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I always love to preach after baptisms. It's exciting. I just love to preach anytime,
I guess. I think today is about sermon number 900 for my life that God has graced me with.
And I was trying to just close my eyes and listen to the song. Perfect submission, all is at rest.
And I thought, my heart is anything but at rest right now. It is revved up. The RPMs are just zooming.
I said to Eric back there, I said, well, I'm nervous too. He said, you're nervous too? Yes, because I don't want to be nervous because of pride, but I'm nervous in the sense that it's a fearful thing to stand up and preach the
Word of God. And there are eternal ramifications. And God does not take
His preaching lightly, nor the listening of His Word preached lightly. And I want to make sure that I say what
God says. What's going on in your life right now?
Anything good happening? Anything great happening? How about on the flip side?
There are tragedies in your life, complications, sin.
Someone sinned against you. Someone's broken your trust. Next question.
How are you responding to those issues, good or bad? Like a
Christian or like a practical atheist, outside of our forgiveness of sins, today we're going to talk about the topic that I think will transform a
Christian and his thinking or her thinking more than any other doctrine in the Bible. Outside of your salvation that Jesus Christ paid for your sins on His body at Calvary, God vindicated
His righteousness and justice by raising Christ from the dead because it was a perfect sacrifice. Outside of that, this is the doctrine today that should make you see those issues in your life that are good, bad, or the issues that will come in your life that are good or bad, properly.
The great English Baptist preacher said this once. Remember, there is nothing that happens in your daily life but what was first of all devised in eternity and counseled by Jesus Christ for your good.
Whatever is happening right now in your life has been counseled by Jesus Christ for your good.
And all things work together for your lasting benefit and profit. In every event of providence,
God has a purpose. The preacher went on to say, the calamities of earthquake, the devastations of storm, the destructions of war, and all the terrible catastrophes of plague have only been co -workers with God.
Slaves compelled to tug the galley of the divine purpose across the sea of time.
From every evil good has come and the more the evil has accumulated, the more God has glorified
Himself in bringing out at last His grand, His everlasting design.
Do you believe that? Do you believe that God, the sovereign God, works out everything for your good and His glory?
The Bible teaches that. And so let's turn our Bibles to Hebrews chapter 1 today and focus again on Jesus Christ, the agent of providence, the instrument in God's hand, the one who is making all these things that are of themselves, maybe bad, evil, good, righteous, sinful, calamities, benefits, and He molds them and shapes them and arranges them in such a way where they bow down and sing, as it were,
Jesus is Lord. It's an amazing thing. When I first realized that God was sovereign and God was providentially controlling everything, it was a second blessing to me.
I didn't know what to do. I lost sleep over it, trying to think that God was sovereign over the minute things in life and also the great things in life.
And it should change the way we live. This doctrine should change the way you suffer. It should change the way you rejoice when you realize it comes from a good hand who has a good purpose for your life.
We, as a congregation, learn theology for a reason. True or false? True. If you'll turn to Hebrews chapter 10,
I know we were going to be in Hebrews 1, but turn to Hebrews chapter 10. Out of the 13 chapters in Hebrews, even this book shows that after there's theology in chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10a, there should be a response.
There's doctrine in the first ten and a half chapters and there's a duty that follows that. Here's who
Jesus is, therefore it should change the way we live. And the same thing with the doctrine of the providence of God, knowing about God, knowing who
He is, what He does, it should change the way we relate to the good and to the bad in our lives. This sermon today isn't about how we feel, how we perceive things, necessarily.
It's about God who sits on the throne and is worthy to be worshipped for many reasons, primarily that He's raised from the dead and He's been our substitutionary sin bearer, but secondarily because He's sovereign.
Jesus is better than the prophets, He's better than the angels, He's better than Moses, He's better than Aaron, He's better than the sacrifices,
He's better than Joshua, you just name anyone you can think of, Jesus is better than them.
Thirteen times in the book of Hebrews, better. Jesus is better. And if Jesus is better, then should it affect the way you live?
Answer, yes. And that's why chapter 10, beginning with verse 19, shows our agenda.
