SPEAKER_00: Next week.
SPEAKER_00: So again, thank you for your encouragement, your prayer, and your support.
SPEAKER_00: It means uh much to us.
SPEAKER_00: Would you take your Bible with me this morning to the book of Matthew?
SPEAKER_00: Matthew's Gospel and chapter two.
SPEAKER_00: It's where we left off last week.
SPEAKER_00: Ian, the remote is not working if you are up there.
SPEAKER_00: I can't get this to go forward up there.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Last time I was with you in this book.
SPEAKER_00: We covered chapter 2, verse 13 through verse 23, but we kind of skipped over very, very briefly the middle section, verses 16 through 18, because I wanted to spend a little more time in it, a little more detailed time in it.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to do that with you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have a Bible, I encourage you to follow along as I read Matthew chapter 2, beginning in verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: God's word says, Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the Magi, became furious.
SPEAKER_00: And he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.
SPEAKER_00: Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation.
SPEAKER_00: Rachel weeping for her children.
SPEAKER_00: She refused to be comforted because they are no more.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, we come to you asking for your help.
SPEAKER_00: This is a heart-wrenching, a gut-wrenching passage of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Incomprehensible in many ways.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Where were you?
SPEAKER_00: What were you doing?
SPEAKER_00: So many questions and unanswered questions, it seems.
SPEAKER_00: We all have our own pains, our own sorrows, our own anxieties, our own troubles.
SPEAKER_00: And we ask similar questions.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Where are you?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, by your spirit, reveal yourself to us.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to grasp what's going on here and what you are doing in our lives as well.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this so that we might praise you in all that we do and say.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Providence is the gracious outworking of God's purpose in Christ within his creation, within his created order.
SPEAKER_00: That means that chance does not exist.
SPEAKER_00: Fate does not rule our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, God directs every step and every event.
SPEAKER_00: This very moment, then, you and I are fulfilling God's purpose.
SPEAKER_00: You are here because God has ordained your presence.
SPEAKER_00: He has guided your steps.
SPEAKER_00: He has moved you to make decisions so that you might be here, and I'm glad for that.
SPEAKER_00: That is his good purpose for you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, most Christians are willing, and we might say, even eager, to relish and affirm God's providence up to and until it involves something personally painful.
SPEAKER_00: Or when it is applied to a circumstance or event that challenges our sense of right and wrong, our sense of justice or fairness?
SPEAKER_00: When those lines are crossed, our views of God and of his providence in his world and in our lives can be challenged.
SPEAKER_00: So what do you think?
SPEAKER_00: What is your conviction?
SPEAKER_00: Does God's providence extend even to the bad things of life?
SPEAKER_00: Think of your own relationship to God's providential working.
SPEAKER_00: It's a simple thing to relish in God's providence when it leads to the fulfillment of a desire, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you've been praying for a new job or a raise, being able to pay off a debt.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've been beseeching the Lord for healing in some way, and he has provided an answer to that prayer.
SPEAKER_00: We relish in God's providence when it results in the positive answer to prayer in a way that we desire.
SPEAKER_00: But what about prayers answered in ways that we do not expect?
SPEAKER_00: Or in ways we do not desire?
SPEAKER_00: What if those symptoms that you are experiencing lead to an extended hospital stay?
SPEAKER_00: To surgery, to lengthy treatment, to death.
SPEAKER_00: How do you feel about God's providence then?
SPEAKER_00: God's providence leads to suffering, to grief, or to pain in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And in those situations, do we praise his providential working or do we get frustrated with God?
SPEAKER_00: Do we blame the devil?
SPEAKER_00: A couple of months ago, Allison and I found what we believed to be the ideal home for us to purchase and move into.
SPEAKER_00: So we we made an offer on this home.
SPEAKER_00: It was perfect.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we we we have our lists, right?
SPEAKER_00: We have our lists of needs.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that we feel like this this is a must.
SPEAKER_00: We have to have this.
SPEAKER_00: And then we have the second list of things that we want, right?
