MATTHEW 6:25-34 - A Spirit-Entranced World

Introduction

(Read Matthew 6:25-34 )

This morning we are drawing to a close our series on “The Spirit-Filled Life”—Who the Holy Spirit is, what He does in our lives, how He speaks to us through the Book He has written, and how He is involved in our salvation and sanctification. We have spent these past few weeks working through this topic because we live in a time and place where there are many false, unhealthy and even spiritually dangerous teachings being promoted about God the Holy Spirit and His work. We have already addressed the error that says that the Holy Spirit gives independent revelation outside the Scriptures, and come to understand that the Bible is completely sufficient, authoritative and powerful to work in every circumstance of a believer’s life.

But when we stand as a church on the utter sufficiency of the Bible as our guide for life, and that the Holy Spirit no longer speaks to us in the same way that He spoke to the Apostles and prophets who wrote the Scriptures, we are often accused of believing in a God who is silent. He wrote a letter to us and hasn’t been heard from since.

And this accusation is further advanced against churches who understand from the Scriptures that the time of the remarkable gifts of the early church (tongues, healings, prophecy, and so on) are no longer operating in the church today—that those gifts have ceased with the death of the last of the Apostles, and are no longer to be expected today. The accusation is that we are not Christians, but in fact deists—the heresy that says that God is like the “Cosmic Clockmaker” who created everything, then winds it up like a clock to run all by itself while He walks away from it and has nothing more to do with it. If we do not affirm the work of the Holy Spirit to give the gift of tongues and prophecy and deliverance today, if we are not looking for these miraculous manifestations of power, we are in fact denying that God is involved in this world.

I want to show you this morning from God’s Word how shockingly naive and Biblically ignorant that accusation is. Because the Scripture makes it plain that

You live in a world SATURATED with the PRESENT and ACTIVE work of God’s SPIRIT

We saw it in the passage from the Sermon on the Mount that I just read a moment ago—that God Himself feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field—Jesus was encouraging His followers not to be anxious about their lives by saying that God was so active and present and involved in this world that He personally fed the birds and clothed the lilies. God is that involved and active.

The theological term for God’s present and active work in the world is represented by the word providence. It is based on the word “provide”—from the Latin word pro (“forward”, or “on behalf of”) and vide (“to see”). We actually have an idiom in English that comes very close to this—if you are going to take care of something or provide what is necessary for something, you can say “I will see to it”. “I will look after that...” And so when we think of God’s providence, it is helpful to think in terms of Him seeing to it that everything that takes place accomplishes His purposes in every way.

We don’t really see the word providence used in the Scriptures, but the idea of God “seeing to it” that His will is accomplished is very plain. In Genesis 22, for instance, when Abraham and Isaac are going up the mountain, Isaac asks his father,

Genesis 22:7–8 (ESV)

7 And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.

The literal translation of that verse in Hebrew comes across as “God will see for Himself a lamb...” God saw to it that a sacrifice was provided for Abraham—He governed the growth of the thicket, he shaped the ram’s horns so that they would catch, He superintended the timing of their arrival to find it at just the right time—everything in that account of Abraham’s sacrifice was perfectly governed by God to accomplish every purpose He had for it.

And so we can define the doctrine of God’s providence like this:

PROVIDENCE: God will “SEE TO IT” that all things HAPPEN to the PRAISE of His GLORY and the GOOD of His PEOPLE

So in our time this morning I want to focus on three arenas where we see His providence on display. First, turn with me to the passage that we read together in our worship earlier this morning, Psalm 104 (page 502 in the pew Bible). You live in a world saturated by the present and active work of God’s Spirit in His acts of providence. First, consider His providence as

I. His guidance in the WORLD He CREATED (Psalm 104)

Throughout this psalm we have statement after statement of the continuous, active presence of God in all of creation. The psalmist makes it clear here in this song that God’s providence is seen as

He CREATES and SUSTAINS all that is (v. 30; cp. Matt. 6:26)

The Holy Spirit is the One who brings forth every living thing--

Psalm 104:30 (ESV)

30 When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.

And just as Jesus said in Matthew, He directly keeps all creatures alive:

Psalm 104:10–14 (ESV)

10 You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills; 11 they give drink to every beast of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. 12 Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell; they sing among the branches. 13 From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. 14 You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth

This is not a picture of a God who wound up the creation and let it run by itself; this is a God Who actively guides and personally brings forth everything that comes to pass:

Psalm 104:5–9 (ESV)

5 He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. 6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7 At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. 8 The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. 9 You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.

