Works of Providence Chapter 9b

Last week we did the first three of the four directions in the chapter. So the chapter is composed of four directions and two cautions or warnings.

So now we're on the fourth direction and then the two cautions on how to go forth with these things and how to reflect on and care about God's providence that was in your life.

So let's start with the fourth direction. The fourth direction John mentions in this book is that we should be reacting to God's providence and his affliction in appropriate manners.

And he quotes Ecclesiastes 7 .14 for this which is incredibly clear, I think, as to what he's trying to say.

In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider.

God has made the one as well as the other, so the man may not find out anything that will be after him.

It reminded me of Article 5 .2 from our confession as well.

The whole chapter 5 of our confession is actually just incredibly helpful for understanding the contents of this book, but 5 .2

is especially good here. Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly, so that there is not anything befalls any by chance or without his providence.

Yet by the same providence he ordereth them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.

As we remember, afflictions are, sometimes those are the judgments and the punishments that God gives us even in the current earth and our current life, right?

And so I remember growing up, I grew up in a very Arminian church, and there was definitely a separation of what does

God do and what does God not do in our lives, and that anything good given to us was a gift from the

Father, anything else was just Satan's wiles or your own creation of a thing almost.

So instead, we should recognize this, or as the confession lays out here, and as Ecclesiastes lays out, which is that all things are from the

Lord, all things are ordained by him, and we should be considering that when we think about the affliction he's given and the providence he's gifted us with.

So he points as well to Ezekiel 21 .10 for this sub -point, which is that we should be celebrating and joyful when appropriate.

So a lot of this section is reminding us that there's even times when we shouldn't be joyful, at least in some of the different ways that he speaks about the kind of joy we can have, the rejoicing that we should be following forth with.

So if we look at Ezekiel 21 .10, let's add that here,

I did not bring that one up. Sharpened for slaughter, polished to flash like lightning, shall we rejoice?

You have despised the rod, my son, with everything of wood. So you can see throughout some passages in the

Bible that the people are called to question the rejoicing, whether or not they should actually be mourning or grieving, especially the actions that they have taken which have caused

God to put these afflictions upon them. To really consider what he's doing in their lives.

Separately, we should have sadness when it is called for. There's plenty of situations throughout scripture that show the people having righteous sadness, whether it be the loss of a parent, the loss of their kings, or really, again, recognizing the punishment that God has given them and trying to consider what in their life the

Lord is trying to teach them to do better with. And there's a quote in here for how

John thinks that we should be considering the kinds of comfort that we have in the

Lord, the ways that we rejoice in what the Lord has done for us. He says there are two sorts of comfort, natural and sensitive, divine and spiritual.

When he says sensitive here, it's not in an emotional sense necessarily, but it's of our senses. So it's something that we physically are going to interact with.

And so he points out to us there is definitely a time to have both, pointing to Esther 9 for that.

Esther 9 .22, as the days on which the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday, that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor.

This is a time where the people are enjoying a spiritual, like, unleashing that God has given them, reminding them that he's their

God, that he is going to be protecting them, and that separately they are turning that into also a natural comfort and feasting in a joyous way too.

Now he points to Psalm 137 .2 to explain that there's a time though to not enjoy the natural and sensitive.

There may be times for more solemn worship and more solemn rejoicing. That passage is, on the willows there we hung up our lyres, with hanging up the lyres meaning they're instruments of worship, they're instruments of, you know, we love music, we like listening to music when we, you know, get together for game nights, get together for anything.

It's a way that we enjoy the world and enjoy our time together. He's suggesting there are times we see throughout the

Psalms, we see throughout Scripture, that people do not engage in these behaviors because it just isn't appropriate necessarily.

But as a whole, there's never a time to not have the divine and spiritual comfort. So there may be times to not have natural and sensitive comfort, but there's always occasion for divine and spiritual comfort, even within the afflictions.

And the two passages he uses here, one of them makes me laugh just because it's so short.

1 Thessalonians 5 .16, Rejoice always. In Philippians 4 .4, Rejoice in the

Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Like there's not much explanation to be had. We should recognize it's the

Lord. He has done all things for us. He is the reason we breathe, the reason we do anything. Rejoice in Him.

It's the thing that I think we forget the most, but it's the simplest and most clear of these things.

We should be rejoicing in the Lord first and always, and only rejoicing naturally when it is appropriate.

Another quote from him, All your losses are but as the loss of a farthing to a prince.