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you, this house checked off every box but one.
SPEAKER_00: And that one was one I could I could maybe live with, but ideal for us.
SPEAKER_00: So we put in an offer on it, and then we made a counter offer.
SPEAKER_00: And then the house was sold to somebody known by the seller.
SPEAKER_00: It can be it can be hard, difficult to see God's good, providential hand keeping something from us, something that we perceive or feel to be positive and good and beneficial to us.
SPEAKER_00: How do we handle those situations?
SPEAKER_00: Think of the moms and the dads in in this account.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think they would have found God's providence praiseworthy?
SPEAKER_00: Now we may never know that answer.
SPEAKER_00: But because we all grieve, because suffering and and loss impact all of us, because we we understand that sense of injustice and travesty in life, we can empathize with these parents to some extent.
SPEAKER_00: Weeping and loud lamentation because children are no more.
SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
SPEAKER_00: Was God providentially involved in this horrendous situation?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the better question and the harder question is this Do you trust a God who providentially uses things we might even call evil?
SPEAKER_00: I've entitled this message Providence and Pain.
SPEAKER_00: The focus of this entire chapter in Matthew's gospel is on the detailed providential working of God in the coming of his son.
SPEAKER_00: That includes the murder of innocent children, an account dripping with so much pain like an unceasing rain on a dreary day.
SPEAKER_00: Your pain may be the loss of a child like those in Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it's the loss of another deeply loved one, or a series of such sorrows.
SPEAKER_00: Your pain might be found in relationships, or in sickness, or disease, in finances, or in physical pain.
SPEAKER_00: You may have pain and sorrow brought on by your own sinful poor choices in life, or your sorrow and pain in life might be the result of something that is entirely outside of your control.
SPEAKER_00: You may live in a depressive cloud of stress and anxiety and worry because of past or current pains and the uncertain future that lays before you.
SPEAKER_00: Have I covered everybody yet?
SPEAKER_00: Hope you get that point.
SPEAKER_00: We can all find ourselves in some kind of painful situation.
SPEAKER_00: So, what does this account teach us about our pain and the providence of God?
SPEAKER_00: Well, here it is in one sentence.
SPEAKER_00: I heard another pastor use this particular wording, and I'm stealing it and giving it to you because it fits our passage perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: God's providence is the only foundation for life's pain.
SPEAKER_00: Let that echo again and again down the canyon of your soul through every twist and turn of life.
SPEAKER_00: John Flavell was a pastor in the 1600s.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote a little book entitled The Mystery of Providence.
SPEAKER_00: I highly recommend it to you.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I have about seven copies of it available at the welcome desk for the first seven people that get there after the service.
SPEAKER_00: And if you can't find it, I believe it's about 99 cents on Kindle, and there's a free PDF online too.
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, you can get it.
SPEAKER_00: Read it.
SPEAKER_00: Flavil noted the style of writing in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Many languages, as you write them out, are written out left to right, but Hebrew is different.
SPEAKER_00: It's written out right to left.
SPEAKER_00: So from our vantage point, from an English speaker, English reader, it's backwards.
SPEAKER_00: Flavil compared that to God's providence.
SPEAKER_00: Some providences, he wrote, are like Hebrew letters.
SPEAKER_00: They must be read backwards.
SPEAKER_00: That is, while God is working and guiding all things to his determined end, we may not be able to trace his work or understand his purpose until time enables us to look back on it.
SPEAKER_00: To put Flavil's statement in 21st century terms, hindsight is 2020.
SPEAKER_00: Walking through pain, sorrow, grief, suffering, whatever term you want to place in there can cloud our view of God's hand in the moment.
SPEAKER_00: It's still there.
SPEAKER_00: He is still there.
SPEAKER_00: But we may have to trust him until we can turn around and look back to see exactly how he has worked.
SPEAKER_00: Now to our text.
SPEAKER_00: A horrendous murder of innocent boys.
