Actors On God's Stage [Part Two]

It is good to know that events and situations do not catch God by surprise like they do human beings. It is because they do not surprise or startle God that Jesus tells us to not let our hearts be troubled or afraid; God is on top and ahead of the situation regardless of what it is. [John 14] Furthermore, Jesus said that mere sparrows that are sold so cheaply are regarded by God; He knows the very hairs on our heads. [Luke 12:6-7] He knows all things; He is God—not some pseudo God, but really GOD!

Isaiah states that God has declared the end of all things from the beginning of all things. [Isa. 46:10] And he said further that the way God sees things is the way things are going to be. For you see, the way God sees things is the way He makes things; His words are powerful enough of themselves to make whatever He says stand as fact—His words are alive and potent. All things are within his power and within His will—God’s permissive will and God’s perfect will are often a way of seeing many things.*

The Apostle Paul is even more definitive is his discourse on the sovereignty of God. He stated that God has chosen us, saints in light, in him before the very foundation of the world to be in Him--I am not exactly sure what the foundation of the world is, but I can infer that it was before the world was made and placed there upon. That means that before there was a when or where, a then or there, before there was an Adam or an Eve, and before there was anything that we now know to exist, God had already declared within Himself that we would be in Him. [Eph. 1:4]

Today, the drama of our lives, the lyrics of our songs, the lines of our dialog were planned and written, as it were, by God before He started or completed his creation. And we were/are all to fit into His play because we were made for His pleasure--a concept that many Christians (and certainly the world) have lost sight of and/or redefined God’s pleasure into sweetness and honey! [Rev. 4:11] Many human beings think that we were placed on the earth for us to live our lives in pleasure and do whatever we think is good and proper, as defined by our own imaginations; of course, that is usually carried out by carnal living. We claim that God is love, as if that is all that God is. This is the sweetness and honey notion-box they concoct and place God into. But that is not God. That is only an attribute of God. He is much, much more than that, and I suggest that you not be deceived by your own wild and fanciful imaginations of God and learn the truth about him, as much as can be known of Him.

Paul argues in Romans, Chapter One, that that which may be known of God is revealed in and to ungodly men, as manifested through God’s wrath upon them for their ungodliness. [Rom. 1:18-19] His wrath upon them for their ungodliness shows that God is holy and He hates sin; it also shows that God is more than just love as the sweetness and honey crowd loves to box Him into; furthermore, it also shows that God angers when disobeyed. But many are unwilling to see this manifestation of God. Paul carries on this line of discourse of God revealing His wrath as a way of revealing himself and not being placed into a box of man’s choosing. In that much overlooked and scary ninth chapter of Romans, he puts forth a rhetorical question on the longsuffering of God that he may show His wrath and make His power known to those vessels He made for wrath and destruction. [Rom. 9:22] On the other hand, God has shown that he is merciful as well. For, Paul again argues, that God has concluded all gentiles in unbelief—a state of being that displeases God; for without faith it is impossible to please Him—that He may show His mercy upon all. And looking at the complexity and mysterious nature of God’s doing and mind, Paul speaks in doxology, saying,

O the depth of the riches both in wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of Him, and through Him and to Him are all things. To whom be glory forever. Amen. [Rom. 11:33-36]

Yet, this doxology does not suggest, as some do, that we should not seek to know God. But it cautions us that there is a cost paid to know God. Paul counted all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ; and having been found in Him without his own righteousness, which was of the law, he had the righteousness that is of Christ. He wanted to know Christ Jesus, who is God, in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering, being made conformable to his death--these are godly attributes. Paul continues this discourse and leads us to a knowledge of Christ Jesus as being perfection, a perfection we are to imitate in our lives while here in these bodies. [Phil. 3:7-15]

