A Glimpse of the Chosen: Glimpses of God’s Elective Grace

By Richard J. Hill

A Glimpse of the Chosen challenges readers to ponder the Bible’s teaching of the doctrine of election. The writer begins by giving a small glimpse into the domain of the absolute holiness of God, his amazing power, his righteousness, and his love.

God, who is the ultimate genius, has a divine purpose for everything that occurs in time and space, both good and evil, in order to ultimately reveal the amazing riches of his glory.

A Glimpse of the Chosen unfolds a glimpse of God’s work in calling people to him, beginning in the Garden of Eden, continuing throughout history, and ending with the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

The writer demonstrates that we are fallen creatures with a distorted knowledge of life. We can take comfort in the fact that no matter how things appear, God is in control and has a purpose for every human being, both saved and lost, that he creates.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512702880

Richard J. Hill

Richard J. “Dick” Hill is a pastor and the founder and director of Glimpses of Grace ministries. He has worked to share through his writings the Bible’s doctrines of grace that have defined his ministry for over 50 years. This book, A Glimpse of the Coming King, is part of his book series (A Glimpse of the Christ, A Glimpse of the Christian, A Glimpse of the Chosen, A Glimpse of Galatians, and A Glimpse of Romans). Hill is a graduate of Florida Bible College, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary, and Louisiana Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Linda, reside in Kosciusko, Mississippi. They have three children and nine grandchildren.

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Copyright © 2016 Richard J. Dick Hill.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-0289-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-0288-0 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date: 01/21/2020

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 A Glimpse of God

Chapter 2 A Glimpse of the First Act of Grace

Chapter 3 A Glimpse of God’s Choice of Noah

Chapter 4 A Glimpse of God’s Choice of Abraham

Chapter 5 A Glimpse of the Isaac Connection

Chapter 6 A Glimpse of the Word of God

Chapter 7 A Glimpse of Divine Appointments

Chapter 8 A Glimpse of God’s Foreknowledge

Chapter 9 A Glimpse of God’s Sovereignty

Chapter 10 A Glimpse of God’s Amazing Treasure

Chapter 11 A Glimpse of the Great Shepherd

Chapter 12 A Glimpse of the Chosen

Chapter 13 A Glimpse of the Chosen’s Response

Conclusion

Endnotes

Introduction

This is the third book in the Glimpses of Grace trilogy. The first two books, A Glimpse of the Christ and A Glimpse of the Christian, set the stage for this book.

Election is a central doctrine of the Bible, affirming that God saves sinners. According to the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which He regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners.¹ The doctrine of election explains how God’s grace brings salvation to people.

God, through the gospel, does not merely give people a chance to be saved when they decide whether or not they want the benefits that the gospel offers. God actually saves people. The Lord Jesus Christ provides salvation that is not hypothetical but actual. The precious benefit of the shed blood of Jesus Christ has a target audience in every generation throughout all of human history. This book contains my view of this great doctrine.

I was challenged early in my Christian life to study the Bible line-by-line, verse-by-verse, and word-by-word. I am convinced that God places every word in the Bible precisely where He wants it, and I believe that every word matters! I am also persuaded that a plain, common sense look at the meaning of each word in its proper context opens a clear understanding of God’s Word. It is this form of study that led me to the biblical positions that I hold. It is precisely because of this method of study that I came to my position on divine election.

My goal in writing this book is to reveal that the truth of election permeates the Bible. Election is not found in just a few obscure passages, but it is a part of the very fabric of God’s Word.

In order to begin to understand God’s amazing grace, one must begin with knowledge of just how big God is. God is an eternal, all-knowing, everywhere present, righteous and just God of love, who is all-powerful. God made the decision to give us life. He determined where and when our life would occur. He decided what nationality we would be, who our parents would be, that we would be male or female, that we would have blue eyes or brown, black hair or blond, and these decisions were made long before we were here. We were given no choice in any of this.

David said that God saw our substance even before we were in our mother’s womb and all of our days were written in His book before we were ever born. David called this information, precious. God also said that our names were recorded in His book of life from the very foundation of the world.

After the Fall, it was God alone who chose to cover Adam and Eve with the animal skins. The fallen couple did not ask Him to. Through Cain and Abel, God made two ways very clear: the right way to come to Him and the wrong way. What do Cain and Abel have to do with our modern culture? What happened to cause a loving God to destroy all creation and start over? What does it mean to be totally depraved?

