Revelation 4:11 in the King James Version says, “For thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” This verse has offended me on several occasions because to me it seems kind of selfish to create all things just FOR HIS PLEASURE. We humans are down here struggling with life because God wanted all this FOR HIS PLEASURE. If you look at the condition of the world, I don’t see how He’s getting any pleasure out of it because I can barely watch the news without shaking my head, and He sees more than we do.
This morning I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and saw it again... "for his pleasure". Then I went and looked up the verse in the New King James Version and got a completely different revelation. It says, "You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created." OMG, not for His selfish pleasure, but by His sovereign will they were created. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made (John 1:3 NKJV). It was wrong of me to accuse God of being selfish.
The prophet Isaiah says God created the heavens and formed the earth. He made it... formed it... and established it to be inhabited. He did not create it in vain. He made man in His image and likeness. He gave life... and breath... and spirit to the people on the earth, and determined the pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings (Acts 17:26). In Him we live and move and have our being. God told the prophet Jeremiah that before He formed him in his mother's womb, He knew him... and sanctified him... and ordained him to be a prophet to the nations. In God's book, all our lives were recorded and every moment laid out before we had lived a single day (Ps 139:16).
When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God ordained Himself to come down and suffer the cross to redeem us from the curse. By no means is this a selfish God. He endured the cross despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb 12:2).
Forgive me Lord for being offended. I was wrong.
Genesis 1:31 (NKJV) Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
And He rested on the seventh.
Dee Richardson, Voice of the Dove