As you will see the notion of perfection threaded throughout of my writings, so will a keen reader find perfection throughout Paul’s writings as well. And as one travels on that road to perfection, he/she learns more of God and the mind of God; we see and learn His patterns and ways, as much as humanly possible, through our efforts at perfection. But a person not on his/her way to perfection will never get pass the surface of God’s word because one knows more about God as he/she follows on to know the Lord; one knows more as he considers and adheres to God’s word; one’s path becomes as a shinning light that becomes brighter unto that perfect day of the Lord. [Prov. 4:18; Hos. 6:3; 1 Cor. 13:9-12; 2 Tim. 2:7] Can’t you see why I stress, even as God does, perfection? The deeper things of God are never revealed to surface-livers, carnal minded men who do not love God’s word enough to live it and who are unwilling to pay a price that is peculiar to all who value God’s truth. For, you see, the truth must be bought, and not sold! It is to be given away to those who actually want it and are hungry for it, but we must not sell it. [Prov. 23:23; Mat. 5:6]

Yes, human beings were made, I repeat, for God’s glory, pleasure and desires, not our own. It is a satanic notion that life is merely for human beings to be happy and pleasure themselves. In His great house, God has made vessels of honor and vessels of dishonor fit for destruction. This is in the pleasure and providence of God, and we can no more rightly complain about this providence and creative actions than we can about the making of one candy bar for eating and one for destruction; such is within the purview of the maker’s will and right.

Paul addressed this notion of complaining about what and how God has made us in Romans 9. He reasons, can the vessel say to the potter, “Why has thou made me thus?” Can the thing formed say to the one who has formed it, “Why have you made me this way?” Logically and legally, until the thing formed has power to form itself, that thing has no standing to question why its creator has created him/it a certain way or to determine whether the creator’s creation is defective or perfect. Only the creator has such standing and such an eye. But for the creator we would have no existence or life, whatever conditions that existence or life has or exists under.

The creator is sovereign in his creation, not the things the creator creates—all creators are greater than their creations; that is a given of logic. God authored and gave existence and life to all things, whether living or nonliving as we define them. [John 1:3] That fact alone speaks to his sovereign will over all things, living or nonliving. Since no one but God has the power or the intelligence to create life, that then, gives God the absolute right to stand unquestioned about His creation.

Look at God’s history of exercising His absolute right to do as He will with His creatures and creation: In the case of Esau and Jacob, before either child was born, God had said that He loved Jacob and hated Esau. [Gen. 25:9-13] This had nothing to do with the twin boys, but it had everything to do with God and His absolute right to do with His creatures and His creation as He wills. It is folly to think that God needs to comport himself by man’s finite way of viewing Him or His creation. Man has made nothing, and without God he is nothing--by analogy, if human beings are anything, we are just travelers who have come along for the ride and don’t even help with the fuel costs. So God has done it all and need not conform to man’s way of thought or action. [Isa. 55:8] And thank God He doesn’t! If He decides to set His affection on Jacob and despise Esau, that is His right, and that is what He has done, and who are we to complain? All things are His.

Likewise, God preferred Isaac over Ishmael. Even though Ishmael was the elder son, Abraham begot Isaac begot both, and thereafter threw Ishmael out the house. Of course, Abraham stands in God’s stead here in this scripture. [Gen. 17] And God through this example is showing greater truths of how he would supplant one people for another. They are both His people but if he wants to set his affection on one and not another that he can and will and has done. He is God, the writer, the director, the producer of his own play; we are merely actors on His stage and must take to our parts and perform according to the script of God with all our minds, souls, and strength.

In the case of this earth, which is the Lord’s, He told Noah that he would destroy it with water, and He did. But in so doing, He knew what sinful man would do, so He said that He would destroy it the next time with fire. And on that theme, Peter says that the very elements that constitute this world and earth shall melt with fervent heat at the command of God, not by nuclear weapons as many suppose. God created this world and He will not allow man to destroy it. Jesus, seeing what horrible things we human being will do and are right now doing to His earth, said that except man’s days on this earth without his intervention, there would be no flesh saved. But, He said, for the elect sake, those days will be shortened. Left to ourselves, we would kill ourselves and all that God has made. “Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver us from this body of death?” It is the nature of sin resident within us that deceives us into thinking that we know the right way without God. We do not; that is why we must live by every word to proceeds out of God’s mouth. God knows the way that we should take. And to not take his way, we will die as fools!

