[Sunday School] What are God’s Works of Providence? (WSC 11)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:01

Thank you, the faithful remnant. You're here. What feels like an hour early to be here at Sunday school? What's that?

SPEAKER_00 0:09

It is an hour early, if that's why it feels like it.

SPEAKER_04 0:12

Yes, hopefully this will be the last time we have to do something like this, but I'm not holding my breath. It's never going away. Heavenly Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for bringing us together to study your word. Lord, thank you for the truth of your providence, that you truly are working all things according to the counsel of your will. That not a hair falls from our heads, not a sparrow drops to the ground apart from your divine say so. Thank you, Father, that because that is true, then we can take it on faith and with trust and in hope that you really are working all things together for the good of those who love you and are called according to your purpose. Help us this morning to think well about your providence and to derive great comfort from it and confidence. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So in these past couple weeks, we've been talking about the decrees of God and the execution of his decrees. So in question seven, this is the decrees of God or his eternal purpose according to the counsel of his will, whereby for his own glory he has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. And question eight asks, okay, how does God execute his decrees? God executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence. So these past two weeks we've been talking about creation. First the creation of the world, and then specifically the creation of man, male, and female in God's image. And today we move from creation to providence. You can think of creation as God's establishing all things, establishing his relationship with all things, and providence as God's continuing that relationship. It's the means by which God controls the world that he created. The word itself comes from the Latin word didae, which means to see. And you put that pro prefix on it, and it means something like beforehand, right? To see beforehand. But not in the sense that God kind of looks down the corridors of time and he has, he sort of sees how's everything, how everything's going to shake out from the beginning, but it's more the sense of God sees to it, right? God from the foundation of the world sees all that will happen because God is the one who foreordains it. God is the one who decrees it to happen. So his knowledge, his will go before his sight. But the world exists because God has known it. So providence, it sounds very familiar. It sounds very similar to the word provide. And that's a good way to think about it. God's providence is God's providing for the world. And we'll talk more about that under the terms preserving and governing in a little bit. But the question for today is question 11 from the shorter catechism: what are God's works of providence? The answer is God's works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful, preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions. God's works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful of preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions. So we'll unpack, we'll dive into this today by unpacking the five keywords from that definition. Three adjectives and two participles, or two modes of action. So the adjectives, holy, wise, and powerful, and the participles, preserving and governing. So starting with the holy one. God's works of providence are holy. That means that God's works are superlative in their consistency with him and his character. Psalm 145, 17. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. A classic way of saying that is that God is all that he is and has all that he has and all that he does. So all of God's works reflect his perfectly wise, perfectly righteous character. They reflect his love, his justice, his goodness, his truth, all of that. God is all that he is and has all that he has and all that he does. So his providence, first word above anything else, is holy, right? It reflects him. Now, why do you think that's a good place for us to start when we think about providence? Think of God's control of the world as a holy control.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

At all times.

SPEAKER_04 4:54

That's right. Everything.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

I have to be careful when I say this because it is not his will that anybody should defend. Right. But nothing that happens is outside his wisdom. As Lewis says somewhere, he thought it was worth the risk to get us a will.

SPEAKER_04 5:26

Yeah. Yeah. But even in that, like when we talk about providence, risk is a word that we have to qualify. Because there's risk in the sense of, you know, he creates the garden, he creates mankind in the garden is in a state of original righteousness, and the risk is that they could sin or not sin. It's a risk from our perspective. From God's perspective, it is the plan. Nothing catches God by surprise. And to say that he is holy, we're talking about God's providence being a holy providence, is like Alan said, is to say it's right. Everything that God does, everything that God allows to happen is right from the context of his decree and from the context of his perfect character. And also, we can actually trust that it works out for the good. At no point does God fall asleep at the switch. There is no point where he just kind of turns his back and he says, whatever, y'all do whatever you want to do. We talk about the passive wrath of God sometimes, Romans 1, how God leaves sinners up to their sin, but even in that, it's not an absolute leaving. God remains the primary efficient cause of all reality. He upholds the universe by the word of his power. He never stops. I use the illustration before of uh from Cornelius Van Till of the man carrying his daughter in his arms on the train, and his daughter's having a fit, right? And she, in her fit, she spits in her father's face, or she slaps her father. Well, she couldn't have been in the position to slap her father unless her father was holding her in his arms. So it's the same way with all of human reality. In our sin, we rebel against God, we shake our fist at him, we spit in his face, literally, Jesus on the cross. And yet we could not do that if God was not actively upholding and sustaining us at every single moment. So God's providence is a holy providence. It's also a wise providence, right? There's a sense in which that's redundant. If in his holiness we're talking about how God's providence contains all of his attributes. But the catechism emphasizes it because it's important. It's a wise providence. Psalm 104, 24, O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all. The earth is full of your creatures. Isaiah 28, 29. This also comes from the Lord of hosts. He is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom. So why does it help us to know that God's providence is a wise providence? What kind of work does the word wisdom do for us there?

