Systematic Theology (part 6)

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Good morning. Welcome to the third part of our increasingly inaccurately named two -part session on the doctrine of God.
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I am going to finish this today whether I actually finish it or not. This will be the last part in which we'll handle theology proper so that we can move on to some of the other chapters.
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Not surprisingly, Andrew and Dave and I, as we try to do these classes and especially when our topic is
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God, it's really hard to get it done in just a session or two because there is a whole lot about our great
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God to talk about. Dave did a great job last week with Doctrine of Man and I didn't quite finish up with Doctrine of God, so we're going to do that today.
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And then I don't actually know what Andrew's going to do in the next two weeks. He's away on vacation right now, but he'll fill us in when he gets back.
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All right, so when we talk about the doctrine of God, we say it's theology proper, right, because theology is the sort of like a way to describe, break apart that word, is that it's the scientific, a scientific study of God, just like we have geology and meteorology and so then you have theology.
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But the problem as we learned right away when we were doing our systematic theology, the very first quote that I shared with you from the worksheets was, the being of God does not admit of any scientific definition.
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So we're going to try, but we know because of God's incomprehensibility that we cannot ever truly completely get our arms wrapped around any kind of definition or full comprehensive understanding of who
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God is. And instead we resort to talking about God in terms of via eminente and via negativa, right, the two different sides of the coin.
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Via eminente, which means the way of eminence, right, the way of prominence, and that's sort of the positive version, who
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God is, what his virtues are, what he is like, and talking about what he is like.
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But again, we're kind of doing this comparative thing. And then via negativa, which is often actually the more concrete one, the one that we can really say definitely, absolutely, which is the way of negation, as in God is not.
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There is a book that came out last year, I believe it is, called 12 Things God Cannot Do.
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And I love that title because it's so provocative. Your brain, you know, if you've been in Christian circles for any amount of time, you immediately go, you're raising up a joke, what do you mean
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God can't do something? God can do anything, right? No, it goes through, because the subtitle to that book is, and why that can help you sleep at night.
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Because it's talking about things like how God cannot lie, how God cannot sleep, how
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God cannot be tempted, how God cannot tempt anyone, how God cannot sin, how he cannot learn, how he cannot suffer, right?
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And it goes through all these things about what he cannot do and why that is reassurance for our soul because of those things.
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And what I really particularly love about that book is, despite all those very absolute concrete terms, if you pick it up,
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I highly recommend it, it's a really excellent book, is there's these little interlude chapters in which it points out that Jesus, in his humanity, does a lot of these things, right?
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We see in Luke, Jesus learning, even though God cannot learn.
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We see in all four of the Gospels, Jesus suffering, of course, even though God cannot suffer, right?
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We see Jesus sleeping on the boat, even though God cannot sleep. And so it's very good in terms of, you know, if you remember from when
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Pastor Steve was trying to do all that stuff about consubstantiality, about how the divine, the human nature in Jesus does so many of these things that we say that the divine nature of Jesus cannot, and yet even that alone, even that too also is such a comfort and wonderful promise to us because it means that he understands us and can be sympathetic to all of our life's concerns, and struggles, and pains, and can be our true, best, ideal
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Great High Priest. All right, today, when we're, we, sorry, then in the second part of the thing, of these sessions,
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I started talking about the decree of God, right? And I didn't say decrees, although very often we talk about it in terms of decrees in the plural, but really,
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I pointed out that the proper way to think about it is singular. There is one decree. It is the plan, all right?
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God has a plan. It's always been the plan. The plan is not changing. There are not, there's no plan
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B. There's no fork in the road. There's no if -thens. It's just the plan.
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It is not, when we talk about the decree of God, it is not God acting on the plan. It is not him executing the plan.
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Those are different, but there is a decree that is the plan, all right?
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And so, when we are talking about this idea of the fact that he has a plan and there is a plan, that compels me to segue into what
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I want to talk about today, which is the topic of Providence. The topic of Providence.
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And, of course, I don't mean the capital of Rhode Island. Providence is what separates us from the deists, from the intelligent design crowd that I mentioned in previous sessions.
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And the reason it separates us is because in the divine decree, he established that there would be a world, but Providence tells us that then
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God acts with the act of creation. He established that there would be a history, right?