SPEAKER_00: Scholars tell us that it probably wasn't as terrible as we imagine it to be.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe twenty or forty boys at the most.
SPEAKER_00: Calling it a travesty is insufficient.
SPEAKER_00: No, this is a continuation of the pattern of those in positions of power sinfully exerting their authority.
SPEAKER_00: And here it is to kill and oppress.
SPEAKER_00: Herod's actions continued that pattern.
SPEAKER_00: And it continues even today.
SPEAKER_00: We could give story after story after story.
SPEAKER_00: I read two weeks ago that the Roman Catholic Church is admitting to priests not only being child molesters, but using nuns as sexual slaves.
SPEAKER_00: About a month ago, the state of New York approved abortions up to the time of birth for any reason.
SPEAKER_00: All to the sounds of clapping and cheering.
SPEAKER_00: Sinful abuse of power.
SPEAKER_00: We find these evil abuses of authority and power in all places at all times.
SPEAKER_00: And with great pain, that kind of evil surrounded our Lord's coming.
SPEAKER_00: In this short, powerful account, God gives us four noteworthy characteristics of his providence that help guide us in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at those briefly and then see how God would have us respond.
SPEAKER_00: First, note please with me that providence is perfectly timed.
SPEAKER_00: Providence is perfectly timed.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 16, we read, then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the Magi, when he saw there's a time element there.
SPEAKER_00: Bethlehem is only five or six miles from the city of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: It would not have taken the Magi very long to travel that short distance to find the Lord Jesus, worship him, give him their gifts, and then return to Jerusalem to inform Herod.
SPEAKER_00: At minimum, we're safe to conclude three days, maybe.
SPEAKER_00: One day to travel, one day to find him and worship, one day to go back to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps due to Herod's busyness, when they did not return, we might be able to say that he didn't come to the conclusion of their absence until days four, five, six.
SPEAKER_00: But at any rate, there was a decisive moment, a moment that concluded with an order issued to search out and destroy.
SPEAKER_00: But I love how God works in this situation.
SPEAKER_00: Herod thinks he's some mighty God who can wipe out a rival with a mere order.
SPEAKER_00: But God sits in the heavens and laughs.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, Herod, I already sent them away.
SPEAKER_00: You can't reach them.
SPEAKER_00: See, immediately after the Magi left, God sent Joseph and Mary and Jesus away.
SPEAKER_00: It was only then that Herod realized the Magi's actions.
SPEAKER_00: Because God's providence is perfectly timed.
SPEAKER_00: If we see and believe that, then we must also note the perfectly timed arrival of Herod's soldiers in the village of Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: And the presence of those precious baby boys.
SPEAKER_00: God's providential timing to bring those boys home to him was perfect.
SPEAKER_00: That's hard, beloved.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard, but it's true.
SPEAKER_00: The timing of pain is always perfect.
SPEAKER_00: Consider.
SPEAKER_00: Consider the timing of the Ishmaelite caravan to whom the sons of Jacob sold their brother Joseph.
SPEAKER_00: The timing of that caravan was perfect.
SPEAKER_00: Consider the timing of Joseph spending years in prison before God finally gave Pharaoh some dreams that needed interpreted.
SPEAKER_00: God's timing was perfect.
SPEAKER_00: Consider the timing of Israel's slavery in Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: Or the timing of Israel's entry into Canaan to destroy the sinful peoples there.
SPEAKER_00: Consider the timing of Job's suffering.
SPEAKER_00: I love the providence in the account of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: You know Jonah ran away from God, got on a boat out into the Mediterranean Sea.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah wrote that God prepared a storm.
SPEAKER_00: The timing of that storm was perfect, beloved.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah also wrote that God prepared a great fish.
SPEAKER_00: Perfectly timed.
SPEAKER_00: The homemoing of my mother and my two sisters by a car accident.
SPEAKER_00: It was perfectly timed.
SPEAKER_00: The homegoing of my wife's baby sister, it was perfectly timed.
