A Study of the Doctrine of Providence Pt 5 The Preserving Providence of God Over Man

Broadly speaking what are the two categories of God’s providence?

Preserving and Governing Providence

What do we mean when we talk about the preserving providence of God?

Preserving Providence- God continually preserves and maintains the existence of every part of His creation, from the smallest to the greatest, according to His sovereign pleasure.

One of the goals of this study is to know God as He reveals Himself in the Scriptures. Understanding God’s providence combats certain unbiblical notions about God and His relationship to man and the world.

To what extent does the biblical doctrine of God’s preserving providence actually govern our thinking, affect our behavior, and inform our decisions?

Practical Deism

What is deism?

Deism is the belief that God created the world but that He does not involve Himself in its human affairs or earthly events.

It is the belief that God created the world and set it in motion under certain “natural laws” but stands personally aloof from His creation.

Does the Bible teach deism? Examples?

How do we become practical deists?

Many Christians are too ready to attribute circumstances, good or bad, to accident, chance, or even natural law. When we do so, we actually betray a kind of practical deist.

Practical Atheism

Now my business is not so much to deal with professed atheists who deny the existence of God … but rather to convince those that own all this [i.e., say that they believe in God], yet … suspect, at least, that all these things which we call special providences to the saints are but natural events or mere contingencies. Thus, while they profess to own a God and a Providence they do in the meantime live like atheists, and both think and act as if there were no such things. —John Flavel

What circumstances in life is it easy to see God’s providence?

In the extraordinary, unusual, surprising, coincidental, seemingly “chance” circumstances or events.

We tend to think of providence as God’s stepping in and changing things ONLY when something dramatic happens —either for the better (a new job, protection in an accident, a successful pregnancy, a Lasko Foundation grant), or for worse (loss of a job, an injury or illness, or a miscarriage)- and God intervenes in these circumstances for His own purposes.

These are examples of God’s governing providence, but first and foremost there must be God’s faithful maintenance and preservation of all things—or else thee would be nothing to govern.

Psalm 3:1–4 ESV

1 O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; 2 many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah 3 But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. 4 I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah

What is the context? David is on the run from Absalom

Psalm 3:5 ESV

5 I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.

Do we ever stop to think about why we are able to lay down and sleep and the wake up again?

Do we wake by accident? or because of “natural law”?

To Whom did David attribute the sustaining of his life?

How did acknowledging this truth change the manner David endured the trial of Absalom trying to end his life?

Psalm 3:6 ESV

6 I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.

How can you apply this truth of God’s sustaining providence?

Each night you survive, each morning you awake with sound mind and healthy body (or awake at all), each day you live, each breath you draw, is the direct effect of the preserving providence of God!

What Does the Bible Say?

“Providence is not merely God’s unusual, occasional intervention into an otherwise laissez-faire policy on His part. God does not operate on a principle of aloof noninterference, which He occasionally suspends on special occasions. Providence, as we have seen, is a two-sided coin—preserving and governing. The first side of the providence is active, constant preservation, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, and even creature by creature.”

Feel Free to Move About

Acts 17:28 ESV

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.’

This is a wonderful definition of God’s sustaining providence!

In God we:

Live- what does that mean?

Only through God and on account of His pleasure do we enjoy the ongoing privilege of life itself.

Move- what does that mean?

“To possess the faculty of motion, exercise the functions of life.”

What do we call it when God withholds or removes our capacity for movement? paralysis.

Have our being- what does that mean?

Lit. “to be.”

Without God we would never have existed; apart from his pleasure to sustain us, or earthly existence would evaporate.

What do we mean when we say, “you don’t appreciate it until you loose it”?

Illustration: being able to get into and out of the car when my back is out.

What’s the point? In Him we live and move and have our being.

None of us would question that a sudden judgement of paralysis or leprosy was providential; it that is the case, then when that doesn’t happen, according to this verse, it is equally due to the preserving providence of God!

Why do we only think of God’s providence when the life or breath or health we take for granted is interrupted?

How can we stop taking for granted our living, moving, and being because of God’s sustaining providence?

What effect could this have on our lives?

Refutation: Hasn’t God kind of “wound up” everything with the power of “natural law,” set everything in motion, and then taken His hands off, allowing “natural laws” to run their course, and stepping in only when it is absolutely necessary?

Hasn’t God created in me a sort of self-sustaining life principle so that I naturally breathe, for example?

Is that idea Biblical? How do you know?

Take a Deep Breath

Go ahead- right now- take a deep breath.

What is the one and only explanation that Scripture gives for you ability to do that?

The preserving providence of God!

Genesis 2:7 ESV

7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Job 12:10 ESV

10 In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.

Job 27:3 ESV

3 as long as my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils,

What does this verse teach?

Hebrew parallelism- my breath in me = the spirit of God is in my nostrils.

Job sees his very life breath as coming from God Himself!

Job 33:4 ESV

4 The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

Job 34:14–15 ESV

14 If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, 15 all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.

Daniel 5:23 ESV

23 but you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored.

Acts 17:24–25 ESV

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, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

1 Timothy 6:13 ESV

13 I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession,

Feel Your Head

Matthew 10:29–31 ESV

29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Anyone know the context of this statement? Jesus spoke these words in Galilee when the twelve disciple were first sent out. Rejection and persecution were to be expected! What comfort these statements must have been.

Luke 12:4–7 ESV

4 “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. 5 But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. 7 Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Why does Jesus use sparrows in his teaching?

Does God actually care about sparrows?

How many sparrows are you worth?

Do we really believe this is true? Will we believe this the next time we are the ones who “fall to the ground”?

Rain on the Unjust

Matthew 5:45 ESV

45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

This verse illustrates that the sustaining providence of God falls on the evil and the good, the just and the unjust alike.

Have you ever paused to consider the profoundest of ironies—that Christ Himself was the very one sustaining the life of His own executioners.

“On your back with you!” One raises a mallet to sink in the spike. But the soldier’s heart must continue pumping as he readies the prisoner’s wrist. Someone must sustain the soldier’s life minute by minute, for no man has this power on his own.

Who supplies breath to his lungs? Who gives energy to his cells? Who hold his molecules together? Only by the Son do “all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). The victim wills that the soldier live on—he grants the warrior’s continued existence. The man swings.

You who can eat, and forget God; you who enjoy the blessings of the sun and rain, and the fruits of the earth, and yet go on as thoughtless of your Divine Benefactor as the cattle of your stall, or who look upon these as things of course of the fruits of your own industry … you are practical atheists. Whatever you profess in words, you do in heart and life renounce and abjure Jehovah from being the Governor of the world. —Samuel Davies

“What is God Thinking?”

Illustration: His sister called him and laid the blame for all of the calamity at God’s feet, then two days later a series of tornadoes destroyed her city, but left her home untouched.

“I could not help wondering if she asked herself, ‘What was God thinking … to let me escape those destructive storms?’”

Why are we so quick to blame God for all the “bad” that happens in the world, while daily we greedily and ungratefully glut ourselves on all the undeserved good we receive from God’s hand without so much as a “thank you.”

At the root of such blindness is a mixture of ingratitude, rebellion, and unbelief.

“The child of ingratitude is presumption; and lurking in the financial security we prize so highly is the subtle poisonous peril of presumption.”

“If everything seems to come simply by signing checks, you may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent upon God.”— C. S. Lewis

A Look in the Mirror

How do you use the breath and life and body God has given to you and sustains for you each moment?

When you woke up this morning did you complain about the going on’s in the world, or did you thank God for restoring your soul?

Do you see the sustaining providence of God in each breath you take, or only in the “out of the ordinary” events of life?