It shows that if we have a creed, chapters 1 through 10, it should change our deeds.
In chapter 10, verse 19, I'll just read you through verse 25 with this point in mind.
What you believe changes what you'll do. In this particular case, Hebrews 10, 19 says,
Therefore, based on all the better declarations by the writer of Hebrews about Jesus, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by His sacrificial death, by a new and living way which
He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, verse 22, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembly together, assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
The preeminence of Christ is established in chapters 1 -10 and then it takes a hold of, almost like quicksand, when
I was a kid I used to love kind of the Tarzan kind of movies, and someone would step in quicksand and it would just envelop you, and the more you kind of lashed out and tried to be agitated against it, it just seemed to kind of suck you down into its very depths.
And this is the same kind of doctrine with the providence of God. When you realize to the extent of the sovereignty of God, whether it's an aphid on your tomato, or it's the election of a president, do aphids go on tomatoes by the way?
I think they do. Bumblebees in the raspberry bushes.
God's sovereign over everything, and it should just suck you down in like quicksand to say, maybe
I can sing with my heart in my troubles, with a tear in my eye. Jesus is my all in all.
Jesus is my comforter. Jesus is my sustainer. I don't see things properly. It's through a dim glass, but I know
God sees it all. And since He sees it all, I have to trust in Him. I'm trusting in Him for my entire salvation.
I'll have to trust in Him for today. And all of that pushes away the sin of unbelief to the
Hebrews, and then it exalts Christ so He can be glorified and majestic in His enthronement.
My purpose today is to show you that Jesus Christ is worthy of your worship no matter what.
Now if you look back at Hebrews chapter 1, He talks about things that are first.
And by the way, true or false, as you're turning back to Hebrews 1, things that are first are always the best. First things are always the best.
Is that true? I said I've preached 900 sermons about over my lifetime. I'll guarantee you one thing.
My first sermon was not my best. Some things aren't the best just because they're first.
Sometimes your first impression might be wrong. Sometimes your first thoughts about something are not complete are the best.
And the same thing here. Even though there's nothing wrong with Moses, there's nothing wrong with the prophets, there's nothing wrong with the priests of the
Old Testament, they weren't the best. The best was yet to come and His name was
Jesus Christ, the God -Man. And that's what it says in verses 1 and 2. God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers and prophets in many portions and in many ways,
God spoke piecemeal in these last days, in between the first coming and the second coming,
He has spoken to us in His Son and then He begins to praise this great
God who's better but who wasn't first. First in preeminence, yes, but not first in time.
And then He gives seven reasons of praise and we're just pretty much camping out here, aren't we? This is a 19 -part series on the greatness of Jesus Christ.
What a great series! I don't think it'll be 19 parts. I think it'll be six. We should finish next week.
But I want to just sit again and try to understand as we look at the Scripture that Jesus does uphold all things by the word of His power and we run by that so fast sometimes we don't really get to look at it and just to kind of get the depths of it.
When I was a kid, I was petrified that I would get lockjaw. All the tetanus stuff, run around school and they had those new kind of shots where it was kind of like space age almost.
There was no needle and you just stand in line and they'd rub your arm and maybe that wasn't tetanus, I'm not sure, but they'd just...
What if you get tetanus and you get lockjaw? That was the worst thing to me.
Lockjaw, I couldn't eat. That's for the gluttony sermon tonight. Lockjaw.
There was a good kind of lockjaw. I want you to just have your thoughts and feelings like lockjaw virus around these passages and texts because when your world is falling apart, everything will be okay, stanzas don't really work.
I understand your pain. It's fine, but it's not the best.
But to realize there's a God who claims His sovereignty in your pain, in your achievement,
He's worthy to be praised. And there's all kinds of things to be praised here and let's catch up to where we were before.
There's seven of them. Whom He appointed heir of all things. Jesus was to be praised because He's the heir.
Jesus is to be praised as superior because He's creator. Do you see that in verse 2? He made the world or the ages, time and everything in it.
Jesus is superior because He's the radiance of God's glory. All the perfections of God are seen in the face of Christ.
