Trust God's Personal, Powerful, Meticulous Providence
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Dear Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Remember the 4 components of a story - character - we have not just a small ‘g’ god, distant or an immanent, impersonal, just formed in our image , imagination to explain the mystery of the universe. No in both creation and in God’s Word - we know a big G God - Personal character - but also as we saw last week - 2 Circles of Existence, and God is in another Circle, He alone is eternal, infinite , almighty, and this other circle of all created things, God is with us and even enters this Circle but remains ever beyond. And the moment we get the nature of this God as ever toward each other, commodity of love, and making Creation, out of sheer goodness, and ever turning toward it in goodness, like the Psalmist in Psalm 104, like the Apostle Paul speaking to Athenians - we can’t just speak of this second circle as if it exists on its own. When we think of Creation, and each creature in it including you and me, when we want to think of the plot your story and mine, we are confronted with the truth that God is the major actor in this story and our story, and he is at work beyond and within this bubble of Creation. Theologians have called this the Creator - creation distinction and it changes the way we think of the setting of our story. Our time and place. Last Sunday, I mentioned that philosopher Charles Taylor has said that our secular age has disenchanted Creation - so just isolated individuals not a community created by God, just taking the stuff of creation for our own individualistic and selfish plans with no thought to the Creator, nor the community He’s creating. This Sunday I want you to think about what ex-Harvard economist, and now reclaimer of his ancestors land, novelist and writer Wendell Barry wants to say to our technological age - We have lost our sense of place. His novels trace a place and people in that place, a community over 5 generations - and the theme of having a place and finding purpose in both the pace and the community. Fascinating discoveries of who your people are what the land meant -ie Napoleon, reclaims thinnest stretch of wild land.
Well, congregation in a grander scheme both the Psalmist for God's people, and the Apostle Paul for those who are not yet into the story have accepted the plot of what God does and who we are to become, what the kingdom of God is, both of them - speak not only of God the Creator, nor of His work as Redeemer of Judge. God wasn’t exhausted after Creation and withdrew form this world. He is intimately and actively involved in the plot of this story. The doctrine of Providence speak of how we are to think of the place we live in - how God is present in our lives and in this creation. And to do that well, we need to have God’s relationships to our world to us, fixed in our minds. Not just that God created, nor that He is going to act in salvation, but that this world is His, and He in control of it -is guiding and directs it for His own good and glorious purposes. We need to grasp the Bibles doctrine of Providence!
Key Truth: Providence provides us not only with a personal comfort that our own lives matter to God, especially in the face of evil, but also the necessary foundation for understanding God’s saving work!
Key Truth: Providence provides us with a personal comfort that our own lives matter to God, and the necessary foundation for understanding God’s saving work!
When we read Psalm 104 and Acts 17 what is this place that God sets up and then also sustains, directs, and steers to a determined destination?
A. Providence is God's Sustaining & Controlling All Things
That’s God not only as Creator, but also as the sustainer as Lord who is with this creation, but no just like any Creature in it, He from beyond sustains but also controls all things as LORD:
Acts 17:24
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,
Did you sense that in Acts 17 God not only determining the places you and I live, in order that people would seek and know him.
And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,
but it all leading to this man, this Saviour and Judge, this mediator - at the centre of the peoples of this earth: Acts 17:30-31
The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Do you see what Paul is doing there? He establishes there is a God beyond yet with His Creation. He establishes His intimate involvement even in the places each one of us lives, but then He says God’s creation, and His control and action within in it - His Lording His creation serves a definite purpose and destination.
There are the basics of doctrine of Providence: Listen to the WCF
God the great Creator of all things does uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His own will, to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy. Westminster Confession of Faith 5.1
The Psalmist describes this action of God with His creation in terms of the how - God actively and meticulously and in an ever ongoing way , not just in the spiritual things of the plot of redemption, but down to the daily feeding of animals, the weather and climate patterns, astronomical movements - He superintends and personally governs all things, people, and events in His Creation. This Paul also says too even quoting a pagan poet: Acts 17:28
for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
But even as we have at the end of this Psalm celebrating God’s creation and providence, it is God’s superintendence of the physical creation that serves bring His determined goal and destination of redemption and the consummation - when evil will be destroyed and righteousness flourish, and the creation the heaven and the new earth - dwelling place of God and man together - the home of righteousness!
And so my question to you is: Do you see and trusts God’s providence in the meticulous little details this world and your life? And, Can you connect them most often only by faith to grand plan of His saving Actions in Jesus Christ and His Church His Kingdom? That is our goal this evening, so that you can say with our Lord Jesus and our catechism: QA 27, QA 28 And this evening of Judah’s baptism, do you see it is our privilege to disciple him to see that God has so arranged things for him to not only be safely protected in the Father’s Hand, but to be brought to the foundation of the goodness who is Christ and to drink deeply!