If we consider as we've gone through the last few weeks especially, we've been trying to focus on what gift

He has promised to us, what promises we have in eternity, that we are getting the inheritance of being

God's people, effectively being His first, His son. And so he's reminding us of this, that anything we lose in this life, whether it be all of our livelihood or our lives even, is as if a farthing was lost to a prince, a farthing being like a pretty small sum of money.

There is no significance to this, to any of the afflictions we really do have. And so we should again be responding in joy to the

Lord and being thankful that the correction is even being given to begin with. Now another major point, there is no reason to give up joy and comfort in the

Lord. We must be careful to maintain it because of our sin. As I've alluded to already, it seems to be our natural way of sinning to forget to bring joy to the

Lord and forget to actually enjoy what He has given us already. I know that is definitely the thing I fail the most at when it comes to just interacting with my sin, interacting with the gifts that He's given.

I'll enjoy the thing that I've gotten while forgetting to bring glory to Him and to actually actively thank

Him for what He has done for me. So comfort can be had apart from faith, but assurance must be paired with faith.

So we should only have assurance because of the faith that we enjoy in the Lord. It can't be because of, you know,

I was raised in a Christian family, I was raised in XYZ. Our comfort and assurance is only within that gift of faith that He has given us.

We should be working then also to remove our attachment to these earthly things because that will lighten our afflictions.

If you consider all the sins in your life, really lay them out like on paper someday and sort of do the mind map of how they occurred, what it requires for them to occur.

All of them have some kind of attachment to the world, have some kind of attachment to people within the world, anything, right?

So if we're hating on our brother in our head or we're just thinking wrongly about the relations that we have, those are only because we have some kind of deep attachment to worldly comfort that we shouldn't really be having to begin with or we're not recognizing the spiritual gifts that we even have in interacting with those people.

And then being able to be a joy and a help to them as well. So for us, we should be remembering how close the

Lord is to all things so that we can be stable in the face of both providences and afflictions.

There's a big quote from here that I really enjoyed. Our hearts are narrow and know not how to manage two businesses of such different natures as earthly and heavenly matters are without detriment to one.

Prosperous providences are for the most part a dangerous state to the soul. The moon never suffers an eclipse but at full.

So this has been another warning all throughout this book as well that we shouldn't necessarily see

God's gift of providences and God's gift of even just things and success to us as a necessary good.

Some of those are indeed stumbling blocks. It's not that we are to reject these things. It's that we are to recognize their danger and to recognize how as he makes one's life easier, he also increases the opportunity for you to fall into these sins.

And so he's asking you to increase your faith, asking you to increase your reliance upon him in respect to what he has gifted you.

And therefore in the other direction, if you have been given very little, often that is itself a mercy given to you so that there is much less opportunity for sin, much less opportunity to waste the talents that he's given.

And so both are mercies that he's given. But one especially needs you to be aware of what he's given you.

And something fun about this chapter, he started speaking to the unregenerate. I find this fascinating just because, you know, especially where we live, pretty much every single person we come across is willing to basically say that they're unregenerate.

They're not like faking being a Christian and then you think you can have a conversation with them about the word and what it would expect of you.

We really live in an area where pretty much no one is gonna say that they're a Christian. Even those who go to churches may fail to tell you they're a

Christian or even just admit that they're not. We've had some fun experiences with that. However, in this book, he's speaking to more of what

I grew up in, which is where everyone thinks they're a Christian or has some kind of respect for their being a divine that they should probably have some deference to.

In this book, he expects that those people are potentially reading this and tries to speak to them about what they should be doing and considering.

With that, the first of the four things. God is greatly patient in giving providence to those who are condemned.

This is something I often mention in street evangelism to people is that even their breath is just a thing that they're taking for granted, a providence

God has given them. God is giving them the opportunity to even blaspheme his name.

It's a horrible opportunity, but an opportunity that they're taking and grasping at like they wouldn't expect.

Really everything that people enjoy, even from just creating logical systems and thinking through how they have their lives, those are because of God's providences and they're only enjoying it because he allows it.

And to the unregenerate again, even though you are condemned, consider the mercies that God gives you every day because he's speaking to the person who's like accepting that they're not gonna go to heaven, sort of like reminiscent of what

Donald Trump said recently. He was saying that he doesn't expect to end up in heaven. He expects to be in hell.

It's like to him, he recognizes there's a God. He even tries to seemingly recognize the Christian God, but he recognizes that he is unsaved by God.

And so this is the kind of person that's speaking to. And so there's some quotes in here initially about it.