Fourthly, He's superior because He's the exact representation of God's nature, our person.
The essence of God the Son is the same essence of God the Father. And if God the Father is to be praised, the
Jews would be thinking, God the Father should be praised. Well, if you're praising God the Father, the essence of God the
Father is God the Son. They're two different persons but they have the same nature. Then God the Father's praise should spill over into God the
Son's praise. And then where we are now, Jesus is superior because in verse 3,
He upholds all things by the word of His power. God the
Son has the whole world in His hands. He arranges.
He disposes. He controls. He alters. He manipulates.
He does whatever He wants for His end decree. Now, just to give us some background again for these foundational building blocks to understand this a little bit better.
Number one, to understand the providence of Jesus Christ, God does not explain everything to us.
Part of our response to God saying in His word that He controls everything and works it all out for our good and His glory should be what?
Hey, wait. What about? Why? How can that be?
Do you see this here? Do you mean to tell me the better response is what? Be still and know that I am
God. Some have said God has a different playing field than we do. God has different rules than we do.
Answer? If that was a question, does God have different playing field rules than we do?
Would you expect Him to have different rules? Certainly righteous rules, yes.
But a great reformer said there is a great difference between what is fitting for man to will and what is fitting for God and to what end the will of each is directed.
God can do whatever He'd like and we don't have to understand it all. It's okay. Reminds me of Corrie Ten Boom's father, the watchmaker.
They were on the bus going from one place to the next and he had all his watch tools and all his watch equipment and all the watches and a big heavy briefcase and they were going from one town to the other before the hiding place incident.
The dad was reading a paper and Corrie noticed that there was a word sex sin on there. Sex sin. Dad, what's sex sin?
Didn't say anything. Never responded at all. They got to their destination and Corrie Ten Boom's father said to Corrie, would you please pick up my briefcase and carried off the train.
Can you imagine down from one cart to the next cart down the steps onto the platform and she tried to pick it up and she said,
Daddy, I can't. It is too heavy. And then Corrie's father said,
It's just like the word sex sin. It's too heavy for you to bear. You can't know it all and you don't even need to know it when you're old enough,
Daddy will tell you. Her response was, Okay. Some of the things with the sovereignty of God, I don't think
God wants us to understand because it may in fact be too heavy. We can't get our arms around all that. He says it's true that Jesus Christ upholds everything by the word of His power.
He has a starting place. He has a finished place. There is a culmination. There is an end and we have to distrust
Him. Secondly, God's providence is universal. How do we understand that Jesus Christ upholds everything?
Well, number one, He doesn't owe us an explanation and everything. Secondly, His providence is universal.
Psalm 119 verse 90 it says, Thou didst establish the earth and it stands for all things are
Thy servants. God is providentially moving everything. Not only everything but the minutia as well.
God takes His sovereignty and it deals with issues of bugs squirming, dogs wiggling, current events changing.
God's sovereign over it all. Fourthly, we learned last week that God's providence includes man's will.
Our God is sovereign over man's will. Would you turn to Genesis chapter 20 to talk about this a little bit more?
God has a free will that is bigger than our free will if you understand the will as man choosing.
God's will trumps our will. This universe is only big enough for one person with free will by definition and it is
God's will that's free. The unbeliever's will is affected by Satan, 2
Timothy 2. It's affected by sin, Romans 6 and 7. It's affected by the world system but it can be affected by God.
God is in charge. God says that He directs a step even though the mind plans
His way. Proverbs 16. God is sovereign over everything that is to say except your will.
No, God is sovereign over everything. Yet God still realizes we make choices with our free agency.
It's still intact and let me just show you a passage that shows both right here in Genesis 20. It's absolutely amazing.
I just love this passage for many reasons. Genesis 20 verse 1. Abraham journeyed from there toward the land of Negev and settled between Kadesh and Shur.
Then he sojourned in Gerar. Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she's my sister.
So Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. What a chivalrous man,
Abraham. But God came to Abimelech in a dream of the night and said, Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken for she is married.