SPEAKER_02 8:13

It's not a mistake.

SPEAKER_04 8:15

Not a mistake.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

He knows better than we do.

SPEAKER_04 8:18

He knows better than we do.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

He's not going to make his first mistake with us.

SPEAKER_04 8:24

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's not trial and error, right? I tried this with Adam, didn't quite work. I'm gonna try something different with Moses. It didn't quite work with Moses. Let's see what David's got.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

There's no plan B with God.

SPEAKER_04 8:41

Yeah, absolutely right.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

In his hopeless, he knows he does the right thing at all times. He does the right thing the right way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:53

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

The perfect way.

SPEAKER_04 8:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Right thing, right way for the right reason.

SPEAKER_04 9:00

Yeah, yeah, exactly. All the rights, right? Yeah, it's you know, pointing at his wisdom, it's like, you know, if we think about God's providence and abstraction from his wisdom, we think he does the right thing the right way for the right reason, the right time, all the time, right? And we go, well, but this thing just happened. And it sure doesn't seem like the right thing. It seems like the wrong thing. So what just happened there? And God's wisdom reminds us that when we think about the rightness of a thing, and we have to take the broader view in terms of what he has decreed and what he is intending to accomplish. It's like with our children, right? We um we might say yes to a thing, we might say no to a thing, we might tell them to go this way instead of that way. And kids often lack the percept or the perspective to know why you're telling them to do what you're telling them to do. And like you can see that they're heading over a cliff, and it's just five steps down the road, and you tell them, hey, don't do this thing, and you might not have the time to explain to them. If you do this, this is gonna happen, then this is gonna happen, then this is gonna happen, and here you're gonna end up. I know that because I've been around longer than you, and I know how this plays out. You often don't have that kind of time, and you don't have that capacity to download all of that into a kid's head. So you just say, hey, trust me in this one thing. Right? And it's the same thing with God, right? We don't have the mind of God in a comprehensive way. Like we've talked about, God is incomprehensible. We don't have his wisdomness, we don't have his wisdomness. Oh my goodness. You can tell I lost an hour of sleep last night. We don't have his uh omniscience, right? So we don't see how things play out. We don't see how this quote-unquote wrong thing that might happen in our lives or in the world actually unfolds to a greater thing than we ever could have imagined.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

There is no bad news for a Christian. Yeah, that's really helped me a lot. Helped me a lot. There is no bad news for a Christian. All things work together for good. That has really been a warm spot for me in my practice, right? Where I'll get an email or I'll get a phone call, and it's all good news. It's all good news because the Lord's hand is in it, right? It isn't like he brought me here. That that's been that mantra.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

That doesn't mean though that I'm agreeing with you. That doesn't mean though that we can't with the Apostle Paul have fears within and fightings without. Right. That was reality for Paul. And I always think of you, Kenny, when Paul listed the care of the church, right along with all the beatings and imprisonments and everything, he, you know, the care of the church was a burden for him, that he gladly took on, but it's still a burden.

SPEAKER_03 11:57

But he was joyful in all circumstances. He was joyful in the way I'm finding my joys in the promises of God.

SPEAKER_04 12:05

Yeah, it's a you're right in an ultimate sense that there is no bad news for the Christian. And yet the Psalms are full of lament. Yeah. Like the Psalms are full of David literally saying, or not literally saying, but essentially saying to God, hey, this sucks. Where are you? I'm really beat up right now. I'm really sad right now.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

I wore my eyes out with crying, with weeping.

SPEAKER_04 12:26

But here's where James is right. He doesn't stay there. It always ends. Right. Right. He doesn't say that, oh, this thing is awful, right? It hurts. Someone's done wrong against me and it hurts. I'm sick and it hurts. It doesn't feel good. This world is broken. Lord, come Jesus, come, Lord Jesus. Right? All these sorts of things. It's like we can acknowledge that. We can lament. You know, lament is God's prescription for dealing with the bad news in the world because it moves us to that place where we recognize that ultimately for the Christian there is no bad news because God is working all things together for the good. Even this, whatever the thing is, God is using it to grow us, to sanctify us, to bless us, to bless the people around us, to do all kinds of things that in his wisdom he knows perfectly, but we don't, we, we, we just we don't have the perspective to see it. And he ends that way, Kenny, right?