The necessary supports of life, nothing. So even to this person, are you going to give thanks and deference to the

Lord who has given you these things? And this is because there are degrees of sin in which someone's going to die and in which the unregenerate person will die in.

And those degrees of sin will to some extent determine their starting point of punishment in eternity.

You're held accountable to what is revealed to you. And so he's sort of warning them against if you're going to not accept the gift of Christ, will you at least accept that there are ways you are sinning and reverse those sins and repent to some degree of these things.

It's not true repentance within faith, but it's at least a diminishing of the sin they're participating in.

Another one, but above all, is the gospel and precious means of salvation nothing by which you yet are in a capacity of escaping the damnation of hell.

And this is reminding that person that if they think that they are already condemned and that there's no hope for them, that that itself is ludicrous and that there is this open gift of salvation to them and that it's really up to them to get that.

That faith is still necessary to be summoned up. If they can actually attain that faith and they can accept the gospel of Christ, they still can be saved.

And this is the thing that we should really be thinking of of any who are in effectively Donald Trump's position.

We should be praying for their salvation. We should be praying for them to recognize that error and to accept the gift that is offered to them.

Now, again, to these people as the third point that he has to the unregenerate, if you are rescued into the gospel, it is likely that the afflictions of God will use you to do so.

So we heard an mm -hmm. It's because a lot of us in here have probably experienced this. For myself, this is how

I came to understand the gospel as well as I sort of describe it as like the worst summer of my life.

My wife is smirking in the back too. She knows a lot of the details of the summer. It's a terrible time, but it was the means by which

God saved me, the means by which he gave me his gospel much more clearly.

Let's look at Proverbs 1 .32 for this. For the simple are killed by their turning away and the complacency of fools destroys them.

So this is reminding to this unregenerate person, are you going to be as the fool, complacent about the gift and the circumstances

God has placed you into and going to completely reject what he is offering you? Or are you going to recognize your situation?

And then Job 36, eight through 10. And if they are bound in chains and caught in the cords of affliction, then he declares to them their work and their transgressions, that they are behaving arrogantly.

He opens their ears to instruction and commands that they return from iniquity. This, I mean, it just sort of makes sense logically as well, especially as reformed people.

When we hear the gospel and are still yet unsaved, we are dead. We are in effectively the worst straits, the most dire of straits that we could be in at that moment.

And God is asking us in that moment, that's when he regenerates us and we receive saving faith, right?

It's within that worst circumstance that he returns us from our iniquity. So it is necessary that we be in that state because of how we are made.

Lastly, the fourth thing he suggests to them, your troubles are a result of your sin. Quote from him, you turn

God's mercies into sin and then fret against God because he turns your sins into sorrow.

This is especially opportune for just the people, even just specific people in my life who

I won't name, who have effectively taken the gift that has been given to them throughout all their life and have just tossed it to the side and made it into a thing to complain about, made it into a thing to get angry at the

Lord about. Rather than recognizing that if God were, to them, if God were real,

I hate him and he has been unjust, recognizing that if God is real, the fact that you can have that thought is again something that should be praised for.

Lamentations 339, why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?

Braden said something in a group chat today along these lines that was interesting just about talking about Calvinism with a friend and it's something that I've come to really harp on people too within street evangelism is that it is a grace that God saves any one of us.

If you watch Leighton Flowers, ever try to push his brand of Pelagianism on the internet, you'll see that this is one of his complaints which is that how can

God justify throwing people in hell because of his own decision? And really the proper response to that is why should God save any one of us?

The salvation he gives any one of us is a mercy. No matter how limited that group of people is, it could have been just one man, it could have been zero men and that itself was righteous.

But God's mercy supersedes his wrath and he still manages too because he can manage all things but he desires to save as many as he is determined.

And for the regenerate, he asks us to consider three things. The mercies that Christ has given us will sweeten the rest of our days.

That can be really obvious ones like being married and having kids and seeing how over time it sweetens the rest of my days.

There's actually some kind of purpose to the labor that I have. There's a purpose to the sufferings that I deal with.

There's a purpose to the use of my wealth versus I see on Blind the other day, for those of you who don't know what

Blind is, it's a really horrific social media app for professionals where you go on there and anonymously complain about your job.

But one of the people on there was complaining about being what he considered very old, which was 29 and having nothing to live for, having no kids, no wife, just a bunch of wealth, sitting around eating rice in his apartment is effectively how he put it.