We have been chosen for the various parts we play. [Eph. 1:4] So why not play them with all our might? Why not be the actors that God would be proud of? All human beings are actors, and please do not confine yourself to that commonly associated definition conjured up in America when the word "actor" arises. An actor need not be one pretending to be one thing when he/she is not; an actor is one who behaves/acts and reactors in situations. Anyone to does an act is an actor, hence, because we all do actions we are all actors of this stage of life.

In the lives of the saints, we understand that it is God who gives us both the will and the ability to do His pleasure. But for God we would not desire, not want, or even have an imagination to do the good things of God that we do. Furthermore, but for God we would never actually do those good things of God that we desire. Paul told the Church at Philippi that it is God who works in us both the will and to do his good pleasure. [Phil.2:13] It is not in man to do good; we of ourselves have altogether gone back from goodness and righteousness--backward from godliness. God said that there is none that doeth good, no, not one! [Psa. 14:2-4] And the good we do is by God’s grace on God’s stage.

How are you performing on the stage of God? Are you an actor who adheres to God’s script? Are you one who improvises and plays with the script to fit your tastes and your desires? Or are you one who has forgotten his lines? Never forget, God is the writer, the producer, the director, and the stage is all His. Furthermore, He is the audience for this play. He has chosen you to be an actor in His play; but remember, He can write you out of any part, out of any play, at any time as though you were never born and even kill your children, which is a process of obliterating you and all that represents you from the face of the earth. This is who our God is.

Job, the wisest man of the East, knew this complexity of God and it caused him to greatly fear the Lord. Listen to Job’s fear: “The thing I most greatly feared has come upon me.” [Job. 3:25] Job feared that the God of the universe would and does destroy the perfect and the wicked alike. [Job 9:22] Job had maintained his way before the Lord, but he knew this thing of God. He knew that we are all on God’s stage for God to do with us as suits His good pleasure. And because Job’s friends were not as wise as he, because they were not walking in the light of God’s word, they were limited in their understanding and could not see beyond one principle of God—sowing and reaping. [Job 4:8]

These were like those today who can only see God in one dimension, “God is love.” So Job’s friends were certain that Job had offended God. And strangely, many today, in trying to justify God and explain the affliction of Job by God, take the same tact in explaining Job. But God needs no defense of His actions because man misinterprets God. The friends of Job were wrong even as those who use the same reasoning today are wrong—those friends sought to denounce Job as a sinner. How else could they explain a righteous God afflicting a righteous man like Job? They had no idea of God’s sovereign nature and God’s absolute right to do with His creatures and His creation as He desires. Job argued that the application of the sowing and reaping principle was not applicable in his case. Instead, his case was about a higher level of truth: the sovereignty of God to do as He will with His creatures. Job did not know it then, but we know it now, that God was showing us what He would do with Jesus, a man perfectly approved of God, how hewould be used to take away the stain of sin and the sentence for sin that God had pronounced upon all mankind.

In closing this discussion, I admonish you that we are all on God’s stage, so we should examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith, acting out God’s script to the ability He has given us, or are we living out our own lines?

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*If you are confused about what I am saying and rush to some rash judgment that is simplistic and not refined, you have not understood that I speak on two levels of truth in this discourse; that of the sovereignty of God level and that of whosoever will level. The sovereignty of God level is where God is in His almighty glory and power—omniscient and omnipotent! The whosoever will level is the freewill level where the individual also has the ability to chose his destiny.

Surely the complexities of God are, in fact, so great that they surpass our understanding. But that which we can know of God, we should know, and a failure to know is a rejection of knowledge, which is an offense against God’s word that says, seek wisdom and in all thy getting, get an understanding. [Prov.4:7; Hosea 4:6]