SPEAKER_03 13:21

Well, my hope is in the Lord. You are my refuge. You are my hope. You are my anchor. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

But I there's still, I'm still agreeing with you, there's still a place for weeping with those who weep. Yep. I as a nurse, I have been. Yep, I remember this very large man, I mean, a big strong guy, had just gotten word that he had terminal lung cancer. And he, I was doing a home visit. He said, I don't want to die. He just wet and wet. I mean, he was like weeping like a little child, and I just put my arms around him and held him tight. I said, You're not dying right now. Let's see what we can do today. And um, I mean, but he was just utterly broken with the bad news that he got. I don't know if he was a Christian or not, but uh it was he was devastated. Yeah. And I've seen plenty of other cases where people first end up devastating news. Yeah. And uh as a Christian nurse, I would say, well, Lord, what do you want me to do with this situation? Yeah, it's not always to preach the gospel at them while they're in that moment.

SPEAKER_04 14:37

Right. Yeah, Job's friends, probably the best thing that Job's friends did for him was sit in silence for a week. Right. Uh being able to weep with those who weep, you know, this view of providence really helps us to do that from a place of utter security. Because empathy is a really big buzzword these days. And the way empathy is usually encouraged, it's where you enter all the way into someone's suffering in such a way where you basically cut the tether, right? And you get down into the if they're down in the pit and they can't get out, you just get into the pit with them and you don't pretend like you have a way out. You just identify with them all the way down. But for the Christian, you know, because we know who God is and we know what God does, and we know that his providence is a holy, wise, and powerful providence, we can get into the pit without cutting the tether. And so we can be there, we can be with the person who's suffering when they're legitimately suffering, and we can do that without losing sight of the fact that, yes, even this is a part of God's will. And when you're ready, let's talk about why that's a good thing. Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Yeah, even Jesus wept.

SPEAKER_04 15:58

Yeah. Yeah. Even Jesus wept when he knew full well what he was about to do. Lazarus dead in the tomb. Jesus weeps, even though Jesus is about to call him out, and he has no doubt that he's going to do that.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

And if you go back to that chapter in John, I think it's 11 or something, he weeps when he sees Mary and Margaret weeping. That's what made him weep. The fact that his dear lovely people were so heartbroken, and he was identifying with their worldliness in that moment.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

He understood.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

He understood. I really treasure, well, I treasure all the scripture, but there's some things that just really speak to you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:48

So God's works of providence are holy, they're wise, and the third adjective, they're powerful. Jeremiah 10, 12 through 13. It is God who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain, and he brings forth the wind from his storehouses. So that's just one of many, many, many, many Bible passages that show the omnipotence of God, his power, his mightiness, his sovereignty, his control. So to say that God is powerful in his providence is to say if he wants it done, it'll get done. There is nothing. There is literally nothing that can frustrate God's plan. So why does that matter when we're thinking about the providence by which God preserves and governs the world?

SPEAKER_00 18:17

But his power can work in very unexpected and mysterious ways. I am smiling to myself, thinking of a conversation I had with my mother about the first chapter of Exodus, where God began his massive work with five ladies that you would not expect. There were the Egyptian midwives, there was the Egyptian princess, or I guess they were Jewish midwives. Hebrew midwives, the Jewish princess. Miriam, what said five? Yeah, there's Pharaoh's daughter, there's Miriam, and there was the girl who's mother, mother's brother. And some authors said the five-fingered fist of God showed up. I love that because I'm a metaphor person, but I love it. Every time I read the first chapter of Exodus, I think five-fingered fist of God showing up in five ladies right there. So that's how the power can show up in unexpected ways.