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And that there, God acts primarily via Providence. Our old friend,
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Augustine, was the first church father to really lay out the doctrine of Providence.
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And then fellow A -Team member, Aquinas, he built upon this foundation. And, in short, how they tried to define it is this.
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Providence is the will of God, as determined by his perfections, preserves and governs all things by the continued, that's the important part, continued exercise of his energy.
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Preserves and governs all things by the continued exercise of his energy.
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John MacArthur writes that Providence is a term that has to do with God not interfering with the normal, quote -unquote, processes of life, but orchestrating all of those contingencies and all of those thoughts and actions to affect exactly what he wants, where he wants, when he wants, with whom he wants.
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Or, if we can sum it up, perhaps in a definition of his, one of his attributes,
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God is in control of all things always. Always.
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There are some crazy implications to that. By crazy,
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I mean mind -blowing. Things that you probably haven't ever really thought about or have occurred to you.
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For example, I'll just say it this way, has it ever occurred to you that nothing has ever occurred to God? At no point does
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God go, oh, or aha, right?
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Everything is unfolding exactly as he planned. Did it ever occur to you that there is no such thing as chance?
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None. Whatsoever. That when we talk about things like probability or randomness or random occurrence, every one of those things completely under the control of God.
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Yes, not, and I say this not to reduce him or make it sound frivolous, but even when you're playing
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Monopoly and you roll the dice, God is in control of which numbers come up on the dice rolls.
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He is always in control. If it ever, if there was ever a thing that could happen outside of his control, he would not be
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God anymore. He would cease to be God.
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Of course, that's impossible, but that is the, when you, you have to take out, you have to take his attributes of his sovereignty all the way to the end.
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You can't just go like, well, you know, he's, he's king, and then stop somewhere, right?
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He is fully and completely in control. And then that though brings us to what we feel like is the paradox of our human experience, which
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I think that Proverbs chapter 16 encapsulates very nicely.
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So if you turn there, Proverbs chapter 16, just one verse, but I want you all to see it with your eyes as I read it.
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So it can really sink in our perceived paradox. Anyway, is this
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Proverbs 16, verse nine, the heart of a man plans his way, but the
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Lord Yahweh establishes his steps. The heart of a man plans his way, but the
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Lord establishes his steps. I got plans.
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I'm making choices. I'm going to go do this. But God was completely in control of that.
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And, you know, we talk about God closing doors and we talk about God opening others and, and putting out fleeces and all this type of stuff.
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Right? But the truth is that God is in control of all things always.
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All right. So what does that mean?
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Well, there are three elements in Providence and the definition of Providence that I've gone through, and you can see them there in number 12 on your handout or picking up there and the handout at number 12.
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There are three elements of Providence. When we talk, when Augustine and Aquinas talk about it as determined by his perfections, preserves and governs all things by the continued exercise.
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The three words in there that we're going to zoom in on are preserves, governs, and continued.
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Right. So you can see their preservation, concurrence, and government. All right.
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These are the three elements of Providence. Yeah. Yes. They're on the table in the back or on the stool back there by the door.
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If anybody else needs a handout, raise your hand now. Okay. So, yeah.
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So we've already done most of this handout, but we're getting the last few in. So starting at number 12. All right.
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Preservation. Which one of those three definitions there do you think it is?
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Anyone care to try to make a guess this morning? Be the most brave.
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Janet. Continually upholds the world. Yes. He preserves the world.
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Okay. Turn to Colossians chapter 1, verse 15, chapter 1, verses 15 through 17.
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Right. He is the image of the invisible God, speaking of Jesus, the firstborn of all creation. For by him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.
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This is a past tense, right? Creation. Done. But here's the present tense. Here's the preservation.
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Here's Providence. And he is before all things and him, him, all things hold together.
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Okay. All things hold together. You get this sense when you read this and you really think about it a lot is that it's not that when, when it, the time comes for the world to end and God wants to destroy this world and create the new heaven and the new earth, he is not going to have to like exercise energy.
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It seems like to destroy us, not us, to destroy this, but rather just simply let go.
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And as soon as he lets go, it's all just going to fly apart. Okay.
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So that's preservation. All right. God is continually upholding the world.
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All right. Number two, concurrence. This is a fun one.
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It's kind of a confusing thing to even try to understand, honestly. Concurrence.
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All right. Is the idea that, I'll just go ahead and tell you, because I know it's, it's a bit, what's that?
