Sermon Tone Analysis

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.

What is the context?

David is on the run from Absalom

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?

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

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!

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!

Feel Your Head

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.

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

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 will 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.”