SPEAKER_04 19:24

All kinds of ways, yeah. A baby in a manger. Right. Yeah, sometimes uh it's like the reality of evil and suffering can really mess with our doctrine of providence. Like when bad things happen to good people, that at that point, probably more than any other, we're tempted to doubt whether God is truly in control. Because if God is truly in control, if he truly is preserving and governing all things, then without God being responsible for sin, he is still, in some metaphysical way, responsible for this awful thing that just happened. The school shooter goes in and shoots at the school. Like God could have jammed the first bullet in his magazine. God could have given him a flat tire. God could have put a security guard in the right place at the right time, and we can go on and on and on. But he didn't. So what do we do with that? And, you know, this is where we get into the deep mystery of God's wisdom and his righteousness and his goodness even in the midst of bad things. But the thing that that's easiest to grab onto to kind of alleviate that sort of intellectual and spiritual tension is to say, well, you know, God gave people free will, and sometimes we use it poorly, and there's nothing God can do about it. I've heard that from a lot of Christians. I've heard it from pastors and preachers, I've heard it from Christian radio personalities, I've read it on the internet, right? Our free will trumps God's will is the basic view. And, you know, there's a lot we can say about that. But, you know, pastorally, the first thing I want to say about it is that, okay, this tragedy happened. Right? This awful, awful thing. And you're praying to God that he will bring you some comfort, he'll bring you some alleviation, he'll bring some kind of good out of this awful thing. Why would you ask him to do that with any kind of expectation if you believed that he was powerless to stop it from happening? Like you can't take away God's sovereignty. You can't take away his providence on the front end of the tragedy and then expect to get it back on the back end. We can pray even in the midst of tragedy and pain and suffering, but it's because we know that God is still in control. That he never stopped being in control. And so that's why, you know, when we think about God's power. In his providence, it's important we hold on to it. You know, of course, this is what the Bible teaches us, right? But you know, so it's true, right? That's that's the ground floor reason to hold on to any of this because it's true. It's how God has revealed himself. But thinking more in terms of the practical application of the truth to our hearts and minds, that's why we have to hold on to it. James.

SPEAKER_03 22:23

When Sarah was diagnosed with cancer and we were going through the initial, oh my goodness, and understanding the aggressiveness of it, I said, okay, Lord, then give me all the fruit I can get out of this. Give me all the fruit. If we can take this cancer and this trial and all the things that come with it, and I can grow closer to you, and that intimacy deepens in the fruit, then I'm all in. Then I'm all in. And you know, I was telling Kennedy the other night that when Sarah was diagnosed, she said, Glory to God. Glory to God, the faith of my wife, glory to God. Right, right. And so, so yeah, that that providence. Okay, I'm all in on this trial, but man, give me all the fruit that you want me to have from it. Then it's worthwhile, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Well, if I wasn't sitting in a tune of church, I would be whooping and hollering about that today.

SPEAKER_04 23:17

It's okay, you can whoop and holler. If you do that, it's safe here. So God's providence is holy. God's providence is wide, God's providence is powerful. Those are the first three adjectives that the shorter catechism answer gives us. The second two words are participles, so verbal nouns, modes of action. He preserves and he governs all his creatures and all their actions. So first we'll talk about preservation. And a good verse to consider for this is Hebrews 1, verse 3, talking about Jesus. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. He upholds the universe by the word of his power. Preservation, as I mentioned earlier, it's God's sustaining or his maintenance of all creation. It's his upholding the universe and everything that transpires within it. It's the reason why we are not all hurtling off into space right now. God is upholding the universe in every exhaustive detail. And when Hebrews says that he does so by the word of his power, it reminds us that the power that holds all things together is a personal power and it's a rational power. I think we talked about this a few weeks ago with the idea of the Lagos. The ancient Greeks believed in the Lagos as the universal principle that held all things together, and in some sense, even like the basic stuff of reality. And the great big revelation of Christianity in John 1 was that yes, the word was in the beginning with God. Yes, the word was God. Great. We can, yeah, we can agree to that. We're Greeks, that's cool. Then the word became flesh. I'm sorry, what? Yeah, the word became flesh, and he dwelt among us. He lived, he died, he suffered, he rose, all of that. Oh. But that's, you know, the Greek logos or the Hebrew word davar. The word is just so important throughout scripture from the very beginning to the very end. God creates all things by blinking them into existence? No. Waving his magic wand? No. By speaking, by speaking his word into the void, and he said, and then there was. And that's the deep rationality on which all of the laws of nature rest, the laws of science. Vern Poithrus, he's a professor at Westminster Seminary, and he wrote a book called The Redeeming Science. And he does a really good job of showing that all of these things that we consider the laws of science or nature, like the law of gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, so on and so forth, they all ultimately depend upon the existence and rationality of the Word, who is ultimately Jesus, the eternal Son of God. We can't have stable, rational laws of reality unless we have that ground floor basic rationality in the Lagos. So God preserves everything according to that word and according to his decree, according to his plan. He holds it all together. Nothing runs on its own seam. This is mysterious because primary and secondary causes, right? God is the primary cause that holds all things together, but he does it by way of secondary causes. So, you know, what's holding me up in this chair right now? God, in an ultimate sense, but it might be more descriptive and helpful to say the structural integrity of this chair. Or we might want to say some things about the floor underneath it, or the supports under that, or the bedrock, and all those kinds of things. But again, you go all the way down. What's holding everything up, what's holding everything together, God is. Okay, so why is that word important? Since we're going word by word and we're trying to flesh it out and apply it and all that. Why is the word preservation important to us? God's act of preservation.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