SPEAKER_00: And we could go on and on and on and on.
SPEAKER_00: Pastor Charles Spurgeon said the night of affliction is just as much under the arrangement and control of the Lord of love as the bright summer days when all is bliss.
SPEAKER_00: We can say that because Christ is the Lord of time and your times are in his hand.
SPEAKER_00: He experiences no surprises.
SPEAKER_00: And if we truly rested in that truth, that he experiences no surprises and that all of our times are in his hands, we would not be so overtaken by the unexpected events in our own lives.
SPEAKER_00: But because our ways are not his ways and his ways are not our ways, we become stretched, we become wearied, and we become pained.
SPEAKER_00: I've been planning to preach on this text and this message for almost three months now.
SPEAKER_00: For the last year, Allison and I have been pursuing adopting another child.
SPEAKER_00: So a month ago today, a month ago today, between that Sunday and the next day, Monday, seven of you asked us if there was any news on our adoption.
SPEAKER_00: Within two days, seven of you asked us that.
SPEAKER_00: Our answer was no.
SPEAKER_00: We were just waiting for a phone call that we fully expected to be a couple of months out, after which we would have to wait a couple months more.
SPEAKER_00: That was Sunday and Monday.
SPEAKER_00: On Tuesday of that week, we received a call informing us that we had been matched with a birth mom.
SPEAKER_00: Great.
SPEAKER_00: We were excited that God's timing was not ours.
SPEAKER_00: That was wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: So we planned to go and to meet the birth mom, but then the next Sunday we were surprised when we got notified that the birth mom gave birth early.
SPEAKER_00: And our trip was not just to meet her, but to receive placement of a baby girl.
SPEAKER_00: No planning, no preparation.
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly our schedules and our lives were entirely in the hands of people we'd never met before.
SPEAKER_00: There was so much that was out of our control.
SPEAKER_00: We want to determine our own times, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: We want to have things to be worked out in the ways that we desire.
SPEAKER_00: But don't you think it would be better for us if we could just rest in God's providential timing?
SPEAKER_00: Flavil wrote, Providence is wiser than you, and you may be confident that it has suited all things better to an eternal good than you could do had you been left to your own option.
SPEAKER_00: Providence is perfectly timed.
SPEAKER_00: God's providence also may be opposed, but never thwarted.
SPEAKER_00: The divine design of everything around the Lord's birth is heavily emphasized in this first part of Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Over and over again we see this theme of Christ fulfilling God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 1, verse 22, chapter 2, verses 5, 15, 17, 23, chapter 3, and verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: The plan of God is fulfilled in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That plan was first stated in the early pages of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: And every Jewish person would have known the general flow of God's promise.
SPEAKER_00: They expected it, they anticipated it, they desired its fulfillment except Herod.
SPEAKER_00: Herod didn't want its fulfillment.
SPEAKER_00: He was arrogantly half-Jewish.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that there would be a Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: He even asked the religious leaders where he would be born.
SPEAKER_00: But as we've already seen, Herod did not allow rivals to exist.
SPEAKER_00: He sought to control the Magi.
SPEAKER_00: And when that backfired, he exerted his powerful control to murder in an effort to thwart God's purpose and plan.
SPEAKER_00: Herod would use all of his power at his disposal to thwart God's providence.
SPEAKER_00: It resulted in sin, bloodshed, injustice, grief, and pain.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't pay to oppose God's providence or to fight against it.
SPEAKER_00: You can pursue every means possible to remain young in your order in your effort to oppose aging.
SPEAKER_00: But it's fruitless.
SPEAKER_00: You know it's ironic that many historians consider the story of Ponce de Leon seeking the fountain of youth to be a myth.
SPEAKER_00: Because remaining young is a myth.
SPEAKER_00: Age will take you down.
SPEAKER_00: You may oppose it vigorously and somewhat successfully for a time, but you will not thwart it.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph's brothers thought they could thwart God's providence by selling their brother to traveling slavers.
