Proved Holy
“‘“You will advance against my people Israel like a cloud that covers the land. In days to come, Gog, I will bring you against my land, so that the nations may know me when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.”‘”
Today’s Text: Ezekiel 38:14-23 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
Is the LORD proved holy before my eyes through whatever trials and struggles and challenges that I may have to face?
The language of Scriptures is such that it portrays a sovereign God who is actively in control of all that is good and bad in this world. But the language of Scripture is also much more nuanced than that, because God exists outside of time and space.
I remember reading once about four-dimensional space (I think it was Stephen King). We can’t really comprehend it. But the author observed that pictures on a canvas represent three-dimensional objects within a two-dimensional space. People in a two-dimensional world would only see the world in two dimensions, even if a three-dimensional being happened to pass through it.
And so it is with our understanding of God in this world, but God must certainly exist in more than four dimensions, even.
The point is that our limited minds may be able to understand that God is infinite and that God is sovereign over all things, but can we really comprehend how God’s sovereign hand unfolds in this three-dimensional world (four, even, if you add the dimension of time)?
So when I ask the question, Is the LORD proved holy before my eyes through whatever trials and struggles and challenges I may have to face, it is off the mark to ask the related question: Why does God cause trials and struggles and challenges to come into my life at all? Why does our Sovereign LORD cause bad things to happen in this world at all?
The nuance of the language of Scripture could be understood in the following way: It’s not so much that God causes bad things to happen. It’s that God has given us free will, because free will is the ultimate essence of the image of God inside of us. But with that free will, we have chosen sin over obedience. And it is that sin that causes all the bad stuff that we experience in this world. But again, God exists outside of time and space, and God is still sovereign. And so He acts in human history to call the elect into the exercise of free will for redemption and obedience.
And who are the elect? They are not those whom God has literally chosen to be saved or not. The elect are those who desire to exercise their free will for redemption and obedience. And the basis of their obedience is to follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. They are the ones who have their sins forgiven through faith and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and have the hope of eternal life.
So I have to face trials and struggles and challenges in my life because of the curse of sin. Ultimately, in the midst of those trials and struggles and challenges, it is my faithfulness that God desires, because (1) it is through my faithfulness that God is glorified, and (2) it is through my faithfulness that I am transformed into the image of my Lord Jesus. Through God’s faithfulness in the midst of those trials, He is proved holy before my eyes. And that proof grows my faithfulness.
Father, Your ways are high above. How can I truly comprehend Your ways? But You have given us Your word to help us understand. May we not understand Your word as if we are reading children’s fables. Help us to understand the deep and complex riches of Your glorious grace—even in this world broken and marred by sins, even through the trials and struggles and challenges I have to endure because of sin. Be proved holy before my eyes, because You are God, and grow me in faithfulness. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