I'd like to have that dream. That was when God did speak in dreams. Abimelech had not come near her and said,
Lord, you will slay a nation even though blameless. And Abimelech knew you're going to start at the top and work your way down.
Did he not say himself to me, she's my sister. And she herself said, he is my brother.
So not only Abraham but Sarah, they both said it. In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands
I have done this with my own will, with my own volition, with my own agency, with my own mind,
I made that decision. God has such a sovereignty over our will that man doesn't choose.
We choose all the time. So did Abimelech. But I want to show you that God's will is over our will.
Verse 6. And God said to him in the dream, Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have not done this.
And I also, the sovereignty of God and man's responsibility and man's will together,
I also kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her.
Now therefore, restore the man's wife for he is a prophet and he will pray for you and you will live. That is amazing.
Here's the utter sovereignty of God that's sovereign over wills, sovereign over mind, sovereign over heart, sovereign over emotions, sovereign over history, sovereign over you, name it.
Yet here this person makes real decisions with their real will and God says, I'm sovereign over that yet you still make those decisions.
So I don't want you to think that somehow we're just robots and we just go around doing whatever God wants us to do without our own wills assenting or dissenting.
Now I have a question. If God is sovereign over your will, was God sovereign over your salvation?
Who's sovereign in your salvation? You or God? On that day when you're standing before God and you see
Him face to face and Abraham says to you, why are you even in this place?
And you say, well, based on what you did with Abimelech and Sarah, why are you in this place? What would you say?
And listen to what Spurgeon said about this. Side by side with you there sits an ungodly person.
It's in a congregation. You two have been brought up together. You have lived in the same house. You have enjoyed the same means of grace.
You are converted. He is not. Will you please to tell me what has made the difference?
Without a solitary exception, the answer would be this. If I am a Christian and He is not, unto
God be the honor. Do you suppose for a moment that there is any injustice in God in having given you grace which
He did not give to another? I suppose you say injustice. No. God has a right to do as He wills with His own.
I could not claim grace nor could my companions. God chose to give it to me. The other has rejected grace willfully to his own fault.
And I should have done the same but that He gave me more grace whereby my will was constrained.
Now sir, if it is not wrong for God to do the one thing, how can it be wrong for God to purpose to do the thing?
And what is election? But God's purpose to do that what He does. And so what
Spurgeon is trying to say is, is God unjust for exercising His will and salvation when both deserve perdition?
No. Let me ask you this question. Was it okay for God to choose Israel? He didn't choose the
Hittites. He didn't choose the Canaanites. He didn't choose the Jebusites. He didn't choose the, some of you are sleeping, the
Electrolytes. He didn't choose the Cellulites. He didn't choose any of thoseites, did He?
He chose the Israelites. Was God just in choosing the Israelites therefore not choosing the others or passing them by?
Answer? May it never be. God's just. And He chose them because they were the greatest.
They understood the technology of war the best. They had the most people. No, God chose them because they were the fewest.
And none of us say, Oh God, you're unjust for choosing Israel. So why do we say if salvation is all of God, why do we then say that somehow
God is unjust if He's the one who chooses salvation? John chapter 1 verse 12 says,
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.
And that verse teaches what? That verse teaches that there's another part of the verse that comes up, another part of the sentence to the next verse.
How are people saved? Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
It is God's will that saves. And I'm so glad. Are you glad that God's will saves?
How about being dead in our trespasses and sins? And Paul said, Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, among whom
I'm foremost. How do you save the foremost sinner? Incarceration?
How do you take somebody that has a heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh? They just decide on their own?
Every person, including myself, before salvation, echoed with Job 21. Who is the
Almighty that we should serve Him? And what would we gain if we entreat Him? Who's God?
Yet God says, I'm going to choose to save you even though you'd never choose Me. And by the way, that is the essence of Christianity.
Every other religion is man chooses God and Christianity is man can't choose
God because of his state, his nature, his will, his fallenness in Adam and therefore God just mows down everybody and sends them to the eternal lake of fire for good.
