold has the idea of a multicolored or iridescent, producing a rainbowlike effect. It calls attention to the infinite diversity and sparkling beauty of God's wisdom as displayed in the entire drama of Christ's life, death, and resurrection and the consequent ingathering of people from all nations and all stations of life into one body of Christ.
It is only in Christ and His work that we see God's justice reconciled with mercy, His law reconciled with grace, Hist holiness with His love, and His power with His compassion. It is only in Christ that unworthy people are both humbled and exalted, and that formerly hostile Jews and Gentiles are reconciled and brought together into one body.
In our Lord's crucifixion, the momentous event in all history, God displayed in a special way His glorious wisdom in using the acts of sinful men to carry out His plan. The disciples acknowledged this in their prayer recorded in Acts 4:27-28.
Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the
Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire
against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They
did what your power and will had decided beforehand
should happen.
They all did what God decided beforehand should happen. The roman government and the Jewish leaders conspired together. They thought they were getting rid of a religious troublemaker. Instead they were simply stagehands in the world's greatest drama: the redemption of a people for God from every tribe and language and nation.
But the drama doesn't end at the Cross or even with the Resurrection. Christ's redemptive work must be applied to people's hearts. Throughout the centuries God has been calling them to salvation through an infinite diversity of ways and circumstances, all displaying His wisdom...
Now through His Spirit - and in a way we cannot understand - Christ dwells in us and we in Him. All this is from God and the outworking of His wisdom: "it is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from god - that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30)."
------
"Now look again at God's providence as it applies to His people. Earlier I defined God's providence as 'His constant care for and His absolute rule over all His creation, directing all things to their appointed end for His own glory.' It's appropriate now to add a final phrase: 'and for the good of His people.' God's providence is both for His glory and for the good of His people. He has designed His eternal purpose so that His glory and our good are inextricably bound together.
This grand truth gives substance to that bedrock promise in Romans 8:28 -"God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose (NASB). This takes us back again to the mystery of God's providence. How can God cause all things - the good and the bad, the big things and the little things - to work together for our good?
The good mentioned in Romans 8:28 is explained in the next verse as conformity to the likeness of Christ (For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren). We have our own idea of what good is, and it seldom includes difficulties and heartaches. But the psalmist said, 'It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees' (Psalm 119:71). And the writer of Hebrews said, 'God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness (12:10). God causes all of life's circumstances and events, including discipline and affliction, to work together for our good - to conform us to Christ.
Consider the sheer breadth of God's wisdom in bringing this about. Every event of your life - everything you do, everything that happens to you - is somehow woven together into a fabric that is making you more Christlike. There are millions of evens in your life each year, and God orchestrates them all for your good.
But you're just one person. No one knows how many true Christians there are in the world, but let's just assume about one billion (out of six billion people). Multiply that number by the millions of events occurring in each believer's life every year and you see the sheer magnitude of God's work. Only an infinite mind - and I truly mean infinite - is sufficient for such a task.
Consider the depth of God's wisdom in conforming us to Christ. We're all desperately sinful. In the words of the venerable J.C. Ryle, our best deeds are no more than splendid sins. We might say God has a big job to do in each of us. But he who named a hundred billion time a hundred billion stars and keeps them all in their respective courses can also cause everything in my life and in yours to conform us to Christ."
"Ah, Sovereign LORD...Nothing is to hard for you." How amazingly true is it that "your eyes are open to all the ways of men." And in your perfect awareness of all things, You perfectly control all circumstances, including the myriad details of my life. "Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you planned for us no one can recount to you; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare." Jeremiah 32:17, 19; Psalm 40:5
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