B. God rules over absolutely event and everyone FOR HIS OWN GLORY
In this series, we are looking at the testimony the witness to God and His salvation, from the Bible that we are to have to each other, but especially those who don’t yet know. And Judah is born into a culture and even a church culture that opposes a view of God intimately involved in our world and lives. We are tempted to live as deists on one hand, that you have met in the science world, and on the other New Age spirituality, and the Lion King would have thinking that there is just one circle of life - and there is God in everything. These ideas involve saying the earth is our mother, and we worship it! Or that God is “in” the green leaf, or God is “in” you and me in some exhaustive way!
But within the church culture we have an age old error that would have us see this world - the physical creation, the material world as less and inferior which God has no control, or concern over, because they would say, God is pure Spirit which is true, that means we should only be concerned about the spiritual realm. And the ultimate struggle is between angels and demons and be preoccupied with that spiritual warfare. But listen carefully: the Bible presents this Creation as the theater for God’s glory. This is the place where the great drama of human redemption from sin, and the building of God’s great kingdom in this creation takes place. While there most certainly is a spiritual realm, with angels and demons, the focus is on the seen daily world, over spiritualized view is a cop out. Judah grows up in and we are to understand God’s action and Lordship here in our lives, with us becoming like Christ!
The Christian doctrine of creation means that God stopped creating ex nihilo on 6th day, on the 7th day gave us a picture of where this whole creation is supposed to be heading, and a way to remember celebrate and enjoy in part that purpose in Sabbath rest. But then God does not fall back in a cosmic couch to see how your life or mine, or Judah’s life, is going to unfold: Oh. what will they do? NO! God is as real and active in our lives today as he was when he was creating! So we confessed last week: Art 11“We believe that [God] also continues to sustain and govern [all things] according to His eternal providence and by His infinite power in order to serve man, to the end that man may serve his God.”
This is an article of faith in the personal God who is the overflowing source of Good, a personal God. And this means you must teach Judah that the details of his life, and this universe don’t come by CHANCE. Of course chance exists as a description of random… but chance does not govern our lives, world or this universe. Ephesians 1:11 ALL THINGS nothing left o chance…
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,
Or consider Psalm 103:19
The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.
Psalm 115:3 Or Daniel 4:35
Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.
all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”
Do you feel the weightiness of God’s involvement in what we confess:
“We believe that this good God, after He had created all things, did not abandon them or give them up to fortune or chance, but that according to His holy will He so rules and governs them that in this world nothing happens without His direction.” Belgic Confession Art. 12
Do you know what this means, it means we can’t live as if the details of life don’t matter to God, even the little details. This means we can't say that there is an event a person, and evil a suffering, an enjoyment, a discovery, that is unrelated to God in our lives! Now many in NA would say that a bad thing if God’s in charge and has his hands in everything, it makes God a monster.
But listen carefully the Scriptures do not limit God’s providence to just natural world and to salvation, but to every action and event! Proverbs 16:9
The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
Proverbs 16:33
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.
This is true with the most random events like a soldier firing an arrow at random, and Kings describes it it just so happened to fall in the chink in King Ahab who was disguised, - God was in charge of that arrow - and His purposes carried out even in the random!
Even national events and leaders; Proverbs 21:1
The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.
That is the whole point of the Book of Daniel God’s sovereignty over all of history!
But if this is all true and you are going to teach Judah that God rules over all wit a meticulous providence, what might He grow to think?
Might he not say, well then why bother making any decisions, nothing is human responsibility, why not live like the stoics - then we can say even the bad things in this world are good, and the goal in life is just to be as happy as possible and let God unfold things by fate.
C. God is Sovereign Over all things, but NOT THE AUTHOR EVIL
And here we are called to reason and to faith. Philosophically and theologically and Biblically, we can reason out that God didn’t create evil. That as Augustine put it evil is not really a thing in itself, but is only a twisting of the good things God created. God didn’t create murder or lust, he didn’t cause the holocaust, the rape of your friend or the abuse of a child. Here it is so important to reason out from Scripture what sin and evil are.
Because one day Judah is going to grow up and think if not say, - well the devil made me do it, Or God’s in control of all things, so I couldn’t help it don’t need to change it, its just the way things are. Or God’s ordained the best of all possible worlds- so evil the accident was caused by him and I’m not sad about it, that earthquake or wild fire under his sovereign control must necessarily be judgment of God , I am going through trial after trial God must hate me!