SPEAKER_00: But what did Joseph tell them decades later?
SPEAKER_00: He said, As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be left alive.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon, King Solomon, the wisest man who lived besides the Lord Jesus Christ, Solomon spent a lifetime experimenting, often experimenting with things that God opposed.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to his conclusion in Ecclesiastes chapter 6 and verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon said, Consider the work of God.
SPEAKER_00: Think about this, ponder it.
SPEAKER_00: Who can make straight what God has made crooked?
SPEAKER_00: God's providence may be opposed, but never thwarted.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you think it would be better for us if we could rest in his providence rather than fight it?
SPEAKER_00: Opposing God's providence is similar to what Octavius Winslow termed practical atheism.
SPEAKER_00: Opposing God's providence is going about your business in thought, word, and deed as though God is completely separate from your world and from your life.
SPEAKER_00: Winslow wrote, God is not only present in his created universe, but he is as much in the personal events of life, shaping, guiding, and overruling each and all.
SPEAKER_00: Providence may be opposed to your great pain, but never thwarted.
SPEAKER_00: Now that that truth can be difficult to swallow when we see the third characteristic of God's providence in this passage, and that is that providence may use pain and suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew wants us to see that everything about the coming of the Lord Jesus fulfilled God's intention from ages past.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus fulfills Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: God then providentially directed events in his world to see and to accomplish the fulfillment of his word.
SPEAKER_00: And we are to believe the same thing as we focus in on the tiny village of Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: This event fits perfectly into God's providence.
SPEAKER_00: And if that is true, if that is true, then the weeping and loud lamentation was not outside of God's providence.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this pain and suffering was intended by God to fulfill Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: He's referring to an event more than 500 years prior to Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: God, in his goodness and loving kindness, purposed to use pain and suffering in his providential working.
SPEAKER_00: Now Matthew refers to Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: Ramah was where Jacob's wife Rachel was buried.
SPEAKER_00: And in Jeremiah, Rachel is pictured as speaking on behalf of the people of Israel, as weeping from her tomb because her children had been exiled.
SPEAKER_00: They'd been carried off as captives to another nation.
SPEAKER_00: They were no more in their land.
SPEAKER_00: The longtime pattern of vicious, sinful despots hurting God's people was true in Israel's history.
SPEAKER_00: And as God's people were carted off into exile in Babylon, Rachel wept because they were no more.
SPEAKER_00: And now in Bethlehem we see that same pattern continuing.
SPEAKER_00: It would have been hard.
SPEAKER_00: But that providence, like Hebrew letters, is better read backwards.
SPEAKER_00: We can now see that what ancient Israel experienced pictured the oppressive rule of sin over God's people and of their desperate need for a redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: Sin's reign through evil despots continued, and sin sometimes overflows with pain and suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And God included his own son in that pattern because his son came to break sin's curse.
SPEAKER_00: There is a new king now, once promised, now reigning and ruling, who rules with grace and truth, not murderous rage.
SPEAKER_00: Satan too uses pain and suffering.
SPEAKER_00: You can talk to Job about that.
SPEAKER_00: But God rules over all in his sovereign providence.
SPEAKER_00: He will use it to fulfill his purpose.
SPEAKER_00: What Israel endured in ancient times, the Lord Jesus experienced in his birth.
SPEAKER_00: Because of the sinful oppression of an evil king, Jesus was exiled to Egypt, leaving behind weeping and grief in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Who better to speak of pain and suffering in our times than Johnny Erickson Tata, paralyzed for most of her life?
SPEAKER_00: She wrote in her book Pain and Providence, quote, evil is not uncontrolled.
SPEAKER_00: Because God reigns over all, nothing happens outside of God's control and plan.
SPEAKER_00: Even if we can't grasp it this side of eternity, our sufferings have a place in God's plans.
SPEAKER_00: We don't suffer in vain.
SPEAKER_00: Our sufferings have meaning because God uses them in his purposes.
SPEAKER_00: Someone else has well said, sometimes providence guards us from pain.