God chose Noah to preserve life and to bring the Seed of the woman into the world. What part do Noah’s sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, play in the modern history of man? Who was Nimrod and what part did he play in history? Babylon is the most mentioned city in the Bible. Why is that the case?

Out of a world of paganism God chose a man named Abraham to become His champion of grace. When believers in the living God seemed to be swallowed up in paganism, God told His prophet Elijah that He had reserved for Himself seven thousand souls who had not bowed the knee to Baal.

When the Jews, the very people who were supposed to believe the gospel were failing miserably to do so, Paul explained that it was not because the Word of God had failed. God had to give life as He had given life to Isaac. God said of twin boys before they were born, Jacob I loved; Esau, I hated. Before the boys were born, God made a choice.

One of the most amazing truths is the work of the pre-incarnate Christ as the living Word of God. As God’s Word He called a select people to Himself. He called Moses, Abraham, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. No indication is given for any reason why God called them. He chose within His own sovereign will to call them.

The Word became flesh in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. God the Father directed every step that His Living Word took and every word that He said. Jesus was led to a series of divine appointments beginning with the calling of His disciples.

I have always been fascinated with the seven I am’s of Jesus Christ recorded in the gospel of John. I am especially drawn to His words, I am the Good Shepherd. There is no clearer explanation of the electing grace of God than the Lord Jesus Christ calling His sheep. This beautiful picture forever settled the issue for me.

God is the ultimate authority and power within His created universe. It is clearly displayed in the Bible through God’s control of the lives of people.

The Bible says that the amazing gospel of grace is the power of God leading to salvation. What is the gospel, and why is it the power of God? Can the gospel be distorted and confused? How? What is the true value of the cross? What makes it so valuable? What is repentance and saving faith? What does it mean that God so loved the world? This book will answer these and many other biblical questions.

I want to take the reader back through my adventure in grace. From the pen of the apostle Paul I began to catch my first real glimpses of God’s magnificent grace. Through his thirteen letters, I understood for the first time that I had sinned against God and that I deserved hell (Romans 3:23; 6:23). I learned that living a good life, or joining a particular church, or doing good works could not give me life before God.

I realized that I could only be given life by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone (Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 4:5; Titus 3:5). I discovered the true identity of the Lord Jesus Christ (John 10:30). Jesus Christ is God who took on flesh in order to die on the cross in my place (2 Corinthians 5:21). Because of Christ’s identity as the God-man, my sin debt was paid in full on the cross, and I now have eternal life based solely upon my personal faith in Him (Hebrews 10:10-14).

Because of my every word matters method of Bible study, it was inevitable that I would come across words that created in me my first feelings of mystery. These words created in me a strange mixture of awe and fear. The words are election, chosen, and predestination.

I read the words God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth (1 Thessalonians 2:13-14). I also read that God chose us in Jesus Christ before He created the world (Ephesians 1:4). At the end of his life while speaking from prison, Paul concluded, I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory (2 Timothy 2:10).

As I thought more on the meaning of these words and the context in which they were found, a silent, unmistakable alarm began to grip my heart. Could these texts mean what they say? This is the Word of God and this is what it says. I decided that the words could not possibly mean what they appeared to mean. I thought that God must have given people freedom to trust His Son or reject Him. There must be further explanation.

I was sitting in a class in Bible college when the subject of election came up. A revered professor zeroed in on the New Testament word foreknowledge from 1 Peter 1:2: Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.

The teacher explained it this way: Look, we are elect based on the foreknowledge of God. He was teaching that the word foreknowledge is the key that unlocks this mystery because God knows everything knowable. He looked down through the corridors of time and clearly foreknew what every human being was going to do concerning His Son. Those whom He foreknew were going to freely believe in His Son, He chose. But those whom He foreknew would freely reject His Son, He rejected. God left the choice concerning Jesus Christ up to the individual. The human will, according to my professor, is free.

I remember thinking, That’s it! I can make my own decision. Great! To verify his position, he turned to the eighth chapter of the book of Romans and read verses twenty-nine and thirty. He zeroed in on the phrase the ones that God foreknew, He also predestined" (Romans 8:29).