Well, that's not quite right, is it? Praise God! Why? Because He sovereignly, as He chose
Israel, sovereignly chooses us and He says, I am just but my justice was totally taken out on Christ.
I am righteous. I did the right thing by punishing Christ and He's been punished so there's no double jeopardy.
How could I punish Him and you? Therefore, I sovereignly choose you. I save you.
I bring you into My kingdom. And it's exactly right where James 1 .18 says, in the exercise of His will,
He brought us forth by the word of truth. Whose will saves? It is God's will that saves.
It is our will that responds with belief and repentance and confession. John 6 .44
says, No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him and I will raise him up on that last day.
How about this? True or false? Your faith saved you. You know, it's going to be a trick question.
Well, we save by grace through faith and absolutely. I did trick you because it's not a true or false question.
Faith does save. But that's just theological shorthand for Jesus Christ saving you by His perfect life, death, burial, resurrection and God granting to you salvation freely by His own will, you responding with faith.
If you say, I believe, you have to believe. But my question stands as this,
Acts 13 .48, They began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord and as many has been appointed to eternal life, believed.
That's the order. You say, well, that's not fair.
That's true, but that's grace. Sovereignty, by definition, shows grace. And you say, well, it gets more complicated and I need more answers than this.
Let's go to the fifth building block as we're trying to build this idea that Jesus Christ is sovereign over everything.
The fifth building block is this. Jesus Christ's sovereignty includes evil.
Call it the permission of evil or call it ordaining evil. Both are true.
By the way, does God approve evil? When sin is committed, is God saying, is that the way
God is? Is God the author of sin? Does God tempt people to sin? Is God Himself, matter of fact, a sinner?
Answer, oh, of course not. But God, by definition, if His sovereignty includes all the purposes to be accomplished by His will through His omnipotent hand, then it has to include evil.
God permits it, God ordains it, but God is not approving of it. Listen to our statement of faith at Bethlehem Bible Church.
God's almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness are so far -reaching and all -pervading that both the fall of the first man into sin and all other sinful actions of angels and men proceed according to His sovereign purposes.
Did you get that? Was the fall of man when Adam and Eve sinned, did
God go, oh, I was over there in the other garden. I was on the other side of the Euphrates. I can't believe that just happened.
There goes the flow chart. I wonder what's going on. How am I going to do this? This has messed up all my plans. Is there riddling around?
Is there something to happen so I need it? Come on. I wasn't paying attention. I've got ADHD and DDDD and DDT.
Where am I? How do we get on to that? I have no idea. Just throwing out the offensive comments left and right.
Our statement of faith goes on to say, It is not that He gives His bare permission for any variety of ways He wisely and powerfully limits, orders, and governs sinful actions so that they affect
His holy designs. See, His design is holy even though there is sin. Yet the sinfulness involved in the actions proceeds only from the angels and men and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.
Now let me ask you these questions if you struggle with that. Nebuchadnezzar, true or false, in Jeremiah 25 is called
God's servant. That's like in our day calling
Hitler God's servant. Would you be so brazen to ever say that? Would you be so brazen to say
Satan only does what God has him to do? And be like Luther calling him the hardest working servant?
God is not saying, Satan, way to go. That was a very good thing that you did. But God is saying, no matter what
Satan does, he is going in the end to work it out for my people to have conformity to Christ Jesus and for my
Son to come a second time. And as long as sin can just be unfurled and unleashed,
I'm still sovereign over it all. Let me ask you another question. The Chaldeans, who were so cruel to Judah, why in Jeremiah 50, verse 25, does it say about that it is a work of the
Lord God in His host in the land of the Chaldeans? Why does the
Bible in 1 Kings 22 say that God wills King Ahab, the bad king, to be deceived?
1 Kings 22, And the Lord said to him, How? And he said, I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. Then God said,
You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so. How about, let's make it even worse.
Absalom commits incest on his father's bed and that would be called a crime, 2
Samuel 16. Then why in 2 Samuel 12 did God say,
Behold, I will raise up evil against you and your own household. I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion.
And he shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. Indeed, you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before Israel and under the sun.
