Chosen
“You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.” John 15:16
All throughout life we are called upon to make choices. We choose the house we will buy or the apartment to live in. We choose careers, or sometimes they chose us. We choose who we will marry and on and on the choices go. Until the day we die we will never be finished with making choices. I have always loved the passage of Scripture in Numbers 17 where God chose between the heads of the different tribes. The Israelites had been murmuring and complaining against Moses and Aaron and God wanted to show them who was boss. He told them to take a rod from each tribe and write the name of their tribe on it and he would choose between the rods. Verse five in this passage says, “It will come about that the rod of the man whom I choose will sprout. Thus I will lessen from upon Myself the grumblings of the sons of Israel, who are grumbling against you.” He was going to choose the tribe by the sign of the rod sprouting overnight. However, when you read on down in verse eight it says, “Now on the next day Moses went into the tent of the testimony; and behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi had sprouted and put forth buds and produced blossoms, and it bore ripe almonds.” Aaron’s rod did way more than what the Lord said it would originally do. God outdid himself to make a point! He wanted no question left in their minds that he had chosen Aaron. The word chose (H977 bachar)in this passage means to prove, try, select, distinguish, to be especially chosen. Something that is accepted or judged to be excellent after it has been tested. It is considered to be the best. The Top Gun, so to speak. The best of the best. It involves a careful, well-thought out choice. Aaron had been proven and judged to be excellent, a well-thought out choice. The term “put forth” or in some versions “put out” means to go forth with purpose for result. It is Strong’s H3318 yasta. God chose Aaron to go forth with purpose for a result. When God chooses us He wants us to go forth with purpose for a result. Read our original verse again. “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit...” John 15:16. God chose us to–go and to–bear fruit. Remember what Aaron’s rod did. It didn’t just sprout it also put forth buds, produced blossoms, and bore ripe almonds (fruit). This is an Old Testament picture of a New Testament principle we are to learn. When God chose us He chose us to go forth to bear fruit. There is a well-thought out plan for our lives. Will we live that plan out? Just as there are different types of fruit there are different types of ministry we are to bear fruit within. Even within a single fruit type there are different varieties. Take apples for example. There are Mutsu, Jonathan, Red and Golden Delicious and many more varieties. 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 tells us: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons.” Within the calling on our lives there are differences of how the Lord will work through each life. Two of us may be called to be apples but are of different varieties within the apple realm. Two could be called to teach but their methods of teaching are different. My call is to the nations but what I do in this realm is vastly different than what most people do in the mission realm. I am just a different variety of a missionary.
The Lord said to the Israelites “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth (Deut. 7:6).” We are the same to him if we are indeed Christians. Won't you produce the fruit God has called you to produce?