And it's really recognizing that. It's like God has given us special mercies, especially those who know his word and gives us a purpose to our days even if we are the 29 -year -old eating rice in his apartment.

He has still done that so that you can know his mercies, know his faith, know what you are coming into as an inheritance of his people and ask you to also just know him better so that your days are sweetened all the more.

Consider our sins in order that we may be content. What he means by this is asking what does our sin actually deserve and what does it require of us to cleanse us?

So what do our sins deserve? Separation from God. They deserve eternal punishment. They deserve our death.

We do not deserve to be speaking about this right now. But what did it require to cleanse us? It required the humiliation of the son.

It required the humiliation of God himself, the condescension of him to come onto earth as man, die on our place.

And we're reformed people so we don't like to watch the passion of the Christ. But thinking about that, the picture of the crucifixion, the picture of what he had suffered through.

Like even just temporally, we consider that such a grand thing but he bore the penalty of our sins.

There's an existential matter to this that we cannot grasp. So we really should ponder upon the cross, ponder upon what it states about our state of being, what was required to receive us back from the dead.

And lastly, consider how close you are to the best good, which is eternity with the

Lord. Let's look at the passage for that. Romans 13, 12. I think we've looked at this one a few times in this.

Actually, we haven't, but it's a good one. The night is far gone. The day is at hand.

So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

If we really recognize that he's gifted us with such a great thing as salvation, we should, as he's saying, cast off everything that relates at all to that former life and try to clothe ourselves with his glory as much as we can.

If you haven't been listening or caught all of Conley's sermons on good works so far, they're effectively just pounding this in harder and harder.

And it's been a joy to me to actually really pour these in and pull them into my heart. Now onto the cautions.

So a very big shift. First caution, do not become despondent when waiting for a providence you have prayed for a long time.

So we are called to pray for a long time, long time being whatever the necessary time is for a deliverance, but we should not.

The despondency being, you know, we may still be faithful to that prayer, but then we start to expect it not to occur.

We start to pray in just a really pathetic way, like we don't expect any good from him.

No, I'm very guilty of this. I just sort of pray for the thing because the thing is there and I'm supposed to pray for it.

Like even when Tasha was pregnant with the child that we have now, it's like once before she was pregnant,

I could tell that my prayers were like not despondent, so to speak. They were like actually for this desire.

But once baby was there, as the longer and longer the pregnancy went on, I could definitely see myself just praying because it was the thing

I was supposed to do. Like pray for the baby's health, pray for it to come. And so I'm not really recognizing then the gift that I am to be praying for the value of the thing that God is doing and that he wishes for me to be joyous about the thing that we're asking for.

Let's look at Psalm 13, 1 to 2. How long,

O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must

I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

It's a much harsher form of despondency than what I was describing with myself. This is a sense of even anger and dissatisfaction with what

God is providing for the single people in here. I think there's like, that is probably one of the worst temptations that you have in your situation especially is that becoming despondent and worrying, how long will

God forget me? How long is he gonna keep me in this position? And there's a lot of scriptural warnings about this.

So the first reason that he would even wait to provide you this thing, God is delaying mercy for our own advantage.

There's a passage from Isaiah 30 on this. Isaiah 30, 18. Therefore the

Lord waits to be gracious to you and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.

For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all those who wait for him. Now earlier in this chapter from last week, there is the passage about him waiting for the people to be within the desert and to be especially thirsty before he provides them the water.

It's effectively the same thing here. God does often wait for you to become especially thirsty before he provides the water.

So it's a question of what is that spiritual thirst? What is he asking of you? He's not asking for you to be dissatisfied.

He's asking for you to be joyfully awaiting what he will be providing you.

Second, is a great mercy to be at God's disposal. A quote from him. A mercy may be given you as a fruit of common providence.

Such a temper of heart is the fruit of special grace. And so this fruit of common providence,

God giving you any of these things, that it's a mercy that we're even under his providence, that he is even dispensing the gifts that he gives to us.

And even the tempering of the heart. So being able to stay away from this despondence is itself a gift that he is giving you through the trial.

So if you are not getting the thing you're asking for, still the state of mind and the recognition of how he desires patience from you and how he grows the fruit of the spirit in you is itself a special grace that he gives to you as an elect.

Mercies are coming near when our hope is lowest. As we mentioned before, mercies are delayed because we're not yet fit for it.

That's often true. I think a lot of people over -assert how much we can even consider the state in which we will be ready for a thing.

It's like, am I ready yet for marriage? Am I ready yet for kids? God asks us to be faithful generally to these things.