It is super important, and I'm going to share my thoughts on that by sharing a way to go wrong, and that is with the idea that wisdom is somehow separate from God, personified, almost made into a goddess. Yeah. And then you know, that kind of creation stuff. Yeah. Scripture doesn't give us leave to do that, even with the wisdom chapter in Proverbs, where wisdom shouts my streets, and you know, wisdom is personified almost as a lady inviting somebody to come in for a feast and all that. I don't that's a figure of speech, a very powerful one, but it doesn't mean we get to say wisdom is separate from God and goddess and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_04 28:26

Right. Right. Yeah, you did. Um yeah, around the turn of the 20th century, there was a very strong move. Um I just listened to an interview yesterday between a woman who wrote a book called Occult Feminism and Joe Rogan. And, you know, her language is pretty salty, so I can't recommend it in church. Both of those are. But you know, just talking about the sort of ideological origins of feminism, and she's not the only one to have made this case, but there are a lot of it. Uh there's a kind of worship of the goddess Sophia. Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom, and they would make that kind of move. Or like Proverbs 8, where it's it talks about uh, you know, God possessed me in the beginning of the creation of the world. You're right, it's a it's a figure of speech, right? It's a powerful personification of God's wisdom. And ultimately, the way that cashed out in the early church and in the reformers and in the Puritans is saying that was talking about the Word. That was talking about the Son, that's talking about Jesus. That's one of the ways in which we were able to kind of discern the divinity of the Son in the early church. But yeah, wisdom, you know, it's you know, it's you can you can kind of personify wisdom and rationality and set it aside from God and live and think in a way where this world is just kind of self-sustaining. It's the divine watchmaker argument where it's this idea, it's a technical term is deism, that God just wound up all things like a watch and then he let it go. And this world is just kind of going. I've mentioned before the uh the sociologist, um I don't know why I'm blanking on his name, Smith from uh Notre Dame. He did an exploration to kind of like describe the prevailing religious sentiment of American youth. Or teenagers, young adults, and this is a couple decades ago, but still mainly holds true. Uh it's uh moral therapeutic deism. This idea that God is just kind of out there. He's mostly, you know, he he likes us, he wants us to all have a good time, uh, but he's generally unaware of and unconcerned with our what's going on in the world. And if you know if we're really in trouble and we really cry out really loud, he might dip in and do something about it. But beyond that, you know, religion isn't about actually having a relationship with him, it's about just making ourselves feel better about the universe. And that's the kind of stuff that happens. It's that deism piece where it's like if you don't have a strong view of Providence, what you have is the kind old grandpa in the sky who's doing his own thing, and he might dip in once in a while to kind of mess with stuff if he has to. But again, that's not that's not our view of Providence. God is actively engaged with every aspect of his creation all the time. Right? And that should give us a kind of confidence. It should also give us a kind of security. Um, you know, think of the Noaic covenant after the flood. God makes a promise with all of creation. And it's it's crazy how the extent to which in those chapters of Genesis, it really makes it a point to say he's making a covenant with like everything, all the creatures, all the animals, all of them, everything, in order to sustain the world so that there would be the ordinary rhythm of days and nights and seasons and all of that. He will sustain the world. He will not judge it again by water. He will maintain the world as a theater of his grace and glory in the time when Jesus comes again. And we can receive that promise as a promise, as a sure promise, because we know that God in his power, in his providence, is in a most holy, wise, and powerful way, preserving the world. Because he's preserving the world, because he has that power, he's actually able to keep that promise. If he doesn't have the power, he can't keep the promise. And then when you know the climate change doomsdayers say that the end is nigh, you know, we don't have a good reason to doubt their alarmism. And there's been different versions of that for every generation, for who knows how long. When we think about preservation, it's not just a kind of preservation of the immaterial world. It's also a preservation of God's people. Uh I just mentioned Noah, right? God makes a covenant with creation for the sake of creation and for the sake of new creation, ultimately for the sake of his people. The history of God dealing with his people and preserving them through various trials. Uh, you know, Jacob and all of his escapades, Israel and Egypt and the Exodus, the exiles and the courts of foreign captured kings like Daniel and Esther, the church and its early persecution, the book of Acts, 1 Peter, so on and so forth. Uh God's preservation, it's an exhaustive preservation of all things, but it's also a preservation of his people, as a people and as individuals. So when we think about God's providence, it's got to get all the way down into our cells, into our mitochondria, into our spirit, into our minds, into our hearts, thinking about he's ordering all things, even in us, even for us. The God of the universe, who literally has his mind on everything, but also has his mind on you. Intimately, intricately, exhaustively. Nothing that's going on in your life right now, nothing that's going on in my life right now escapes his sovereign gaze.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