How can that be? How can this be? Acts 2 .23
This man Jesus, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross.
God's plan has to include the ordination of evil or else there would be no plan of Jesus dying for the sinners' sins before all eternity.
Remember Titus 1. God had a plan. God had a promise. God had a triune, before time beginning plan of how to make men righteous before God.
I've got big problems with that. If I stop there, we would all have big problems. But let me lay down the sixth foundation.
God's providence through Christ is wonderful because He causes evil to complete
His good purposes. God causes evil to complete His good purposes. I know what you're already saying.
Well, why do we even need to pray? We'll get there. You know the verse, Genesis 50 .20
As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. Genesis 45
Now therefore it was not you who sent me, but God. And He has made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all his household and ruler over all the land of Egypt.
Do you mean to tell me when the brothers threw him in a little hole and said toodaloo, that's what God was planning?
We know the answer is yes. How about Job? How about, did
God allow, permit, ordain Satan to do whatever He wanted to Job and his family except kill
Job? What was the result to that whole thing? Job didn't even know it.
Job struggled that whole time and Job was an object lesson to say, you know what, Satan? Job doesn't love me for what
I give him. Job loves me because of who I am and you can take away everything you want and it'll be a divine object lesson that he doesn't even know about to show you that I'm ordaining and not approving, but making good out of sin.
Well, how about this one? Romans 828. Would you go there just for a minute? Romans 828. This is almost like the pillow that you should rest your head on.
By the way, if somebody is really struggling, it's not a great verse to just go up and quote, kind of, you know, I can tell you this in Greek and backwards and in Hebrew and everything else.
You may silently be praying that God would help them to wrap their arms around it, but it is true and eventually people need to get there because God makes good out of evil.
God makes good out of evil. Look at Romans 828.
This verse is going to show you that no matter what happens in the world, including the crucifixion of Christ, God culminates evil with His good and final glory.
It might not happen in time. This is just a thrilling verse. Do you see how... Let's just pick it apart. And we know. Let's just stop right there.
How did you know I was going to say that? And we feel. You're in a big trial. Oh, we feel like this is going to work out for good.
Oh, we just feel. It doesn't say that at all. It says what? We know.
Do you notice in verse 26? There's a lot of things in Christianity we don't know. Do you know how to pray when you're in a trial?
I often don't know how to pray. Look at verse 26. The Spirit helps our weaknesses for you. We do not know how to pray as we should, but the
Spirit Himself intercedes for us. We don't know how to pray, but we do know that God's going to go ahead and make these things turn out for great glory and for our good.
We do know that. We know for sure. We don't have to conjecture. We don't have to waver.
We don't have to doubt. And what's He say there? We know. I was reading a commentary this week, and He says, just imagine if all the saints of old could come and tell you these things.
And Abraham could come and sit there and say, I know. We know God works these things out for good.
Here comes Moses. Here comes Joshua. Here comes Caleb. Here comes Ezekiel. Here comes Mary. Here comes
Martha. Here comes all these people. How about take some old saints in the church. You're going through a hard time.
You go find somebody with gray hair, a hair of glory, and you say, you know, I put that in there for effect.
My life's falling apart. And they'll say, you know, I've been there, and God is faithful. You might not see what
He's doing now, but God's faithful. And Paul is almost joining the choir. We know. We all know this is going to happen.
And we know what? That God causes all the time, perpetually, faithfully, on our account, without getting tired.
He is always causing these things to work. They are working. They are not idle. They are not taking naps.
God is not somehow slacked off. He is working every one of those details together. You say, I can't see it. That's not the point.
And then it says, God causes all things. What kind of all things might that be? Matter of fact, in the
Greek text, all things is the subject. So all the attention is drawn to this all things that God just works out in such a way where we just think, wow, how can that work for good?
Let me give you one of the most quoted verses that I know of for Christians that is also quoted out of context every time.
And if this is your life verse, email
Stephen Dave. Jeremiah 29 .11 For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the
Lord, plans for welfare, and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29.
