I love order and organization. It is diligently applied in my study. For example, I have about 1000 volumes in my library, and it is organized in such a way that each volume is placed in a very strict order. Consequently, if I am sitting at my desk and need half a dozen books to reference, I could show to you where they are located with my eyes shut.
I decided to apply a like order and organization to my wife’s kitchen some years ago, during our residence on the island Tortola. She had returned to the USA to visit family. I needed a pot in which to boil some water for drinking. While looking in the kitchen cabinets for the suitable pot, I thought she would be most appreciative if I made all her pots and pans readily visible and accessible. So, I put hooks in the wall from which to hang them. Each hook was spaced from the others in such a way as to make all the pots and pans the same distance from each other. I did a like arrangement for her other utensils also, such as ladles and stirring spoons. The array was very impressive – most orderly and organized. I was sure my wife would appreciate what I had done for her.
When I telephoned my wife to inform her that I had reorganized her kitchen, she replied, “Good! And when I return home, I will reorganize your study.” Needless to say, I immediately returned her kitchen to its original order and organization, and decided to never again try to reorganize or reorder or rearrange anything in her domain, and hoped she would treat me likewise.
I wish freewill-religionists would learn the lesson she taught to me. God is perfectly orderly and organized in all that He decrees and does. But freewill-religionists are so foolish as to attempt to improve on these things. For example: God’s gracious decree for the salvation of sinners is perfectly ordered: He, before the foundation of the world, chose whom He would for salvation, and predestined them to be His children, and accepted them in Christ, and sent Christ to redeem them, and then sent the Holy Spirit to apply to them all these saving benefits and to be the guarantee of their eternal heavenly inheritance (Ephesians 1:3-14).
But the freewill-religionist would reorder this decree so that: God chose for salvation those whom He foresaw choosing Him; predestination is discarded because it makes God “unfair”; men are accepted in Christ after they accept Him; Christ came to redeem everyone, not just God’s elect; the Holy Spirit cannot apply anything to us unless we let Him and cooperate with Him; nothing regarding salvation has a guarantee, and a heavenly inheritance may be lost, and every occupant in the everlasting hell will know he is doomed forever even though God dearly loved him, Christ vicariously died for him, and the Holy Spirit earnestly tried to save him.
As for me ... I am convinced that salvation is God’s domain (Jonah 2:9), and that He loves order and organization infinitely more than I do, and that His eternal decree is flawless (Romans 8:28-30), and that I would be well-advised to believe it, and that I would be a damnable fool to mess with it.
And I rejoice in knowing that “Although my house is not so [i.e., right] with God, yet He has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure.For this is all my salvation and all my desire; will He not make it increase?” (2 Samuel 23:5).
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