Including your breath. Every breath, every heartbeat. And that's where that fall into his arms, surrender. And it's a spiritual discipline, for me, it's a spiritual discipline, a spiritual exercise. When the heat comes and you run down, you know, you send your mind and your heart down, like sterile. Glory to God. And when you run like that, it starts to become second nature, right? Where there's the quote bad moves, you think it's bad moves, and it hurts, and your chest gets tight, and you run down. And it's a spiritual exercise. I've actually worked that spiritual muscle, at least for me, and I hope that I can help others who may be running.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Exactly for me, that same way too, because a huge mistake I made for many years was okay, the Lord saved me. Now I've got to fix myself. Now I've got to go through the whole, I've got to do the sanctifying and I've got to be the good little girl and all that. Not that I want to be a bad little girl, but I've got to finish this work. I took me a while, even though I read the scripture, that it's the Lord who begins and ends. He's the author and the finisher of our faith. Um read that, but it really didn't sink in, you know, where it was operating in a more relaxed obedience as Lewis's word of relaxed obedience, that God's gonna finish me up and make me exactly what he wants to make me, and I will be happy with that. I don't need to be worried about I've got to add something to his work. Yeah. No. That's so awful.

SPEAKER_04 36:16

It's the Galatian heresy, right? You fools who has bewitched you. Exactly. You've begun by the spirit, now you think you're gonna finish it by the flesh. Come on. That's essentially Paul's argument in Galatians.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

That opens the door for so many really weird legalistic things. Okay. Like when my parents first went to Somalia, way back when they were Mennonites, and they went under the the uh structure of the Lancaster Mennonite, and for them, my dad's shoes had to be black, they couldn't be brown. And my mom's hair had to be over her over her ears, couldn't, I mean, behind her ears, it couldn't be over. Now, is that not the most ridiculous thing you ever heard? But that's what legalism does. It gets tighter and tighter and more, you know, little and little and petty and putting tassels on it. The Pharisees did it, but people, other people, everybody in every church tradition will go that way as if they don't keep tight on the Lord Jesus and his grace. They'll go that way one way or another.

SPEAKER_04 37:28

Yeah. Relaxed obedience is a good term, especially when we think about this. Not in the sense that we're relax about our obedience, that's not the case. But like when you think about preservation, that God is preserved preserving all things, right? There's a kind of anxiety that you can live with in the world. Whether we're talking about climate change kind of globally, or maybe we're talking more locally in terms of our own health, right? You can be like a biohacker where you're going to perfectly fine-tune every variable in your life. You're going to work out three hours a day, you're only going to shop at whole paycheck, all these kinds of things. And, you know, I'm not saying those things are wrong. I mean, those are mostly good things. But if it's born of a kind of anxiety where you kind of forget that God is the preserver of all things, and then you believe, if it's meant to be, it's up to me. Right? If you believe that you're the preserver of all things, then you're no longer in the realm of relaxed obedience, where it's like, I'm going to take care of my body, I'm going to take care of my world because God has called me to do it. I'm going to do it freely, I'm going to do it joyfully, I'm going to do it in confidence, knowing that, you know, He's the one who's working in and underneath my work. Like that's a good way to be free in the world. But the other way is to be anxious, where you're bearing the weight of the world on your shoulders. And if I get this thing wrong, if I don't get the right macro ratio today, or if I like buy a thing with the wrong kind of packaging, or I put the kind of fuel, wrong kind of fuel in my car, whatever, like I'm going to participate in the destruction of the world. We're not called, we're called to be good stewards of our bodies and of our world and all of that. But we're not called to live under a crippling anxiety as though it's up to us to keep creation and keep ourselves alive. If that makes sense. People say carbon footprint, put that on a coffee box. We're not having church today, we're having life wet.