That's my life verse. I'm glad you like the verse. I like all the verses in the
Bible. Don't you? What's the context? It maybe could be your life verse if you remember he's talking about a certain situation.
He's talking to the Jews. He's talking to the Jews in Babylon. And he's talking to the Jews in Babylon who were exiled there after the catastrophic destruction of Jerusalem.
It's like Washington, D .C. is just torn down except not just Washington, D .C., the civil organization, but this whole religious sacred place where how can you get your sins forgiven if you can't go to the temple and God just destroys it and then he says this to them.
How can God cause all things to work together for good like the destruction of the religious temple in Jerusalem?
For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare, and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. Future, hope, it cinders.
One man said God is ceaselessly, energetically, and purposely active on their behalf.
Being himself holy good, his works are all expressions of his goodness and are calculated to advance his people's good.
What are some of these all things? How about Satan? We talked about that.
How about the world system does he cause together for good? How about your job?
How about your lack of your job? How about how you hate your job? How about your house?
How about your wayward children? How about your health? How about issues in the church? How about sin?
Is that part of the all things? The great commentator from Scotland, Robert Haldane, said even the sins of believers work for their good.
Not from the nature of sin, but by the goodness and power of him who brings light out of darkness.
Sin doesn't work good, but God who overrules it does. Even sin.
Now, if you say, great, I can't wait to sin today because God's going to have a lot of mess to clean up. When he cleans it up, whoo!
To God be the glory. Great things he has done. No. No to my own singing too.
Are we to continue in sin that great might increase? No. But are we to kill ourselves with care? I like a little poem called,
The Web of My Life. No chance has brought this ill to me. Tis God's sweet will, so let it be.
He seeth what I cannot see. There is a need for each pain, and he will one day make it plain.
That earthly loss is heavenly gain. Do you think the
Lord's dealings with you are harsh, unkind, unsympathetic, unempathetic?
Samuel Rutherford, who suffered probably more than people here have suffered, and myself included, he said, because God's sovereign, quote, it is best, in humility, to strike sail to him, and be willing to be led any way our
Lord pleaseth. You know not what the Lord is working out of this, but you shall know it hereafter.
I can't wait to get to heaven. See the Lord, billion years later, say hi to Kim, say hi to the kids, a couple billion years later, but one of the great things that I'm going to revel in, in heaven, is just sitting at the agent's feet, the author of all the world, and his sovereign hand, and say, how could you take all those people, and work out all those things, and all that sin, for something good?
Pick up the newspaper. Who even likes to read the newspaper? It's just a bunch of mess, and say, everything on there.
If I think of the whole world, I can't grab it, so let's just think of a football stadium. 100 ,000 people in Michigan Stadium, for instance.
God knows every one of their thoughts, every one of their motives, every one of their actions, everything that they've done, and God is up there saying,
I will wisely, providentially, circumstantially, authoritatively, effectively, work everything out in a perfect response, and,
I was going to say Paul, but the writer of Hebrews then, wants you to say, wow, that's a great
God. That God deserves to be praised. Somebody said to me last week, in an email, we don't always feel good, coming out of the service, after you preach, but we always learn a lot about God.
That's good. Because when I look into myself, what do I see? I'm sick of myself, half the time.
I want to see Christ. I want to look up. I want to say my salvation, comes from the hills, that's over there, it's not within myself.
And lastly, we're going to have to go quickly. I know we've gone long, with the baptism today, but, the last building block for today,
God's providence through Christ, does not excuse man from obeying Him. Why are you to pray?
Because God commands it. Why are you to pray? Because God has ordained the ends, salvation, certain accomplishments, and God has ordained the means, that God ordains prayer.
He uses prayer. Why do you evangelize? Because God commands it. Because God uses the preaching of the gospel,
Romans 10, to save people. We have full human responsibility. If God is sovereign, we are told then, under His sovereign rule, to preach and pray, and therefore we're to do it.
If you haven't read, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, by Packer, you need to read that book. Packer says, this is old
Packer, the good old Packer, in prayer you ask for things, and give thanks for things. Why?
Because you recognize, that God is the author, and source of all good, that you have already. And all the good, that you hope for in the future.