According to my prof, God simply foreknew who was going to respond positively to His Son based on the foreseen faith, so He predestined that group to be conformed to the image of His Son. He then called them, justified them, and glorified them. Again, everyone has the freedom to make up his or her own mind about the gospel and choose to believe or reject.

This sounded so good and so very settling to my anxious mind. I knew there had to be an answer and this was it. Wow! The issue was immediately settled. It was like releasing the air out of a balloon. The stress left me.

I never really considered the remote possibility that my teacher might be wrong in his view of the meaning of the word foreknowledge, but indeed he was. I will show in this book why he was wrong, and we will discover the correct meaning of the word.

Years later while teaching through the amazing miracle of our Lord’s feeding of the thousands, I made a fascinating discovery. Many had observed the miracle, eaten the fish and bread, and were overwhelmed with its impact. But most did not believe in the Christ. Jesus described Himself as the bread of life that came down from the Father. All who eat of this bread will never hunger. He then gave the reason that so many did not believe. The reason unveiled for me the most amazing truth imaginable. It is a truth that has become my most valuable treasure.

CHAPTER 1

A Glimpse of God

Many views of what God is like have surfaced over the years among those who believe that there is a God. Some hold a childlike view of God, believing Him to be a majestic old man sitting on a jewel-encrusted throne somewhere in the sky. Sitting within easy reach of His gigantic telescope, this God observes everyone in the world. On one side of Him is a massive marker board. On the other side is an enormous digital scale on which He is balancing the works of everyone. He watches each of us every second of our lives. He keeps close tabs on all our works, of what sort they are.

When we die, we will stand before Him. He will place all our good works on one side of the scale and our bad works on the other. Whichever way the scale moves, that will determine our ultimate destiny. If the bad outweighs the good, we will go to hell. If the good outweighs the bad, we will go to heaven. If it is close and teeters in the balance, God (because He is love) will place His hand on the good side and let us into heaven.

Believers laugh. I held a form of this view all my growing up years. But that imagery has taken root and has confused and distorted a true knowledge of the God revealed in the Bible.

Then there is the genie God. To some He is the convenient God that stays out of our lives – in the bottle – until He’s needed. We handle most problems on our own, but when real trouble comes, maybe in the form of a sickness that can’t be quickly diagnosed, or the illness of one of our children or grandchildren, or debt that can’t be quickly paid, or a serious crisis in our lives, we quickly run to the lamp and summons God who rapidly appears to do our bidding. We cry out to Him for help.

When the crisis passes, we put God back in the bottle. Then we go back to living our lives the way we choose, and God stays in the bottle patiently awaiting our next summons.

Others – mainly in the South – refer to God as the good Lord. To this crowd, God takes the shape of a benevolent old grandfather figure that loves unconditionally. That means that no matter what we do, how we choose to live, how we rationalize our sin, He will always say, Oh, that’s okay. I forgive you. Those who view God as the good Lord feel His characteristics of love and compassion far outweigh any other attributes He may have.

Then there is the wizard God, the magician who is ready to produce amazing miracles by charlatan evangelists that make demands upon God. On request, He shows Himself in mysterious ways. When one asks Him to speak in an audible voice, He complies. When He is asked to reveal Himself in startling visions, He appears. And on demand He heals immediately with just a word. By a human touch He slays people by His spirit.

We have fashioned God to be like us. A biblical understanding of God has been greatly reduced. We have shaped Him to our liking. We have made Him a gentler, kinder God who is dominated by His love. We have made Him a God who never makes demands on us and always accommodates every decision that we make. Someone once said that God made us in His image, and over time we have returned the favor. But none of these characterizations describe the qualities of the God who penned the Bible.

In his 2005 book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Christian Smith conducted a survey that was paid for by the Lilly Endowment. He surveyed American young people from the ages of 13 to 29. They were asked, What do you believe about God? What was discovered is that the majority believed in what they call Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). It has the following traits:

• A God exists who created the world and watches over human life on earth.

• God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

• The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

• God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when He is needed to resolve a problem.

• Good people go to heaven when they die.

An additional shocking discovery is that many of these beliefs are being picked up from the Sunday schools in many of our churches.² What is the true God really like? Let’s look at His amazing characteristics from the Bible.

GOD IS ETERNAL

The psalmist said that God has