The Election

Editor's Note: The following is a sermonic excerpt from Mike Nafziger, youth pastor.

I was recently at the zoo with a friend. After we saw the cutest baby giraffe in the entire world, we went to see the rhinoceroses. As we approached, we noticed the oppressive smell coming from their pen. We looked out and saw three rhinos laying down almost completely submerged in mud and filth, trying to avoid the heat. The person I was with said, “Oh, these guys are kind of cute!” I said, “Cute? No! This is so sad! It’s 95 degrees out here and these rhinos are laying here in the mud and in their own feces and are getting attacked by flies! This is disgusting! And the saddest part of all? They like it!” I thought to myself that if I could speak rhino and went and told them that they didn’t have to live in their own filth anymore; that they could get up out of the mud and the zookeeper would give them a nice cool hose down and let them live in the grassy area; if the rhinos were offered this opportunity, they wouldn’t take it. They were drawn to the filth. They desired the filth. The filth was comfortable to them, and in their filth they were never forced to think about the oppressive heat facing them outside. Brothers and Sisters, the same is true for us! On our own, we are drawn to our sinful nature. It is comfortable for us, it is all we know. This is what Paul is talking about when he says in Romans 7, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” But then there is hope: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We have no means on our own to rid ourselves of the filth that we love to wallow in. But thanks be to God that even before the foundation of the world he chose us through Christ to be holy and blameless before him in love. “By grace we have been saved.” Only after Christ opens our eyes and our hearts can we see our sinful flesh for what it is, a pit of rhino dung. It is on this basis that we should read the rest of Ephesians 1, and in this understanding the promises of God become even more praiseworthy and awe-inspiring.