"As I Have Purposed, So Shall It Stand"   

Isaiah 14:24

 

     Throughout the Scriptures we are assured that the Lord our God has a purpose of grace, according to which he sovereignly rules the world (Rom. 8:28-31; Eph. 1:3-6, 9, 11, 12). James declared, "Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world" (Acts 15:18). If all God's works were known to him from the beginning, then all were certain to be accomplished from the beginning. If they were certain, it must be because God purposed and ordained them. And if he ordained them, he ordained them from the beginning, before ever the world was made.

     GOD'S PURPOSE OF GRACE IS HIS SOVEREIGN, ETERNAL WORK OF PREDESTINATION. In predestination God acted in total sovereignty, moved and constrained by nothing but the good pleasure of his own will. We are plainly taught, by the apostle Paul, that all who are finally saved and obtain the inheritance of heavenly glory in Christ have been "predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory."

     THE PURPOSE OF GOD IN PREDESTINATION IS THE GLORY OF HIS OWN GREAT NAME IN THE SALVATION OF HIS ELECT. When the Jews were captives in Babylon their plight seemed hopeless. Deliverance appeared to be impossible. But God promised that he would do it. Their deliverance was irreversibly decreed.The same thing is true regard- ing the deliverance and salvation of God's elect in every age, out of every part of the world. As the Jews were his elect among the nations in the Old Testament, so there is now "a remnant according to the election of grace" (Rom. 11:6), a people whom God has given to his Son from eternity (John 17:2,6, 9), a multitude to whom God promised eternal life before the world began (Tit. 1:2). This elect remnant God will search out from the four corners of the earth and save (Isa. 43:5-7; John 10:16). In due time he will call them by his irresist- ible grace (Ezek. 34:11-13) and bring them into a saving knowledge of Christ (Isa. 65:1; II Pet. 3:9). He will also keep them unto everlasting, so that not one of his elect can ever be lost (John 17:12).

     God's purpose cannot fail! "The LORD of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; as I have purposed, so shall it stand."

 

Don Fortner