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God secures his divine purpose. No, actually, that's government. It's the first one.
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I know. That's why this, this one's so really hard one to wrap your brain around. He precisely causes things to act the way they do.
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All right. We'll get into that a little bit more in a minute. And then government is the idea in which he is, he rules all things so as to secure the accomplishment of his divine purpose.
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All right. Now I said that God acts primarily via providence, but only primarily.
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Okay. Because there's the exception of course. What's the exception to providence?
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Miracles. Miracles are the exception. Right. And although, interestingly, as I studied this,
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I found this really fascinating. A lot of theologians call miracles extraordinary providences. Just so that they can stick with saying, you know, categorizing all of God's acts as either creation, creation act, and then providential act.
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Right. That even, because this is true, miracles, again, no plan B. Right.
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Remember the decree, there's no plan B. So miracles, whatever miracle God is going to commit or has already committed, always part of the plan.
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Right. It's always been a part of the plan. He didn't need to be like, oh man, the Israelites are stuck on the side of the
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Red Sea and they're about to get wiped out by the Egyptians. I better do something. It was always the plan for them to show up at the edge of the
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Red Sea and for Pharaoh to suddenly change. Pharaoh changed his mind.
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God didn't change his mind. Pharaoh to change his mind about letting them go and pursue them and trap them against the sea.
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And for then God to show his mighty power and majesty and also affect essentially the final defeat of the
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Egyptians. Right. That was always part of the plan. So miracles are part of the plan.
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Miracles are providences. They are just extraordinary providences instead of ordinary providences.
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Right. God is acting via a means. But when we talk about miracles, it's that God is acting via a means that does not conform to the so -called laws of nature.
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Why do I say so -called? Because God controls nature.
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Hey, we're getting it. Is there really such a thing as a law of nature? No. That would make it sound like there's a
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God, another God named nature. Right. Who has some principles or rules that God has to normally follow but then every once in a while,
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I mean, he's super powerful so he can violate them maybe. No. The laws of nature so -called that we see are simply
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God being consistent. It's just God being consistent.
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That in his providence, he keeps on doing what we would say it normally does.
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Such that and that gets into like when I said a minute ago about chance and probability. God, even in in what looks sort of random and like chance to us,
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God has sort of this notion there's some normality to even that and so we can say things like it is more likely that if you, you know, that when you do x that y occurs, right?
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Or that it will happen at a rate of a certain likelihood, right? That's the study of probability.
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But even there, it is God acting according to his laws that he has set forth, right?
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All right. The force, Berkhoff has a great quote on this. He says, the forces of nature are not annihilated or suspended.
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They are only counteracted at a particular point, okay?
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It is just God saying, right now I'm just not going to do that, that way that I've been doing it all along.
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And it's going to look miraculous to you because you're so not used to it. But it is truly, if we really want to let ourselves think about this, when we see a miracle and we say like, wow, look at how amazing
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God's power is, we should be able to say that about the so -called normal operation of the universe at all time.
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Wow, look at God's power on this. How amazing it is that even when he's, you know,
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I don't know, like you almost sort of get into this idea of like you might think of miracles as God's suddenly paying extra special attention at that spot, in that moment, in that place.
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He's not. He's not. He is, what does
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Jesus tell us about God and the sparrows? He cares about them.
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Right, why do you not care about us? That's the great lesson of it. But before Jesus gets to why he does not care about us, he tells us that not a single one falls in the forest without God, not just knowing, but being in control of it.
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Every single one. Wow, to me that's even more mind -blowing than the fact that there would be potentially this really powerful superhero kind of thing that just, a being that shows up on the edge of the
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Red Sea and splits the Red Sea. No, your God is paying attention to every sparrow in the whole world all the time.
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And he's paying attention to every, we can just keep going here, every worm, every caterpillar, every grain of sand, every hair on your head, every one of the trillion billion stars of the universe.
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I think that when we, when science has tried to study the cosmos, right, and people,
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I've sometimes had people ask me, why did God make the universe so big? Why, if we're the special part, right, if we're the focus, and I'm almost contradicting myself what
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I just said a minute ago, but it is true, we're made in the image of God, so there's something extra special about what's going on here on earth, all right?
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Jesus came here. So if this is, you know, the purpose, if God's purpose is being, is really being executed out here, why bother with a trillion billion stars, right?
