Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.
Philadelphia, July the second, seventeen seventy six. There's a document sitting before a crowded room. The room's hot, the delegates are afraid, and really they have every reason to be. If they sign this document, they are committing treason, surely, but they're also likely signing their own death warrants. And one of the delegates pipes up and says what, you know, most cautious men would say, that the country is not yet ripe for independence. But he receives an answer from a Scotsman in a black clerical gown. Not ripe, sir. In my judgment, the country is not only ripe for the measure, it is in danger of rotting for the want of it. That man was John Witherspoon. He's a fifty-three year old Presbyterian minister from Yester, Scotland. He is from the same line of clergymen as the famous Reformed theologian John Knox, and for all intents and purposes, John
Witherspoon was a genius. He's said to have read the entire Bible by the age of four, and he was at the University of Edinburgh at the age of thirteen. And at this time, he is the president of the College of New Jersey, Princeton, and has only been in the country for eight years. And he would go on to be the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. In fact, when he came into the room to sign the document, he purposefully left his preaching robes on. Now, six weeks prior, Witherspoon preached a sermon that was printed and circular, you know, circulated all around the American colonies at the time. It was the only political sermon that he had ever published. He titled it The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men. And the text he used was Psalm 7610. So I'm actually going to read it from the King James Version, as that would have been the version that Witherspoon would have used. So here goes Psalm 76.10. Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee, the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain. So there's a very specific claim here, guys. The rage of wicked men does not run loose. It is not untethered. It serves for God's glory. And then whatever's left over, God straps to his own waist like a belt. So Witherspoon preaches this sermon in public, you know, ahead of a war that most observers thought would be impossible to
win. He preaches that sermon and then immediately had to live it out. Because in November of that year, he made the decision to shut down Princeton because the British were closing in on the town. He evacuated the campus just before the Redcoats took over Nassau Hall. They burned the library and they even burned down his own personal home. And the following year, at the Battle of Germantown, his own son James, who was serving as a major in the Continental Army, was killed. So the man who preached that God holds the wrath of men on a leash had now lost his son to it. Witherspoon stayed in Congress until 1782. He served on over a hundred committees and actually rebuilt Nassau Hall on his own dime. He went blind in 1792, and he died a couple of years later in 1794 on his farm outside of Princeton. Many of his students actually went on to build the young country. There was a president, a vice president, dozens of congressmen, and three Supreme Court justices. I mean, that's just a huge part of his legacy.
Now turn with me to Genesis 50. So we have Joseph here, and his brothers are terrified. They're kneeling before their brother that they had sold into slavery. Joseph now has the power of death over them and the ability to exact revenge for the evil that was delivered to him. But let's pick it up and we'll just keep going with the King James Version, starting in verse 18. And his brethren also went and fell down before his face, and they said, Behold, we be thy servants. And Joseph said unto them, Fear not, for am I in the place of God? And now, verse 20, we've been building to this. But as for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass as it is this day, to save much people alive. So let's unpack this. Joseph didn't say that, you know, what the brothers had done was not evil. Like Joseph straight up acknowledges that they did it intentionally and that it was evil. Like they were guilty of wickedness. Joseph really was thrown into the pit. Like he really was a slave. He really had a decade plus of his life essentially deleted. The text also does not say that this was God somehow cleaning up a mess after the fact, right? I mean, the verb used to describe these situations is actually the same. Joseph's brothers meant to do what they did, and God also meant to do what he did. There are two intentions for the same event, but God's intentions were the sovereign one, right? And God's intentions were for good. And that's Psalm 76, 10 in narrative form, right? The wrath of man praising God, the remainder worn like a belt. And Joseph only had this perspective at the end of all this tumult, right? This was after the pit. This was, you know, after the incident in Potiphar's house. This was after he was left in prison for an extra couple of years because the cupbearer forgot about him. He could only connect the dots looking backwards.
Now listen to me, men. Providence is not a doctrine that you learn in the good years and then cash in during the bad years. It's a doctrine you stake on something before you know what the outcome is going to be. And remember, Witherspoon preached the sovereignty of God over the wrath of man in May and then lost his son in October and he didn't take it back. And that's really the test that counts. It's really easy to affirm the sovereignty of God when you're, you know, relaxing by a bonfire with a delicious beverage and a cigar. But what about a month later if you're standing over the open grave with one of your loved ones in the casket? Most men actually just look at the providence of God as some sort of a you know optimistic Bible verse bumper sticker. It only works until you get bad news from the doctor. Or until you find out that your wife had an affair, or until you lose your job, or until one of your kids goes prodigal. Then it turns out that you never actually believed in the goodness and sovereignty of God over evil. We should all strive to be men like Witherspoon. We should let our yes be yes and our no be no. We should rest knowing that our God is good and that he has the dragon on a leash. And because of that, we can trust him.
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