You pray, in fact, because He's sovereign. And you pray for your friend's salvation, your husband's salvation, your children's salvation.
Why? Because you know, salvation is not inherent in them, it's inherent in the giver of salvation.
General Stonewall Jackson said, duty is ours, consequences are
God's. When you pray, you believe in the Lordship of Christ. You say, how does this work?
Sovereignty of God, prayer and evangelism. How do they go together? Irreconcilable differences.
And Spurgeon would say, no they're not, they're friends. And I never try to have friends reconcile. They're both taught clearly in the
Bible, I just believe both of them. It is our privilege to evangelize. We are mouthpieces for God.
Packer goes on to say, you are going to be bold, if you realize God's sovereign, as you preach the gospel.
You are not on a fool's errand, he said. You're not wasting either of your time or theirs. You have no reason to be ashamed of your message, or half -hearted and apologetic in delivering it.
God can make his truth triumph, to the conversion of the most seemingly hardened unbeliever.
You and I will never write off anyone as hopeless, and beyond the reach of God, if we believe in the sovereignty of his grace.
It shouldn't be a hindrance, it should be a motivator. I don't know until I get to heaven, but let me ask you this question.
Jeffrey Dahmer, do you remember Jeffrey Dahmer? The man who committed unspeakable crimes?
Is God's arm too short to save Jeffrey Dahmer? What will you do if Jeffrey Dahmer is in heaven?
Matter of fact, he made a profession of faith, and was killed in the jail. He made a profession of faith, that was a good profession of faith.
His salvation, I don't know. But what would you do, if you had to sing the praises of Jesus Christ, forever and ever, because God decided to bring
Jeffrey Dahmer to heaven? What would you do? What would
I do? I think about the sins I've committed with my mind, my thoughts.
And beloved, God is pleased to take sinners, who are hardcore sinners, and save them, because then he gets the glory, because those people can't be saved on their own.
God's providentially working and saving people, and then we can sing, to God be the glory, great things he has done.
Who's worse, Paul or Jeffrey Dahmer? Who's worse, me or Hitler?
God is the God of history, and beloved, when everything is falling out from under your feet, you're on that ride in the amusement park, that I just absolutely hate, and you all stand in this big cylinder, with no ceiling, and you stand there, and you hold on, and all of a sudden, you start spinning so fast, with a centripetal force.
I think that's right. The bottom drops out, and you're stuck to the side, flying around.
When I was a kid, I loved it. I did it last year, and I had to keep focusing on something in the middle, so I wouldn't just, you know what?
The point of Hebrews, is to say Jesus is superior, because he's sovereign over all that.
And when the bottom drops out in your life, and it will, if it hasn't already. You need something to stare at, so you don't get dizzy.
You need to stare at that something. You need to stare at the sun. You need to stare at the sun, S -O -N, and say,
I've got to focus on that, because I'm spinning around. I can't control it. There's nothing I can do about it.
I've tried to manipulate it. I've tried to cry about it. I've tried to be anxious about it. I've tried to call people about it. I've tried to threaten about it.
I've tried to do all these things about it, and I can't do it, and so it's time to look to the focused object, and say, you know,
Lord, you give, you take away. You're the Lord of history.
You've made my life dark, but you've used some dark tones. There's beauty coming, either on this earth, or in the future, and I'm just going to have to trust you, even though it might kill me.
And I think God is pleased with that kind of attitude, of thinking that Jesus is better, thinking that Jesus is superior, and therefore thinking not about ourselves.
Let's pray. Lord, we commit this time to you. Would you seal these truths to our hearts?
Lord, lots of mental information, yet we would exclaim together, that your son upholds the universe, and all things by the word of his power.
Thank you for that. Lord, I pray for the folks in the church today, who are enjoying just a sweet time of life.
Lord, may they praise you for that. And Lord, I pray for those people, who have not slept, who are struggling, who have issues in their life, issues in their marriage, issues at home, issues at work.
And Lord, I pray that they would praise you too, because you are always in this latest trial, that you've given them.