SPEAKER_00: Other times the providence is in the pain.
SPEAKER_00: We must, though, understand this fourth characteristic of God's providence, and that is that it is planned with purpose.
SPEAKER_00: To see this, we need to go back to the passage that Matthew had in mind.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah chapter 31.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah records God's word again about Rachel weeping and refusing to be comforted because her children were no more.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jeremiah 31, 15 said.
SPEAKER_00: But then if we keep reading in verse 16, it says, Thus says Yahweh, keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, because there is reward for your effort, declares Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: They shall come back from the land of the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: There is hope for your future, declares Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Now that hope is not merely a return from exile.
SPEAKER_00: That happened.
SPEAKER_00: They did return from exile.
SPEAKER_00: That hope was fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: There was hope to be found in that.
SPEAKER_00: But the ultimate hope, Jeremiah goes on to say near the end of this chapter, is there is a new covenant between God and his people, and the pinnacle of that new covenant is the forgiveness of sin.
SPEAKER_00: God says in the same chapter, Jeremiah 31, verse 34, I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.
SPEAKER_00: Six hundred years later, Rachel would weep again.
SPEAKER_00: Again, because her children were no more.
SPEAKER_00: Sin in its viciousness had taken away her children.
SPEAKER_00: But this time it was the fulfillment of God's plan.
SPEAKER_00: He had purposed to deal with sin.
SPEAKER_00: He had promised to forgive sin.
SPEAKER_00: And now he had come to do just that.
SPEAKER_00: The rescuer had come.
SPEAKER_00: Providence is planned with purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Even when it involves pain and suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Consider some truths from the book of Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah is one of my favorite books of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And there's some fascinating statements in Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: Consider Isaiah chapter 14, verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: This is the purpose that is purposed concerning the whole earth.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations.
SPEAKER_00: For Yahweh of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it?
SPEAKER_00: His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back?
SPEAKER_00: That's a hypothetical question.
SPEAKER_00: No one.
SPEAKER_00: When God purposes, no one will change it, and God purposes and his providence carries it out.
SPEAKER_00: Later on in Isaiah in chapter 37, we read in verse 26 these words.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what about bad things?
SPEAKER_00: What about things that to us seem terrible?
SPEAKER_00: How do we make sense of that in terms of God's providence?
SPEAKER_00: Well, in chapter 45 of Isaiah, God is speaking to Cyrus, a Persian king.
SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 5, I am Yahweh, there is no other.
SPEAKER_00: Besides me, there is no God.
SPEAKER_00: I equip you, Cyrus, though you do not know me.
SPEAKER_00: He's a pagan king.
SPEAKER_00: I do it for a purpose, so that people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none besides me.
SPEAKER_00: I am Yahweh, there is no other.
SPEAKER_00: Then listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: I form light and create darkness.
SPEAKER_00: I make well-being and create calamity.
SPEAKER_00: I am Yahweh who does all these things.
SPEAKER_00: One more.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 46, beginning in verse 8, remember this and stand firm.
SPEAKER_00: Recall it to mind, you transgressors.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the former things of old, for I am God and there is no other.
SPEAKER_00: I am God and there is none like me.
SPEAKER_00: I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand.
SPEAKER_00: I will accomplish all my purpose, even calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country.
SPEAKER_00: I have spoken and I will bring it to pass, I have purposed and I will do it.
SPEAKER_00: So when we read in Matthew that Scripture was fulfilled over and over and over again, it shows us that God providentially planned these events with purpose, with intent.
SPEAKER_00: Even Rachel's weeping.
SPEAKER_00: The weeping of Rachel stands for all of our weeping and anguish at the effects of sin in our world.
SPEAKER_00: We cry to God to do something about sin, pain, suffering, grief, injustice.
SPEAKER_00: And he did.
SPEAKER_00: He sent his son to break sin's curse.
SPEAKER_00: In December of 2014, Christian music artist Aaron McCain stopped his tour bus in the middle of the night before an overturned truck with two nearly unconscious men inside.