In a sermon on Ezekiel 1, Charles Spurgeon put it this way:

I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes—that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens—that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence—the fall of . . . leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche. (Charles Spurgeon, “God’s Providence,” sermon on Ezek. 1:15–19, Accessed 05/24/2023, https://answersingenesis.org/education/spurgeon-sermons/3114-providence/)

That hummingbird that flits across your porch is kept in the air by God’s hand. The air pressure in your tires is kept constant because God Himself is moment by moment ordering the movement of all those air molecules at precisely the correct velocity. The sway of every leaf on every tree in the forest is moved in its pattern by the loving hand of God. The rush of blood that you hear when you place your ear on your child’s chest is because God is commanding her heart to pump every beat. Everywhere you look you are seeing the mighty hand of God continuously upholding and sustaining and feeding and caring and governing and commanding—there is not one rogue molecule in all of the cosmos that is not governed by His active, continuous presence!

And not only does He create and sustain all things, but Psalm 104 tells us that

He REJOICES in ALL His works (v. 31; cp. vv. 25-26)

Psalm 104:31 (ESV)

31 May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works,

God not only creates and sustains all that is, the Scripture says that He delights in it! In verses 25-26 we read that God created the seas for Leviathan to play in—God is endlessly delighted and happy in His work of actively and personally guiding all things according to His providence.

G. K. Chesterton wrote about God’s inexhaustible delight in the world He has made, comparing His joy to that of a young child who shouts “Again! Again!” over something that they delight in. He suggests that

...God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” (Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

In his book on the providence of God, John Piper takes Chesterton’s thoughts one step further:

I used to look at sunrises when I was jogging and think that God has created a beautiful world. Then it became less general and more specific, more personal. I said, “Every morning God paints a different sunrise.” He never gets tired of doing it again and again. But then it struck me. No, he doesn’t do it again and again. He never stops doing it. The sun is always rising somewhere in the world. God guides the sun twenty-four hours every day and paints sunrises at every moment, century after century without one second of respite, and never grows weary or less thrilled with the work of his hands. Even when cloud cover keeps man from seeing it, God is painting spectacular sunrises above the clouds. (Piper, J. (2021). Providence. Crossway Books. p. 21)

What a tragedy it is that we live in a world that considers it more true to talk about the technicalities of light refracting through the atmosphere that creates a sunset than to say God delights to paint that sky, or that is is more accurate to talk about soil nutrients and photosynthesis than to say “God makes the grass grow!” (Piper, p. 224). And what a heartbreaking ignorance is displayed by the nonsense that saying the miraculous sign gifts have ceased makes you a deist who denies God’s active presence in this world!

Christian, you live in a world that is saturated with the present and active work of the Spirit of God! And if God really is that present, that active, that engaged in His delightful “seeing to” all the events and circumstances of this world, then that means His providence is

II. The ground of your CONTENTMENT and PEACE (Hebrews 13:5-6; cp. Romans 8:28; Philippians 4:11-12)

Turn with me to the book of Hebrews, Chapter 5 (p. 1009). The author is exhorting his readers to practical acts of Christian godliness. And in verses 5-6 he encourages them against the sin of discontentment. And he does it by appealing to the providence of God—look at verses 5-6:

Hebrews 13:5–6 (ESV)

5 Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” 6 So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”

Don’t be greedy, don’t make money an idol; instead, be content with what you have. And what is the ground of that contentment? “Be content with what you have for [because] God has said that He will never leave you or forsake you—He will be present with you and will “see to it” that you will have what you need! What can men do to you—you have the all-powerful Creator God who is providentially “looking after” you! The same God who never tires of painting sunrises and spinning galaxies and holding together every quark that makes up every proton in every atom in all of the cosmos—He will never tire of “looking after” you!

And not only that, Christian—but you have the additional assurance that

He has PROMISED you nothing but GOOD (Romans 8:28)

It is the God of all providence who has promised that

Romans 8:28 (ESV)

28 ...for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

The continual, active, personal and present providence of God means that He is working every single moment of your life for your good and His glory! Not just the joys and the blessings and the laughter—but if God really is “seeing to it” that everything works for your good, then that means He is also orchestrating the sorrows, the broken hearts, the betrayals, the illnesses, the failures and sins and disappointments as well—all things means all things! The same God who has ordained the pathway of every tear that falls from your eye will see to it that that tear will water a harvest of your eternal joy in Him!

Christian, you live in a world that is saturated by the present and active work of the Spirit of God—and that means that not only will He see to it that all things work together for your good and His glory, but also that

He has PLACED you in your ROLE (Philippians 4:11-12)

Paul’s confident contentment in Philippians 4 is grounded in his understanding that God is looking after him:

Philippians 4:11–12 (ESV)

11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.

He understood that because God is providentially ordaining and bringing about whatever comes to pass that God is the one who put Paul in either plenty or want! God is seeing to every facet of your life for your good, Christian, and that includes the role He has placed you in.