SPEAKER_03 39:44

But what's your sin? What's your sin footprint, right? When you put like slander, gossip, you know, all these other things, I you know, what's that sin footprint look like? What's I'm very conscious of that too. The total Bob Allen comment or something. There you go. I don't know whoever Bob Allen is, but.

SPEAKER_04 40:08

You don't know who Bob Allen is? The guy who's an elder here? Who moved to the city? Oh, Bob? Yes. Oh, yeah. You can totally say that. Yeah. I'm gonna tell him you forgot who is thinking. Alright, that's that's preservation. He was only here for like 20 years, it's okay. I wasn't here for 20 years. I know, I'm not sure. Alright, we talked about God's pro preservation. His holy, wise, and powerful preservation. And now we'll finish up by talking about God's holy, wise, and powerful governing all his creatures and all uh all their actions. So Psalm 103, 19. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all. Matthew 10, 29 through 31. 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. Fear not, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows. So God's governance is the specific activity of God guiding and directing all his creatures and all their actions. And, you know, to what extent does that uh control, does that governing uh go? In the Bible, we see it's it covers the full gamut, right? Broad and narrow. In one sense, you can zoom out to the perspective of eternity, Ephesians 1.11. 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. And we can zoom in. Alright, so that's you know the sweep of history, everything that happens, right? But then we can zoom in and see how God is at work in governing even the various spheres within creation, like the natural world. Psalm 135, 5 through 7. I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the deeps. He is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses. So, this idea that God, as he's guiding and directing everything that happens, that includes the weather. Even if we don't like have categories for this and we don't think about it intentionally, a lot of our theology is uh, you know, the the classical phrase is lex orendi, lex credendi. The law of praying is the law of believing. And the practical insight is like if you if you want to know how a church or how a Christian believes, listen to how they pray. Because our theology comes out in our prayer. And so we might not say that, you know, God's providence extends to God to God governing all the clouds and the winds and the sun and all of that. And yet we'll pray for sunshine. Or if it's been dry for too long, we'll pray for rain. If you're praying for rain, you are tacitly acknowledging that God can actually answer that prayer and send the rain. The scriptures get pretty clear on this, that God's governing, God cares about the weather. God cares about the weather enough to actually direct it according to his wisdom. Uh animals. Uh Psalm 104, 29. When you hide your face, they are dismayed. When you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. Uh God gave the animals life, God takes away the animals' lives. God guides and directs even the days of his non rational creatures. Human history. Maybe thinking more abstractly. Uh, the history of nations, politics. Uh he changed uh Daniel 2 21. He changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. God is sovereign even over elections. God is in control even of who ascends to the throne and who doesn't ascend to the throne. And how history folds out in light of those ascensions and elections. God is in control of who the mayor is right now. God's providence extends to human affairs. That's why Romans 13 and Paul can say that we ought to obey our earthly authorities because they're the servant or the deacon of God given to be a terror to the bad and a blessing and a benefit to the good. God puts people in power. He's in charge of that. He cares about that. His providence extends to that. Accidents. Seemingly accidental occurrences that happen in the world. Proverbs 16, 33, the law is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the Lord. We talked last week, or maybe it was a couple weeks ago, about the king of Israel. It's either Ahab or Ahaz. I think it was Ahab. You know, he goes to battle, and a prophet had prophesied that he would be killed. And so the king says, Well, I'm just going to dress like any other soldier, so nobody can single me out. And then he goes into battle. And it's it's crazy how it's um, I want to say it's it's Kings of Chronicles, one of those. I don't have it written down. But uh it it makes like the most nondescript description of the soldier. Now a certain man just happened to aim his bow in a certain direction, and he let his arrow fly, and it just happened to hit the crease in the king's armor and penetrate, and it killed him. And so it's presented in the language of accident, right? Just like the lot is cast into the lap. But the point that it's making is that there are no accidents. Even the things that seem most accidental to us are a part of God's providence. Everything is unfolding according to his plan.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

Under me, Prince Prince uh, no, Silver Chair. Under the the carving that said under me, and Answan told them they would have to, they need to find words and then obey them. And then they were mocked because some came and made that, and Pub Blum says, Don't you trouble yourself. Yeah. That's an example of previous. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:45