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I got my answer. Anybody got an answer? Anyone want to posit a guess? This is not doctrinal, so you, we're just discussing as brothers and sisters here.
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Ben? So we marvel. Yeah, right, the universe is so large, who's still larger, right?
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I do think that, like, at this point, we can't bound the universe, right?
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Science is trying, and they can't, they cannot find the edge of it, and God says, and yet I'm still bigger than that.
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Yes, Janet. Sure, yep, be about us.
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Yep, for his glory, right, exactly, for his glory, for his pleasure, the universe exists, right?
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And what I find really awesome is that science is also struggling in the opposite direction when it tries to get smaller and smaller and smaller, right?
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Once upon a time, we were absolutely certain that the smallest thing, the smallest possible thing was an atom.
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That's what the word really means, the Greek word. You can't get smaller than an atom.
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Whoops! Okay, fine, fine, fine, fine, they're made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, but that's it.
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That is the smallest it's going to get. Whoops! Okay, hang on, right?
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Like, we can't get any smaller. And then the fact that science just, like, folds in on itself as they talk about how atoms are mostly empty space and all this stuff, like,
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I can't remember the perfect analogy, but, like, the crazy distances, relatively speaking, between the nucleus of an atom and the electron shell of the atom that, you know, it should mean that everything is mostly empty space, and yet this keeps happening, right?
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Like, we just can't get it. And again,
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I see that, and I say, there is God showing off his incomprehensibility again, right?
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Not only am I bigger than this gigantic universe that I created, I'm also more intricately involved than the tiniest little detail that you've been able to zoom down in on with your electron microscopes.
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All right, we're not going to go through all these verses, but you, you know, are not going to be surprised that this is one of those, like Trinity, this is one of those theological terms that doesn't appear in the
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Bible, Providence, and yet is all over the Bible, all right?
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The Bible teaches God's providential control over the universe at large in Psalm 103,
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Ephesians 1, and frankly, probably half the Psalms. The physical world and nature in Job and Matthew, the affairs of nations in Psalm 22 and Acts 17, talks about his providential control over our individual life in Psalm 139, talking about how we're being fearfully and wonderfully made and knit together in our mother's womb, very individually.
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Also in Isaiah 45, in Galatians 1, Luke 1, or in Proverbs 16, like we just read, talks about how
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God is in control of the accidents and the insignificant, in Philippians 4,
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I'm sorry, in Matthew 10, which is the thing about the sparrows, the provision and protection in Romans 8 .28,
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right, in Philippians 4 .19, and that God is in control of the exposure of sin and the punishment of the wicked in Psalm 7 and Psalm 11, right?
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Providence is both general and special, okay, in that in his, the special part, in his particular, his care for us, his most treasured creation.
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All right, so I promised to try to explain these ideas of preservation, concurrence, and government a little more, so let me try to break it down for you a little bit better, okay?
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But before I do, let me just say that Berkhoff and the other theologians that I studied, they're all very careful to say that this is, these are, they're never apart from each other.
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You can never look at a certain providential happening in history or in your personal life and say, ah, that was
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God acting in preservation, or that was God acting in concurrence, or that was
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God acting in government, all right? Every providential act on his part is all three of these in one, okay, but they all, but they all have these sort of three elements to them, all right?
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Preservation, as I said, and as it says there in that worksheet, is God created the world and upholds it by his power, and only his omnipotence is what keeps it going, okay?
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It is poetically referred to throughout the Bible as the God who never slumbers, and that our very breath, which is continual, depends on God, okay?
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That, I think, everybody gets, so I'm not going to spend too much time on that one. Concurrence and government are the ones that are a little more confusing, so let's talk a little bit more about those.
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Concurrence is the notion of, and Berkhoff tries to define it as, the cooperation of the divine power with all subordinate powers, according to the pre -established laws by God.
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God's the one who pre -established these laws, but according to pre -established laws of their operation, causing them to act, and to act precisely as they do, all right?
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Someone said it this way, that, like, for example, when we were talking about, I told even miracles are extraordinary providences, okay?
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That when, I think it was Spurgeon who gave this illustration, that when God sent down fire to destroy
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Sodom and Gomorrah, okay? That was a miracle, obviously, all right?
