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Nevertheless, "Hath God cast away His People?". No! for within His desire for Israel
is the `hard core' of His purpose to fulfil the covenants with them, and with Abraham
their forefather.
"Thus saith the Lord; if ye can break My covenant of the day, and My covenant of the
night, and that there should not be day and night in their season; then may also My
covenant be broken with David My servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon
his throne; and with the Levites the priest, My ministers . . . . . If My covenant be not
with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; then
will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David My servant, so that I will not take any of his
seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; for I will cause their
captivity to return, and have mercy on them" (Jer. 33: 20-26).
There are two Scriptures only, involving the use of a word to do with the purpose of
God, which have possible applications to members of the Body of Christ. The first is to
be found in James 1: 18:
"Of His Own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of
firstfruits of His creatures",
or more literally having purposed (or determined) He begat us. God does not merely
wish, or desire that certain ones should be begotten with the word of truth, for that would
leave our new nature and our salvation at the mercy of our desires, and our response, we
should be saved by our decision. We are saved `according to the purpose of Him Who
worketh all things after the counsel of His Own will'. As with those to whom James
wrote, so we also are `begotten' with the word of truth, and if they were to be `a kind of
firstfruits of His creatures', may we not say, in the light of Ephesians, that we are to be `a
kind of firstfruits' of `the all things'? In Heb. 6: 17 we read:
"Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the
immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath."
God purposing . . . . . to shew . . . . . the immutability of His purpose;
and by the
unchangeableness of His purpose to `the heirs of promise', confirms
to us `the
immutability of His purpose' for us. We have every reason for the utmost
confidence;
our salvation depends upon His purpose, and our hope is secured to
us by the
`immutability of His purpose'.
But for those whose salvation is certain, and their hope secure, God has certain
desires. It is of these that Paul writes in Rom. 12: 1, 2: "that ye may assess what is the
good and well pleasing, and perfect desire of God". Clearly as human beings, even if we
were in the position fully to know the purpose of God, our limitations would prevent us
from being able to `assess' it. We do need to be able to discover the good and well
pleasing and perfect desire of God to us, and above all, as we experience it, as we test it,
to discover that it is indeed, for us, good and well pleasing and perfect. Fundamentally
this desire is, as we saw in the last study, our sanctification: "This is the desire of God,
even your sanctification". He desires that we should be separated, not so much separated
from anything, as to be separated to Himself. As, increasingly, we are separated to Him,