In his book The Art of Divine Contentment, Thomas Watson puts it this way:

Let a Christian often think with himself, who hath placed me here; where I am in a higher sphere or in a lower? Not chance or fortune, (as the purblind heathens imagined); no, it is the will of God that hath by His providence fixed me in this orb; we must act that scene which God would have us. (Thomas Watson, The Art of Divine Contentment, p. 21)

I love that statement— “we must act that scene which God would have us”. If God really is the Orchestrater and Author of your life, Christian, then what kind of character are you playing? Who are you in the story? As one author puts it:

Are you the guy who’s there just to make the actual hero look good? Are you the guy who’s there just to die as a morality tale, as a lesson, a cautionary tale for other people? You might not be one of the REAL villains—a lecherous youth pastor, an unfaithful husband—but you are SOMETHING. You are the back-stabbing friend, the irritable dad, the horrible boyfriend, the gossip of a girlfriend. You are a complainer, you are a whiner—you are SOMEONE, and you are someone you probably would not actually like if you saw them on screen. Trials come; do you snap? Do you lose it? Your pipes freeze. Your girlfriend leaves you. Who are you in that story? We should be laughing, because God is laughing. We should be sacrificing ourselves because God sacrifices His own Son. We should be like Him. We should be THOSE characters. (N. D. Wilson, Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl)

Christian, God has providentially “seen to it” that you have been cast in the role He wants you to play—play that role well.

You live in a world that is saturated with the present and active work of the Spirit of God—His providence is displayed in the world He has created, it is the ground of your contentment and peace in this life, and His providence is

III. The guarantee of your PROTECTION and GUIDANCE (1 Timothy 4:10)

One more passage to turn to this morning—1 Timothy 4 (page 992). Paul is pointing Timothy to “set [his] hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” The providence of God works in the lives of every human being—He brings the rain on the just on the unjust, the wicked receive their bread from His hand just the same as do the righteous. Picture the most cruel and dangerous heroin dealer, driving back to Philadelphia after selling his poison in DuBois, marveling at another one of God’s masterpiece sunrises as he drives along I-80. God’s providence cares for and blesses and upholds all people, but especially His own children who have been bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. That drug dealer may get to enjoy a beautiful sunrise while reveling in his evil, but the children of God get the sunrise and deliverance from evil!

The providence of God, Christian, is your guarantee of your protection

In the way that He KEEPS you from JUDGMENT (Amos 9:8-9)

This is what we see in the Old Testament prophet Amos, as he wrote about God’s coming judgment:

Amos 9:8–9 (ESV)

8 Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground, except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” declares the Lord. 9 “For behold, I will command, and shake the house of Israel among all the nations as one shakes with a sieve, but no pebble shall fall to the earth.

God will shake and destroy the kingdoms of the wicked, but of His people, not one pebble shall fall to earth! Even as you are being shaken along with everyone and everything else in these days, Christian—even though the nation you live in and the community you are part of is being sifted like wheat, you will not fall with it! The God Who orchestrates and decrees and ordains every single molecule of the cosmos has decreed that you will not be destroyed! And at any given moment the Spirit of God is at work in a million different ways to keep you and uphold you and protect you and surround you and “look after you” with His steadfast lovingkindness!

The providence of God is the guarantee of your protection from judgment—and it is your guarantee of your guidance in this life

In the way that He LEADS you in DISCERNMENT (Hebrews 5:14)

A couple of weeks ago, we briefly examined from Hebrews 5:14 how the Holy Spirit works to illumine the hearts and minds of His children as His Word works in them, so that they “have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” And we were careful to establish that this does not mean that we have leave, for instance, to take any random thought that crosses our minds about someone and believe that is some kind of “revelation” or “word of prophecy” that we are meant to share with them.

But there are times in every believer’s life when God’s Spirit moves them in a remarkable or extraordinary way. Let me give you an example in the recent past of our own church family. A number of years ago we sold the church parsonage, and we began seeking God’s direction as to what to do with the proceeds. Around that same time Dave Taylor, our missionary with The Door in Bellwood, was working to establish the Lion Heart ministry for young men. One Sunday morning in our elders’ meeting, Steve shared that God had been impressing on his heart that we needed to give a substantial amount from the parsonage proceeds toward LionHeart. We talked together and prayed about it, and decided to give (I think) $10,000 dollars. But Steve came back and said, “Guys, I just can’t shake the feeling that we need to give more—for some reason, I keep thinking it should be more like $25,000.” And so we presented that figure in our congregational business meeting, and it was unanimously approved.

A few days after that meeting, after the check had been cut and we had arranged for Dave to come to Bethel to visit so we could surprise him with the check, we saw his latest newsletter that said that he had been praying that God would provide for some major expenses for Lion Heart; that God would provide the ministry with $25,000. (When we presented the check, Dave said that he was praying that God would provide that amount, but had no idea He was going to provide it all at once and from one church!)