And so we must do some biblical theology - some thinking about how God acts through Scripture with us and this world. We’ve seen in our morning series in 1 John 2:16
For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
We know in terms of the first temptation and every temptation in our world: James 1:13-14
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
God is sovereign over all things and all decisions and all actions of all His creatures, even the devil and demons, and your and my sins. He is able to bend them all to serve His grand purpose of this world and our lives. Our sins and evil doesn’t overthrow God’s reign in this world. And though he ordains whatsoever comes to pass - though he will bend it all for the plot of this world - he does not cause sin or evil, and He has a plan to overcome it.
And here must engage together in some biblical theology. If God created a world with creature that reflecting Him would have moral agency. If they were to have real freedom and responsibility - if God created them knowing they wouldn’t necessarily have to fall, sin and evil didn’t have to happen by Him causing it. But that it would, and that He would do something about it, then do you see that some thing happening Divine providence that are God’s direct and divine action . He is the Primary Cause and sometimes the only cause. But don’t you see that every time we make a free choice according to our nature - every time we wry we choose to walk in strop with the Spirit or in step without fallen nature. God is’t morally responsible - and he has designed in this world secondary causes , creatures that make choices. And those causes for stuff that happens are contingent. And can you see all knowing God using those free choices of our good and bad, including them in His plan - what theologians call Divine Concurrence! Mystery of how free will/human responsibility and providence go together, There are no stray molecules and no evil or sin catches God surprised or unable to bend it to serve His good purposes for this world!
And what is the greatest OT example of this. A story - Spielberg tried to make a movie of, but which should be story explaining Christ to Judah. Joseph hauled off to Egypt glad to be rid of him. Would have murdered him, perhaps spun out of smug pride and understandable jealousy of favoritism of parents. But years later all these happenstances: Genesis 50:20
As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.
Now God didn’t make those things happen, he didn’t override the human will so the brothers, nor even in a later story Pharaoh lost his human agency, but God did ordain, he had a plan , he overruled even those evil events to accomplish his good and saving plan of grace for this world! And so else where in the OT we read of God ordaining even the bad, in a way that He is not the cause of the evil but that he does use whatsoever comes to pass for His ultimate plan.
I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.
Amos 3:6
Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?
And before you say well what about he NT, let’s go to the most wicked act of human history the crucifixion of the sinless Son of God. And how does the NT describe that event. Look a the divine concurrence - there is a ultimate cause in which God uses and bends to good the evil acts, but there are clearly the secondary causes of responsible human actors: Acts 2:23
this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
Do you see it God has a definite plan, Gk Boule, not just this is what wish and want, but a determined counsel, he has decreed certain things like the crucifixion of Jesus will take place, but also that the people involved, acting freely but sinfully will be involved init. Now it takes a strong view of God’s providential involvement of all creature and creation to understand that. And the most contemporary trend in theology is to say God is OPEN to the Future, Doesn’t Have a Plan, but just one of the players who is changing and changing His plan as Creation and as God develops!
But isn’t that the great hope that we have, that in this world we will have trouble, says Jesus but I have overcome the world that rage against God’s good plan. I and God hates the suffering evil and sin have unleashed and continue to unleash in this world, but He sovereignly and powerfully is doing something about it, not a distant bystander. That God who sovereignly reigns, not only got involved with providence, but in the ultimate providence, He comes down and takes on the evil and suffering and death upon Himself. That is the ultimate providence isn’t it - the way of his benign evil and sin to serve His good purposes and the good of his people - was by taking it on Himself - all the mistreatment of injustice, all the shame of our sin, all the curse against sin - . The one who rules the universe, and now with nail prints in his hands - took that for you His people freely.. This is the gospel you must share with Judah from youngest years. Time of pandemic none of us has guarantee health long year,s but Savior come - death already dealt with, any thing comes to pass - benefit for our good! There is an article of faith - I don’t see the how of providence in all this brokenness - but putting my hand in his I trust He is good and He is just:
For [God’s] power and goodness are so great and beyond understanding that He ordains and executes His work in the most excellent and just manner, even when devils and wicked men act unjustly. Belgic Confession Art. 13
We can’t understand it, comprehend it Deuteronomy 29:29
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
Our confession puts it this way: And as to His actions surpassing human understanding, we will not curiously inquire farther than our capacity allows us. But with the greatest humility and reverence we adore the just judgments of God, which are hidden from us, and we content ourselves that we are pupils of Christ, who have only to learn those things which He teaches us in His Word, without transgressing these limits. Belgic Art 13
And that is the last, best and easiest point the revealed part of providence that we and are children are to rest in!