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The fact that it occurred was sort of out of the normal operational laws of nature. However, the actual, the fact that the fire consumed, right?
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That's concurrence. There is fire, and what fire does is it consumes things, right?
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It burns things up. That's concurrence. Bavnik, just talking about, just sort of in general, in your life, uses the same thing with wood.
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Wood burns. God only causes it to burn, but formally, this burning is not
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God, but the wood is doing the burning, right? So, that's the concurrence idea.
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God caused it to burn, but it's the wood that's doing the burning. The wood is the subject, right?
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God's not burning. The wood is burning. Now, I'll freely admit to you, this is so similar to government that I even have trouble distinguishing it, okay?
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Burkoff uses, in fact, it's so similar that Burkoff uses Proverbs 21 .1 as the scripture text for concurrence.
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Turn to Proverbs 21 .1, and you'll be like, wait, that's government, and I'll be like, yeah, I know what you're saying.
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That's why this is hard. Proverbs 21 .1, the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the
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Lord. He turns it wherever he will, right? The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the
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Lord. He turns it wherever he will. Doesn't that sound like government? I mean, the king is the government, right? Our definition of government.
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So, I'm with all of you in the confusion. But the idea here is that the king is the subordinate power, okay?
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God is the power, the absolute power. The king is the subordinate power. God is making something happen through, with, in cooperation with the subordinate power, okay?
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God himself does not execute the decree to tax, you know, all of the
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Roman Empire. Caesar Augustus does. But it is God's providence that Caesar Augustus do that because God's got a plan for all these things to line up such that Joseph and Mary are going to have to make a trip because of the fact that this decree has gone forth from Caesar Augustus.
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It's no accident that Caesar Augustus did this. It's not that Caesar Augustus said, purposed in his heart first, and said, like, hey,
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I'm going to tax the world, and God goes, oh, hey, that's a great idea. I know what I can do with that. Okay?
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The subordinate power of Caesar Augustus, but God's acting by using, so to speak, this subordinate power.
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That's concurrence. Okay, so he can, right, okay. Anyone have any, how's your heads doing tonight, this morning?
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Are they in many pieces, few pieces? How are we doing? Janet? That's absolutely right.
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Yep, the end of Joseph's story is, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good, right?
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That the whole, that Janet was saying that, for you, if you couldn't hear, that concurrence actually comes,
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Sproul uses it when he's talking about the story of Joseph in Providence, and Joseph's life story is an amazing tale of Providence for us, right, of how
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God is in control of all things, orchestrating all the details of life, such that it will all come together for exactly his purposes, right?
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But I want to point out carefully here that when we're talking about Providence in Joseph's life, it was not just the ends alone that everything was happening for, okay?
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You can't go to, it is true that all Providence, you have to look at it backwards.
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That's the only direction, really, that you can look and see and understand it. But don't misunderstand that everything about Joseph's life was only about so that when he got to the end, it was going to work out okay.
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The whole thing was Providence. The whole thing was good all the time for Joseph, even the part where it looked like in the moment he was suffering, right?
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It was all good all the time, and not just for Joseph, but for all who love
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God. That's the promise of Romans 8 .28. Even the dark seasons were for, were, not just were for good, but were good, right?
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Yes. So, the London Baptist Confession talks about first causes and second causes, and it says that he has, he uses the second, like he has, what is it, where did he use arranged?
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Ordered. Right. He ordered them to fall out through the second causes. That's concurrence, right?
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That the second causes would be the subordinate powers, or the laws of nature, or all that stuff.
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That's all the second causes, and everything's going to fall out according to his plan, according to his decree. He's the first cause, but they all then, all those second causes occur.
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Now, we got to be careful here, because it's also true that this is not some kind, don't think of concurrence as some kind of synergistic joint effort going on.
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It is not two horses pulling the same cart, like God's work and man's work, and that's how we're getting there, okay?
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It's not that kind of concurrence. You know, without me, you can do nothing, right?
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God is the, that's why the London Baptist Confession, the Westminster Confession, both, they're very careful to talk about first cause.
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God is the lead horse, and then there's that other horse, the second cause, coming along behind, okay?
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All right. You know, a good example of this scriptural evidence for this is
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Philippians 2 .13, in which it says, He works in believers both to will and to do according to his good pleasure, okay?