SPEAKER_00: He and his manager got out of their bus and tried to help, but then realized that fuel was rapidly leaking from the truck, and Aaron ran away from the truck thinking that the leaking fuel would explode.
SPEAKER_00: In the darkness and in the unfamiliar area, he jumped over what he thought was a median.
SPEAKER_00: He jumped instead into a deep ravine, breaking an ankle, a leg, and his jaw, bringing a lifetime of depression and PTSD.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, by the way, he was also newly married.
SPEAKER_00: Aaron said that God crushed his pride and moved he and his wife to a place of utter dependency on God's sovereignty.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what Aaron said in his own words.
SPEAKER_00: God has preordained trials of hardship in order that we would gain a gift greater than the trial itself.
SPEAKER_00: If we would last, making it to the end, we would be glorified in Christ with Christ forever.
SPEAKER_00: These minor setbacks, imagine that.
SPEAKER_00: These minor setbacks, he's calling them, are nothing less than the hair of a distraction in light of the greater gain eternally.
SPEAKER_00: It is because of God's sovereignty I am allowed to taste the goodness of his grace when all seems lost.
SPEAKER_00: My jaw is only temporary.
SPEAKER_00: My feet and legs will one day be replaced.
SPEAKER_00: My pain and suffering will be traded for an everlasting joy that only God can supply.
SPEAKER_00: Aaron came to rest in God's providential work.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the church and God's word has called us to, time and time again throughout church history.
SPEAKER_00: I think St.
SPEAKER_00: Augustine said it best.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote, trust the past to God's mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Trust the present to God's love.
SPEAKER_00: And the future to God's providence.
SPEAKER_00: How would God have us respond to this?
SPEAKER_00: One word.
SPEAKER_00: Trust.
SPEAKER_00: Trust God's providence in your life and in your world.
SPEAKER_00: Why would we do that?
SPEAKER_00: What would motivate us to trust that kind of God who is that powerful, who is that awesome?
SPEAKER_00: Well, very simply, it's because trusted providence leads to a hope-filled rest in the sovereign God.
SPEAKER_00: God's providence is the only foundation for life's pain.
SPEAKER_00: Pastor Spurgeon wrote it best.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Providence is wonderfully intricate.
SPEAKER_00: Ah, he says, you want always to see through Providence, do you not?
SPEAKER_00: You never will, I assure you.
SPEAKER_00: You have not eyes good enough.
SPEAKER_00: You want to see what good that affliction was to you.
SPEAKER_00: You must believe it.
SPEAKER_00: You want to see how it can bring good to your soul.
SPEAKER_00: You may be enabled to in a little time, but you cannot see it now.
SPEAKER_00: You must believe him.
SPEAKER_00: Honor God by trusting him.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Our brother, our Messiah, our King.
SPEAKER_00: We pray not for a guarantee of happiness, but instead for the strength to endure.
SPEAKER_00: Give us the strength to go on, to keep putting one foot in front of the other when we feel like we can't take even another step.
SPEAKER_00: By your spirit, grant to us the strength to trust you when we are filled so much with doubt and fear.
SPEAKER_00: Give us the strength to stand firm when everything in us is crying out to give in.
SPEAKER_00: Grant us grace to bear that to which you have called us.
SPEAKER_00: Not with bitterness and grumbling, but with cheerfulness and joy and trust.
SPEAKER_00: Fill us with strength to persevere to the end.
SPEAKER_00: By your spirit, give us strength to rejoice even as we mourn.
SPEAKER_00: And the strength to seek your face and to find our security in you.
SPEAKER_00: Cause us, your people, to say, My refuge and my fortress, my God and whom I trust.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Comes from Lena Sandabel Berg, who in the 1800s suffered the tragic death of her father as she watched him fall overboard on a boat.
SPEAKER_00: These were the words of trust that poured from her heart, and which I pray will pour from yours.
SPEAKER_00: And from mine.