Rescued

“They are your people still, your inheritance whom you powerfully and sovereignly rescued.” (Deuteronomy 9:29 MSG) Moses is talking to God in this passage. Recounting a series of moments in which he interceded for the wayward Israelites. And this final verse of the chapter paints such a clear picture of God's work. The powerful and sovereign work of God didn't stop with the Israelites in the Old Testament.

God rescues! He is the rescuer. He comes into our mess. Our trouble. Our problems. Our pains. Our selfishness. Our often self-inflicted upheaval. Our personal slavery of the soul. And He rescues.

It may not feel that way or seem that way. Especially when life is beating you up. But God rescues. He does it powerfully. In a demonstration that declares he alone has the ability to do it. He does it sovereignly. With the dignity and veracity of the King of All.

He brings anyone who would come to him into himself. An inheritance. A part of the family.

Yeah, sign me up for that.

Tree of Life

The forbidden fruit was tasted, and a curse fell upon mankind. A curse of sin and separation. The inaugural human couple was thrust from the Secret Garden, angelic sentries poised at the indiscernible entrance, and immortality was mercifully kept without the grasp of man. Thank God. Genesis 3 recounts to us the story of the fall of man. Some terrible things are at work, but in the midst of the great tragedy of the fall, there is also an incredible mercy. God separated mankind from the possibility of an attainable physical immortality. What if He hadn't? What if God had never allowed physical death?

You see, many people I know, or have read, who discount either the goodness of God or His sovereignty often do so by building a case upon the existence of death. Why would a good God allow death? How could an all powerful God allow death? To these I say, how could He not?

Had mankind been allowed to eat of the Tree of Life we would have been hopelessly lost in our immortality. We would have been forever stuck in this less-than-real existence, the super-reality of the spiritual realm lost to us. Furthermore, to fix this, God's Son Himself took on the form of man and allowed Himself to be murdered, to die, in order to restore the gap between human transgressors and the divine Godhead. Without death, there is no cross, no sacrifice, no atonement, and no resurrection.