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Both to will and to do. His providence, his working, doesn't just, it's not just about what we do, it's even what we will to do.
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Or, as Proverbs 21 .1 said, you know, turn the heart of the king like turning the stream of water, okay?
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All right, so that's concurrence. And then there's government, which is the idea that there is a continued activity of God whereby he rules all things teleologically, there's a 25 cent word, so as to secure the accomplishment of his divine purpose, all right?
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When we say teleologically, we just mean with the end goal in mind, all right?
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With the end goal in mind. God has an end goal, it is his glory, it is especially the glory of his
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Son, right? The acknowledgement of the whole universe of his Son as Lord, and so he's ruling all things with that end goal in mind, to secure the accomplishment of his divine purpose.
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One good way to put this, maybe sort of in a pithy statement that is important for you to recognize, is
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God is the universal king, but not the universal father, okay?
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He's the universal king. He is father, but he's not universal father, he's only the father of his people, his chosen sheep, but he's the universal king of everybody.
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The flow of all things that are happening and operating is leading to the glorification of God and our good.
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That's the idea of government. Again, very similar to concurrence, and so it's almost a distinction without a difference.
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I feel like you need a PhD in theology to really care, right? Which is why, also,
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I think Berkhoff was really helpful, and when he said, like, don't try too hard, because in every providential act that you're going to find, we're going to be able to talk about all three of them, all three of these elements in every act.
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One example, though, he puts in about government that I do like is, and sort of how the ordering of things are going to continue to occur, to flow, right, would be the idea that there are not just laws of science, but also spiritual laws.
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Honor your father and your mother that it may go well with you, and your days may be long, right?
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I always get those up backwards when I say it out loud. Or, on the negative, anger and tension lead to physical ailment.
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If you spend your whole life being angry, you end up with ulcers, or high blood pressure, right?
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Pride leads to self -destruction, okay? These are sort of those, the proverbial laws.
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All right, with our remaining few minutes, I want to talk about the applications of providence and the benefits that we have from a firm grasp of providence, and Jim Boyce and A .W.
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Pink are my sources for this, right?
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And this is number 13, where I say, you know, God's acts, right, do not relieve us of our responsibility for our acts, okay?
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This is why it's very important to have the grasp of concurrence and causes and second causes and whatnot. God does not, just because it was that God was, it was all part of the plan,
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God was acting through Pharaoh and all that stuff for his thing, did not relieve Pharaoh of the responsibility of the fact that he made a choice to do wrong, to do evil, or did not relieve
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Assyria of the responsibility of the fact that they, God used Assyria to punish the wayward
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Israelites, but then also turned around and punished Assyria for being bad to his people.
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All right, so it does not relieve us, God works through means that do not relieve us of the need to make wise judgments or to be prudent, okay?
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Do not start thinking about providence like it's fait accompli, but providence does relieve us of anxiety, because providence is a sure ground for trust and a spur to faithfulness, because no circumstance should cause us to fret, no act on our part can ruin
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God's plan. Pink tells us that when we have a firm grasp of providence, it delivers us from being carried away by the tide of public opinion or, you know, just the way the world is going, right?
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Like, this is what we want to do, this is the way to go. No, we have a firm grasp of providence, and we know that there is a direction that God is going, and that's the direction we want to go and know all will go.
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That makes it a real help in guarding us against, you know, deceit, and provides us consolation amid so much with what, as Pink says, consolation amid so much which distresses the godly.
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The idea of God, as I've said it already this morning, the idea of God numbering the hairs on our head, of causing the sparrow to fall ground dead, it should put to rest any thought that there's any detail or any some detail in your life too inconsequential for God to be in knowledge of or in control of, because what could be more trivial than knowing the number of hairs on your head?
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So yes, God does care about every little thing, and there is nothing that you can pray to him about or trust him to order and bring to pass.
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Heavenly Father, thank you so much, Lord, for the fact that you are in control and that you have revealed that to us, because without that knowledge, we surely would be anxious, fretting people, tossed about by every new event, every circumstance in our life, thinking that all is falling apart and coming to ruin.
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And yet, we can look at this and we can know that all is happening according to your decree and according to your good purpose and done ultimately for our good and for your glory.
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So, Lord, may we rest in that. May we fight when the temptation to worry rises up within us.
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May we fight that with the truth, knowing that you, Lord, are in control and care about every little detail.