Now, any of you that know Steve Null Jr. know that he is the last person on earth that would claim that he received some special revelation from God, or that he had some “prophetic word of knowledge” about the needs at Lion Heart. If you ask him, he will just tell you that God worked it all out—and when you understand the providence of God as revealed in the Scriptures, you see that that is exactly right. God “saw to it” that the Lion Heart program got the money they needed, because He is intimately and actively engaged in every single thing that takes place. It wasn’t some gift of prophecy or revelation; it was God’s wonderful and perfect and timely providence. And to insist that because deny that it was some sort of “gift of prophecy” then that means we don’t believe in the Holy Spirit’s work at all is a slanderous lie from the pit of Hell itself.

You live in a world that is simply saturated with the present and active work of the Spirit of God. From every grain of dust that blows on the wind to every sparrow that feeds in the meadow to every helium atom fused from hydrogen in every star in every galaxy, from every song of joy from every lip to every broken-hearted tear falling from every eye, from every roll of the die to every thought of the heart to every answer on the lips, God will see to it that all things happen to the praise of His glory and the good of His people.

And for you who belong to Jesus Christ by faith, that means that all of the infinite movements of the providence of God will redound to your eternal happiness in Him! Walk outside and feel the warm sunshine on your face and know that your infinitely delighted Father has said “Do it again!” to the Sun, and will say “do it again!” to the Moon as it rises tonight, and let His rejoicing in all His works flow into you that you may praise Him in it. You do not live in a wind-up, clockwork world—you live in a world that lives and moves and has its being in the delight of your Heavenly Father!

All of our steps are numbered and ordered by God’s wise providence—we are not robots, we decide where to go and what to do without being coerced or restrained—and yet God is so utterly and completely in control that He even uses our freedom to accomplish His purposes! And so it is with you this morning. You came here today of your own volition, and yet at the same time God’s providence directed your steps here. And that means He has His wise and perfect purposes for you here this morning.

Perhaps He has called you here because you are His beloved child who is weary and heavy laden by your circumstances—He invites you (as Jesus did in Matthew) to lift up your eyes to the world around you and know that He who feeds the birds and clothes the lilies can feed and clothe you. Repent of that anxiety that says He can’t care for you, lay down that unbelief that says He doesn’t want to, let it all go, because His Word promises that He is “looking after” you!

Perhaps He has directed your steps here because you are fretting over the place He has ordained for you. Everyone around you has it better; you would be so much better off if He had cast you in that role instead.But you have been placed there by a loving Heavenly Father who knows exactly what is best for you! He has promised that He will be your provision and He will be your protection. So repent of the discontent and unbelief that has you by the throat; be the character in the story that you would like if you saw it onscreen; rejoice at where He has put you and rest in His wisdom and timing and leading—He will always “look after” you in His perfect providence.

But perhaps He has directed your steps here this morning because you need to come to terms with His providence in your life—He has been pursuing you but you have been trying to escape His call because you know that if you surrender to Him that you will never belong to yourself again; that He will hew from you your every pet sin and every secret vice that you indulge. You flee from Him because you hate the thought of not being your own master; you know that He is calling you to obedience, to say “Not my will but Yours”, but the beating heart of pride within you does not want to relinquish control, does not want to bow the knee.

But can’t you see that you will never outrun Him? How can you escape from the One Who holds together the very molecules of the road you are running down, the One Who commands every beat of your heart in your chest and every breath of air in your lungs? How will you contend against the One Who commands the stars in their courses and they obediently shine? How do you think you will turn your back on the One Who is everywhere present at all times?

The only way to quit running from Him is to surrender. There is no bargaining, there is no negotiating terms—there is only your abandoning your rebellion, confessing your crimes and bowing the knee to Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. Because in the providence of God there is only one way that this ends. Psalm 104:35:

Psalm 104:35 (ESV)

35 Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more! Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!

He will “see to it” that sinners will be consumed by His wrath and the righteous rejoice in their escape from His wrath by the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the Cross. So let this be the day that you stop trying to escape from the God who sees. Repent of your sin, plead for the cleansing blood of that Cross, and come—and welcome!—to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

1 Thessalonians 5:23, 28 (ESV)

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ… 28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

What do we mean when we refer to God’s “providence”? What is the difference between the providence of God and the sovereignty of God? How are those two truths about God related to each other? How do you relate to God’s sovereignty and to God’s providence?

Why is it unbiblical and slanderous to say that if God is not dispensing miraculous sign gifts in the world today that He is therefore silent and absent from the world? What Scriptures can you point to that support your answer?

How does God’s providence in creation fuel your joy in Him? How does it allow you to be content in the place He has put you? How will you take comfort and delight in His providence this week?