D. MY FATHER’s Providence is an Unspeakable Comfort
In the same way with a humble trust I can say, My Father built this , created out of nothing, Not god” but my Father in whom I am in relationships, in whom I delight in hand partner in his purposes of creation - this kingdom this communion this fellowship, this glorying, in the very same way I can say - it’s not just God in control. Its’ my Father, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. The personal God - nothing at all - not my broken back at 17 not my child born with down Syndrome, not the sins of my youth, or the ways people sinned against me, not the time in history I’ve been born into, the family, not the pandemic =- the privilege s and wealth or the temptation - none of my life or Judah’s life comes by chance - but only at the direction f our gracious heavenly Father!
We are in the Father’s hands, and He will hold evil and the devil and even those temptations we can’t handle - he will hold them all back. Not a suffering can enter my life that my God has’t first of covered his hand around me - only this much and for His good.
Do you know the calculation young mothers take in this time, first trip out, first visit - hover over with such incredible care and planning, things that happen out of their control, lots in this world - but the parental care. Well listen to what Jesus says, Matthew 10:29-30
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.
You know the teaching of Romans 8:28
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
That doesn’t say that God caused/is the source of all things, it doesn't shield us from hard and bad and evil and suffering things, but it does say that God is at work in all things . It doesn’t say that all things that happen are good - we don’t have to like the hard provenience - but it does say God will be at work bending them to work together for the good He is working. But only see that as you are called to His purposes!
That’s what Judah’s baptism calls him to discover what are God’s saving purposes in Christ for me, how will I live into those purposes and my life in Christ in His kingdom in this world. And it means that Judah won’t have to live with a fatalistic half-comfort of this world - when life gives you lemons, make lemon aid - or Monte Pythons - Always look on the birght side of life. No, life doesn’t give me anything. I have a God who is the Creator and He is my Father.
Steven and Rachel, leading catechism class and young adults through the catechism. Teach this one to them for it is the biblical comfort of providence : Q 26. What do you believe when you say, "I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth"?
A. That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth and everything in them, who still upholds and rules them by his eternal counsel and providence, is my God and Father because ofChrist his Son. I trust him so much that I do not doubt he will provide whatever I need for body and soul, and he will turn to my good whatever adversity he sends me in this sad world. He is able to do this because he is almighty God; he desires to do this because he is a faithful Father.
Q 27. What do you understand by the providence of God?
A. Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty—all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from his fatherly hand.
Q 28. How does the knowledge of God's creation and providence help us? A. We can be patient when things go against us, thankful when things go well, and for the future we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing will separate us from his love. All creatures are so completely in his hand that without his will they can neither move nor be moved.
I can’t put it better than that, and I am not ashamed to end my sermon with the catechism, like a good biblical sermon preached over 450 years
Steve and Rachel, dear Congregation, do you remember seeing a couple bring there first born into he world - And they thought marriage was a big change, but now this. I am so thankful for the home - you welcomed me into - and now this child has been placed by God to grow in - so many protection,s warmth, - but Judah is going to grow up - he’s going to get lost, going to fall, and troubles will befall him, he’s going to be blessed so many talents and opportunities, face so many choices - The biggest of which is: What will He do with the Saviour and Lord of all Jesus? And before all those events come, before the tragedies great or small, before the opportunities that will launch him in some pretty big direction come - He needs to see by the way you trust Your Father in these Providences of your families life, and you need to walk and talk through those Providence with Him.
A Stoic only has a small “g” in charge of the world with no real personality. Others only “impersonal fate of chance”. But you know the big G GOd the LORD Jehovah. The German philosophers with there impersonal God sad it was the scandal of particularity to believe that God cares about particular people. This water this name upon Judah says, no God who rules all, his eye is on the sparrow and His eye on me. He has faced every sin, every evil every suffering, and he has overcome. And I putting my hand back in His am saying, He and His Son who is working out this Providence, His p Spirit who is applying all the goods Christ has won, - This Triune God He is my only comfort in life and in death! Not just my life, but this whole creation God is sovereignly overruling in Providence to make all things. new. We don’t live by stoic must be a purpose. We know that purpose already Triune God who created all things is likewise in control of all things. Yet, because his own dear Son has suffered for us, we do not serve an indifferent, disinterested Savior. Furthermore, God pours out the blessed Holy Spirit into our hearts so that we are united to Jesus Christ and call this creator God our Father. Our confidence is not in our endurance when we suffer, but in the goodness o God, who created all things, sustains and governs all things, and who redeems us from our sins. For all things do indeed work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose