Gtcotr/ws080223
1 Corinthians 14:40 Let all things be done decently and in order.
The order of God is evident in all of creation. It is, as it should be, noticed when something or someone is out of order. Being out of order causes problems. The order I am referring to are the things God set into motion and the boundaries He established for all creation. God established order to protect us, to provide for us, and to ensure all things continue as God intended.
Someone might ask: “Who made Him God? Why does He get to decide what we should be?”
Well, we don’t know the answer to that question, and no one is smart enough to figure it out. The prophets Isaiah (Isaiah 29 & 64) and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 18), and even the Apostle Paul (Romans 9), wrote that He is the Potter, and we are the clay. Does not the Potter have a right to decide what the clay should become? Did any of us create ourselves? We are the work of His hands.
Isaiah 64:8 But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand.
From the orbits of the planets in our solar system to the reproduction cycles of the fruit fly and the fungus gnat, God has chosen the order in which creation is designed to work best. The end result of altering the order of God is degradation, death, and destruction.
Yet there are two created beings that have been given free will by God and in the exercise of that free will, they have altered the order of God. I am talking specifically about humans and angels.
God created angels, gave them certain abilities, set the in a realm best suited for them, and gave them their orders. Not all angels were created equal in stature, strength, or standing. Some were cherubim otherseraphim, principalities, mights, powers, dominions, archangels, and a heavenly host of angels who serve in choirs, carry prayers, usher saints into heaven, function as messengers, fight in battles and attend the needs of God’s children as guardian angels.
Our protestant Bible names the archangel Michael who is known as the Prince of Israel, along with the angel Gabriel who is a special messenger of God. Other angels remain nameless but not without recognition. One such is called the Angel of the Lord. Some believe this at times to be a personal reference to the Lord Jesus Christ in His role as the primary messenger of His Father God.
There were more than 12 legions of angels awaiting the call of Jesus to rescue Him from the tyranny of man as He made His way to the cross of Calvary. Jesus didn’t have to die on the cross to become the Son of God. He only had to die to save your sinful soul. Angel commanders, all in rank and in order, awaited His decision that day.
When the angel satan decided to rebel and then convinced others to join him, it upset the order of God. The heavenlies got messed up and all God planned for His creation fell from perfection into disruption and chaos.
We are given very little information about that moment, but we know God created a prison of darkness into which He placed some very evil and wicked angels, bound in chains awaiting judgment. We know this prison as hell. God intends to lock satan and all of his followers in this hell before casting it and all its prisoners into the eternal lake of fire bringing an end to the disorder once and forever more.
The next created being given free-will was mankind, the human race. The devil was not tempted by an outside force, as we know it, but rather “he was perfect until iniquity was found in him” (Ezekiel 28). Being angry with God and imagining himself as good or better than his Creator, satan tempted man and man fell from the perfection God gave him. This disorder which continues to degrade the life God intended will ultimately cause the death and the destruction of everything God created on this earth.
We live in a fallen world evidenced by the imperfections and disruptions to the perfect order and will of God. All of the earth and every living creature on it, God put under the authority of man. When man fell, disorder prevailed. As hard as we try, the earth and all of creation, including man, are yet in the clutches of darkness. Things will not get better but the world and society will wax worse and worse (2 Timothy 3:13). Diseases, earthquakes, wars, famine, and troubles of all kinds; from cosmic concerns to chromosomal anomalies, from the sin of gossip to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, from the gender affirming chaos to the full-blown evil of the anti-christ, this world has notfully experienced the darkness our disorder will yet bring to mankind upon the earth.
Any agenda which does not include returning to the order of creation does not stand a chance of making lives better. However, even if things get better, man is still on a collision course with death and destruction … The only hope is Jesus.
And the only ones given the responsibility and the privilege to share Jesus with a lost and dying world is us, the Believer. Each born-again Believer in Christ has ceased to be a mere mortal and has become a new creation in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17).
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
The old man and the old nature was crucified and buried with Christ and your soul has been saved. When you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, God counts His death as your death. If you died with Christ, you are also raised with Him and have been given a great commission (Matthew 28:18ff). In the divine order of God, the privilege of sharing the Gospel does not belong to angels, but to the children of God.
Let’s look at our text for this evening from the Book of Acts, chapter 10.
Acts 10 NKJV
1 ¶ There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian Regiment,
2 a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, who gave alms generously to the people, and prayed to God always.
3 About the ninth hour of the day he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God coming in and saying to him, “Cornelius!”
4 And when he observed him, he was afraid, and said, “What is it, lord?” So he said to him, “Your prayers and your alms have come up for a memorial before God.
5 “Now send men to Joppa, and send for Simon whose surname is Peter.
6 “He is lodging with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea. He will tell you what you must do.”
The angel did not share the Gospel of Salvation with Cornelius. It is not the divine order. The divine order given by Jesus in the Great Commission was not given to angels but to New Creation Believers. There is a divine order to things which both angels and Believers should respect.
The privilege and the responsibility of sharing Jesus are ours.
All the while God was preparing Cornelius and his household to hear the Gospel, God was also preparing Peter to share the Gospel with them.
God works all things together.
Acts 10:44 ¶ While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word.
Cornelius and his whole household were saved!
A similar thing happened as recorded in Acts 16 at Philippi. Although angels were present, no angel shared the Gospel with the jailer, rather it was Paul and Silas.
This is the divine order.
We should work to develop and hold to a Biblical world view. God’s way is the best way. Everything should be done decently and in order.