God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. Right? And that's, yeah, yeah, he uses all the things. Even, and again, our perspective is so limited that we just we can't, most of the time we can't see that in the moment. And we just have to be faithful to what he's put in front of us, trust him, even when it doesn't make sense, and eventually we'll see how things shake out. And we can trust the promise that they'll shake out in our favor. The lives of individuals, right? God governs even the lives of individuals. 1 Samuel 2, 6 through 7. The Lord kills and brings to life. He brings down to Sheol and He raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich. He brings low and he exalts. Right? Just, you know, it's. We all have different circumstances in our lives. Uh maybe we're a little lower than we would like to be. Maybe we're a little higher than we'd like to be. Uh maybe all the signs are pointing to us not having as many days in our lives as we thought we would. Or we've had far too many days and we're tired of seeing our friends go to be with the Lord. Like wherever we are in the spectrum, we have circumstances in our lives that we might appreciate, we might not appreciate. And God's providence tells us that, you know, that's what the Psalms tell us, that every single one of our days were written in His book before any of them ever came to pass. There is no page in your story and mine that has not already been written by God. And in His providence, He is unfolding the story. He's bringing it to fruition. And like, that's a hard word when you're in the darker chapters, right? It's it's a hard word to embrace and accept because it comes back to what I talked about with like evil and suffering, challenging our doctrine of providence. But as hard as it might be in the moment, it's actually the most hopeful word we have. Because what is the alternative? We're in a dark chapter, we're in a dark moment, we're in a dark season, and it's like, you know, good luck. It might get worse. Right? And it might get worse, but the promise is that even if it gets worse from your perspective, God is doing something. And it will get better. Infinitely better, if not in this life than in the next.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

Okay, one more thing. Psal 110. Yeah. The most messianic song there is. Yeah. Quoted more than any other song in the New Testament. Rule, first of all, there's two, you put in the midst of your actions. And if we are doing Christ, we're more in the midst of enemies. So we should expect possibility, we should expect counter moves from the enemy who's just a pilly little arcade. No, he is not anti-government. He needs another display.

unknown 49:45

How dare he?

SPEAKER_00 49:46

Thank you for the son of God. And then he was just God didn't make an enemy out. Anyhow, uh rule the midst of your enemies until I make your enemies your footstool.

SPEAKER_02 49:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:59

Isn't that exciting?

SPEAKER_02 50:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

That's what one of the things that I crossed train for it's giving me hope in the middle of difficult circumstances. Yeah. This is something God needs to make my footstool.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 50:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:17

There are there's a lot more we can say about Providence, of course. Uh there are more, there are deeper, more philosophical, theological, technical discussions that we can get into specifically about the relationship of divine sovereignty and human agency. It's like, you know, if God's in control of everything, then am I truly free? Are any of us really truly free? Yes. Yes, we are. Um, I'm just gonna assert that right now and not say how it's so. But I would really encourage you if you want to read more on this or to reflect more on this. Uh, chapter five in our in the Westminster Confession is the chapter on providence, and it's really rich about how this stuff works. And also the chapter on free will. I think it's chapter 17, if I could be completely wrong. Uh because that's, you know, God is in control of all things, and yet he has made us free, rational, moral agents. And we tend to think of that as a zero-sum kind of thing, where either God is working or I'm working. But scripture tells us in Philippians 2, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works within you, both to will and to do for his good pleasure. So we work, we do, and we have a whole universe of ends that we're trying to achieve and desires we're trying to realize and that sort of thing. But the deep truth is that God is at work underneath us. Alright? And that's we remain free in that, but God is the most free agent. He's the primary cause, we're the secondary cause. And he's making things happen in us and through us by way of us. Any closing thoughts or questions before I pray? Heavenly Father, thank you for your providence. Thank you that your control of all things is not the control of a tyrant or a despot, but of a holy, wise, and powerful God, who is worthy of all of our praise and all of our honor and all of our glory, who makes no mistakes, who truly does bring all things together, who works all things for the good of those who are called according to your purpose, who brings about goodness and glory and grace and truth and beauty. Lord, I pray that you would help us not to resign ourselves to your providence as if we were stoics, uh, fatalists, caesaras, rah, whatever will be, will be. But as those who trust in your providence, because we trust in you. Those who are willing to lament boldly when this world gives us what it should not give us. When things break, when sins multiply, when evil seems to win this or that battle. Help us to lament honestly, to cry out to heaven that these things should not be so. But in our lament, Father, we pray that you would whisper back words of comfort and remind us that these things will not always be so. That one day the trumpet will sound and Jesus will descend, and we will all rise to meet him in the air. And that we will come into a new heavens and a new earth, where there are no more tears, there is no more cancer, there is no more degradation, there is no more sin or pain or any suffering or evil whatsoever. Lord help us to long for that day and to look forward to it with confidence, knowing that you are most holily and wisely and powerfully preserving and governing all things until they reach that end. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.