Niels Prip – Blog

I was recently looking at a Commentary on Acts 2:22-23  “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—this Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death”.

The Commentary said the following, “It has now become the habit of the Apostle’s mind to trace the working of a divine purpose, which men, even when they are most bent on thwarting it, are unconsciously fulfilling”.

It is amazing to me how God’s plans are many times not seen while they are happening. Many times, even in our own lives, we can not understand His ways until time has passed and we are able to look back and “trace His divine purpose”. This applies to the world at large, and to our own personal lives.

Think of it, Peter and the disciples never expected the plan of God to be that Jesus would be crucified. It was Peter who famously was rebuked by Jesus for suggesting that He would never be given over and crucified. What changed? With Jesus being crucified, the disciples were devastated and scattered! But then He appeared to them, and they received the Holy Spirit. When Jesus ascended into heaven, they started looking back and remembering the things that Jesus taught them. They then began to “trace the divine purpose” with the help of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit.

In Acts 2, it is now Peter who stands up and addresses the crowd. He now acknowledges that Jesus “was delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death”. Wow! How little of God’s ways we understand.

This is a huge topic, one worthy of understanding in a better way. In another verse, Acts 4:27-28 it says, “In fact, this is the very city where Herod and Pontius Pilate conspired with the Gentiles and the people of Israel against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, they carried out what Your hand and will had decided beforehand would happen”. Again it was God’s hand in it all.

When we look at world history and events, can we realize that God is in control?  In Revelation 17 we have some similar assertions. Verse 17 says “For God has put it in their hearts to execute His purpose by having a common purpose, and by giving their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God should be fulfilled”. At the end of the age, it is God who orchestrates and puts into the hearts of men to execute His purposes. Just like when Jesus was crucified, it was God’s “divine purpose”! The more we search the scriptures and understand this, the better we understand God and His ways.

Again, a disclaimer, I am by no means an expert on all of this and don’t fully understand it all. We should all pray, “open my eyes that I might behold wonderful things out of Thy word”. If we can get a better grip of all this, we will have less turmoil in the body of Christ and in our lives. We will have less fear and worry over things of this world. I encourage you to look back over your own lives, can you trace God’s hand in it? Thank God, He works all things for good to those who love Him.