Looking for a spouse while also preparing ourselves for it. I think it was

Facing the Giants, one of those very funny evangelical Christian movies about football.

But one of my favorite scenes from it is this janitor is walking down the school lockers and he's touching every locker and praying for it.

I don't even remember the context, but for some reason they then tell a parable about farmers praying for rain.

Both farmers pray for rain on their drought -ridden fields, but one prepares his field for the water and the other does not prepare the field for the water.

So when the mercy of rain occurs, the one who prepared is actually rewarded. The one who did not prepare does not actually receive the mercy of rain.

There's a sense in which God's asking us to do that. We may not be yet fit for it, so work to make yourself fit for it so that you are ready when the providence comes along.

Last two things in this caution. We don't deserve the mercies we're waiting for to begin with.

It's part of why we shouldn't. We should, in some sense, in the back of our head, not expect it, but when we do receive it, be ever more joyful when they occur.

Be ever more joyful that God has even provided that thing. While also knowing that God will especially provide those things that he's told us to be faithful to to begin with.

Consider that much of man is as good as you naturally, yet has been left to condemnation. That's an especially important one to put into your soul, especially as you have people in your life that you're maybe very similar to.

Like I have siblings who I'm obviously quite similar to, being siblings, but I am the only one

I could reasonably call a Christian. And there's sort of dealing with that in my head at times of like, why is it me?

Well, it's not because of me. That's really part of the answer. And so recognizing because of that, how much

I need to rely on the Lord, right? And now the second caution. Do not spend so much time trying to understand the working of God's providence that you believe you can actually sort out

God's will. This is not telling us to not consider deeply his scripture, to not consider deeply the things that we can't understand about the

Lord, which is much, but not all, not even close to all. But he's warning us against thinking that we can start to discern how to gain these good gifts and how especially and specifically to gain them.

This would be more of like the actual prosperity gospel. It's not wrong to expect good things from the

Lord as we are faithful. It's not wrong to expect, in some sense, temporal rewards. It would be wrong to mechanically expect these things to say this mechanism is how

I can get this. By giving to this pastor, I will get this. The Lord will bless you generally for your faith.

The Lord will bless you specifically for your faith as well. But these are not necessarily things you can understand.

Some passages to mention this. Do not become envious of the wicked who receive graces from God.

This is part of failing to understand his mercies. There is a greater goal from God's foreknowledge.

There's a greater working of means that we can't possibly understand by which he is making even the wicked prosper so that he can judge them more greatly or so that he can give common graces to everyone, including ourselves.

Like why does he make so many of our leaders who are unbelievers so wealthy? Why does he give them such important things to manage?

He does those also for the common grace of man, for those things in which he is rewarding us generally.

Secondly, we should not commit the sin that Job commits. So Job, for those who don't remember,

Job does actually commit a sin within this book. He does not commit the sin of rejecting the

Lord that Satan said he would actually commit, but he does commit sin within the way that he spoke about the

Lord. We can see this in Job 42 .3. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?

Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which

I did not know. The sin of Job that he recognizes himself is questioning why

God is hiding this counsel. It's him having no knowledge yet expecting to understand what the

Lord is doing and why exactly he's doing it, thinking that he can, in a sense, justify what is occurring to him.

And that's also the sin of the other men around him. All of them are trying to understand the workings of the Lord in a way that is not appropriate for them to be doing.

And that relates to the last point of the night. Our carnal reasoning may find divine workings as unreasonable, so leaning on it, our carnal reasoning entirely, may be to our own harm.

And let's definitely look at the passages for this. Genesis 18 .13 -14 and Genesis 42 .36.

So 18 first. The Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh and say,

Shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time

I will return to you about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.

And Genesis 42 .36. And Jacob their father said to them, You have bereaved me of my children.

Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more, and now you would take Benjamin. All this has come against me.

So in the first passage, we have someone really finding what the Lord has suggested to be ridiculous. Sarah is listening to, believe the angel of the

Lord speaking to her husband in this. It's not like she's just hearing her husband say it, and even then it would be wrong for her to respond in this way.

So she finds it unreasonable, laughs it off, and God still provides. And with Jacob, he is, in a sense, forgetting what

God has already promised to him, which is his sons, which is this lineage. And yet, so he says,

All this has come against me. He does not recognize that there may be some greater working of the Lord that he doesn't understand.

He keeps holding back his children, and it requires Joseph to really put harsh means upon this family to get them to come, and to get his father to come and recognize what the