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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Genesis 27-50
Well, it's good to be back in action, so to speak. I'm a little under the weather this morning.
Half my family is sick as well, so I'm hoping my voice will be sustained. I don't have any little pieces of paper to hand out as you did the past two weeks.
That was actually kind of nice. It might be something we have to introduce. This morning, we return back to the book of Genesis.
We've been spending some time the past two weeks that I've preached summarizing the book of Genesis.
We began with chapters one through 11. We spoke of the warp and the weft of God's redemption.
We looked at 12 through 25 and God's grace to Abraham. And this morning, we wanna complete our summary of Genesis, draw out some of the takeaway applications that I think are foremost from chapters 27 through 50.
And within that, looking at first the life of Jacob and then the life of Joseph.
Now, I'm not gonna be spending too much time atomizing and putting under the microscope some of the things that we've spent months considering over the past year.
What I wanna do is highlight a few themes and then draw that toward application by the end.
So with Jacob, first, we're going to look at God's sanctifying grace.
With Joseph, secondly, we're going to look at God's providential grace. And then drawing both of those together toward a conclusion, third, we'll consider how we submit to God's providence, submission to God's providence.
Now, here we are in December. And whenever we come to the end of the year, it's a good opportunity, first of all, to just simply reflect on what this year has meant for us.
We have occasion to look to the Lord's grace in our lives, to consider how we've been sanctified or where sanctification is needed.
Even still, we have opportunity to see God's providence. What has His will been this year?
What has He put before you? What has He brought onto your plate, so to speak, or what has imploded in your life?
What hilltops have you been blessed by? What valleys have you struggled through? What has this year meant for you in terms of God's providence?
Where have you grown? Where have you fallen short? Do you see His providential hand more clearly?
Are you hopeful for the work that He's beginning to do and what that might look like next year? You don't want to come to the end of the year and just stumble into 2023.
Some of you are familiar with driving automatics. One of the ways you can start is you park downslope, that you put it in neutral and get that running start.
If you have issues with your starter. And that's what you need to do when you come to the end of the year. You sort of need to park on a slope.
You need to aim downhill. What do you want to carry into? What's the trajectory you're going to build for next year?
What is God doing in your life? And how are you gonna capitalize on that? So these are the things we wanna consider together this morning.
So first, Jacob. Jacob and God's sanctifying grace. You remember that the story of Jacob began with God's revelation to Rebekah about the twins that He was knitting together in her womb and how the older would indeed serve the younger.
This displayed God's sovereign choice of Jacob even before he was born. God said
Jacob would surpass Esau. Jacob would be the one who would be blessed.
And indeed the promise that God had made to woman in the Garden of Eden would be passed down through even this child of promise until the seed that would crush the serpent's head would come in the fullness of time.
So God's grace, His sovereign choice, rested upon Jacob, not just before Jacob was born, but we would argue even before the world was made.
In eternity past, God had chosen that His grace would rest upon Jacob the twister,
Jacob the usurper, Jacob the manipulator, Jacob the fraud, the cheat, the thief.
Grace was upon him. This was not Jacob's own doing. What does
Paul say about this in Romans 9? For the children, that is Jacob and Esau, not yet being born nor having done any good or evil so that the purpose of God would stand according to election, not of works, but of him who calls, it was said to her, to Rebekah, the older shall serve the younger, as it is written,
Jacob I have loved. When did God love Jacob? Before he was born, before he had done good or evil.
Why? He didn't have any works. Why did God love him? It's never of works, Paul says. It's of him who calls.
God called Jacob by his grace. Jacob, therefore, I have loved.
Grace is upon the twister despite the twister. Grace has marked out, has prepared the manipulator despite the manipulator.
What does Peter say at Pentecost? That this grace, this promise is for whomever the
Lord our God will call. It's for whomever God calls, not of him who works, but of him,
God, who calls. We remember the way that Jacob actually received that promised blessing from Isaac in Genesis 27.
You remember that Isaac himself had grown quite fond of Esau, really didn't have much of a relationship with Jacob, and he seemed to despise the revelation that God had made concerning him.
He seemed complicit to maneuver Esau to receive the blessing. Give me food, the food such as I love.
That was all that he required to bless Esau on his way. But remember how God moved through Jacob's own sin, the evil that he brought upon his father.
When the jig was up, Isaac was left trembling and tremoring on his bed, recognizing, indeed,
God has done this thing. Jacob surely will be blessed. Though Esau sought repentance with tears, he found no place for it.
Even though Jacob is a twister, a swindler, a crook, a thief, God comes to Isaac, and Isaac realizes,
I am going to bless Jacob. Jacob, indeed, shall be blessed. This was the summary we saw in Genesis 27.
Jacob is blessed despite his sin. Jacob is blessed despite his sin, which
God is going to root out by His sanctifying grace. Jacob is blessed.
And so this work begins in his life, because Jacob has not only had God's love marking him out, wooing him, preparing him for this fateful stage when he's called to know and have a relationship with the
Lord God, but it's also the beginning of this work of grace in Jacob's life, a work that will sanctify him and bring him in not only right relationship with the
Lord God, but also right relationship with his neighbor. And we move forward to see him reconcile with Esau, a major event in Genesis.
The point here is that the same grace that calls Jacob is the same grace that sanctifies
Jacob. If you've been called by the grace of God, you will be sanctified by the grace of God.
There is no way to opt out of it. If you are not currently living a life that God is sanctifying, you should have no assurance that God's grace rests upon you.
The grace that calls us is the grace that sanctifies us. It leads us to ask this perplexing question.
Why would God choose someone like Jacob? He looks at Jacob, he sees what
Jacob is doing, he knows what kind of man Jacob is, sniveling, maneuvering, manipulative, cowardly, no love for his father, no respect for his father, no integrity, deeply flawed, deeply rebellious, stubborn, hateful, spiteful.
God knows him, knows Jacob better than Jacob knows himself. A manipulator tends to begin to believe their own lies, believes their own self -presentation.
God knows Jacob as he really is. God knows all of us as we really are. Not as we prune and preen and present ourselves on social media, but as we actually are in of ourselves.
God knows, he knows who Jacob is, what Jacob is like, what Jacob will be like.
He knows you, he knows who you are, what you're actually like.
The things that you do, the things that you will do. Jacob could say, oh
Lord, you've searched me, you've known me, you know my sitting down, you know my rising up, you understand, you comprehend my thoughts even from afar, that is, even before I think them.
You know my thinking, you understand my path, my lying down, you are acquainted with all of my ways.
They stand ever before you, they greet you, whether with blessing or with cursing.
There's not a word on my tongue, but behold, oh Lord, you know it all together. You've hedged me behind and before, for Jacob up to this point in chapter 27, this is a horrific confession to make.
You know me, you know my thoughts, you know my words, you know my actions, you know how
I really feel, not how I put on, not how I present, but how I actually am, what
I actually love, what I'm actually seeking and striving after. You know it. That's a humbling, sobering thought.
You know it all together, and what's the expectation? Therefore, judgment, therefore, chastisement, therefore, harsh rebuke, therefore, woe and curse from left to right and top to bottom, but what does he say?
Behold, oh Lord, you know me all together. You've hedged me behind and before, and you laid your hand upon me.
That's a surprising turn. You know me as I really am before you, and you lay your hand upon me.
In my unworthiness, in my sinfulness, you lay your hand upon me. Grace, grace,
God's grace. Grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace,
God's grace. Grace that is greater than all of our sin. Even there,
God's grace is seen to be something effectual in the life of his people. You know me,
Lord, all together, but still, in your mercy, you lay your hand upon me, and it's because in your mercy you've laid your hand upon me that you will not leave me as you've found me.
It's because you know me and in your mercy you've called me that you will no longer allow me to be the way that I've been.
You will give me grace that pardons but also cleanses within.
Be of sin the double cure. Cleanse me of its guilt, that's pardon, and its power, that's cleansing.
That's what God's grace does in the life of a believer. That is grace that is greater than all of our sin.
Because of God's calling, the believer knows we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but you look at the life of Jacob, precious few moments do you actually see him doing this thing, but what you see everywhere in the life of Jacob is the following truth from Philippians 2 .13.
It is God working in him both to do and to will his good pleasure.
That is something we see everywhere. Jesus says, my Father's always working.
Believer, don't you know the Father's always working His grace into your life? Working in you to will and to do
His pleasure? He does constant work.
We have fits and starts and we're often on strike and we often punch out pretty early when it comes to working out our salvation in fear and trembling.
But the grace is effectual in our lives. And that grace, that work of sanctifying grace, notice in Jacob's life as in our lives, it tends to bring us through trial.
That God uses trials and crises in our lives to especially be seasons of cleansing, to humble us and alert us to our estate before Him, to expose those hidden sins, the sins of the heart, not only the massive potholes and tank traps of our walk, but even the foxes in the vineyards.
God uses crises to cause us to slow down and be still before Him and examine ourselves.
And we saw that with Jacob. The one thing that he had run away from and though God's grace had been working in his life under the harsh providence of Uncle Laban, we saw that still that was preferable rather than seeing the avenger, the murderer,
Esau coming after him. But God slowly but surely led him to that encounter with Esau.
We're reminded that sanctification rarely works in a vacuum, right?
One of the points we drew out of that great encounter in chapter 32 was that redemption involves relationships.
God is triune. God consists of three persons in communion within the
Godhead. And part of who we are as image bearers, therefore, is communal.
There's something true about our persona, about our individuality, but just as much as human beings are individual, we're also communal beings.
And we see that if redemption must affect us as individuals, redemption also must affect us in our relationships.
It must always be this way. Sanctification doesn't occur in a vacuum. We need relationships for growth in holiness.
You will not become holy if you go in a Vermont cabin and sit there for four years and just read your
Bible and pray. You're not gonna be that much more holy. You'll be holy when you have that Vermont cabin and a bunch of rude, disrespectful, and hostile neighbors around you.
That's gonna work more holiness into your life. When you have trouble within the home or troubled relationships with coworkers, managers, relatives, whoever it may be, this is the sanctifying grace of God for you.
Imagine if Jacob had stolen the blessing, deceived his father, and then everything went well after that.
He got the blessing, he took off the goat hair, and he said, you know, this was great. Everything went better than expected.
Maybe there's something to this whole Yahweh business. I'll try to be a good boy from here on out. Now I have the blessing,
I know the inheritance belongs to me, and everything's just swimming. If he had never had to run, if he had never had to submit to that difficulty under Laban, to be cheated himself, and to have his own activity as a twister brought out in Laban's dealings with him.
If he had never felt the pressure and the panic of knowing that Esau, in his anger, was potentially seeking him.
If Esau had just remained in Edom and they had never had this fateful encounter, and that all of the lying, the cheating, the manipulating went unchecked, unexposed, unsanctified, uncleansed,
Jacob would not be the display that he is, a work of God's grace. Jacob would know very little about himself.
Jacob would know even less about God. How paper thin his sense of God's presence in his life would be.
But because of these very things, Jacob knows who God is, and he knows who he is, and he knows
God's grace has not been sluggardly in his own life. And so God appoints
Laban's, God appoints Esau's for the growth of his people, so that they know him, they know themselves, and that they can see the way
God is sanctifying them by his grace. In 2022, what have your
Laban's and your Esau's been? How has God been using these situations, these circumstances, to bring sanctification into your life?
Has it brought sanctification into your life? Or has it brought murmuring and grumbling?
As hard as it may be, God loves to surround his holy ones with Laban's and Esau's.
He just loves to do it. Thankfully, he also gives us Barnabas, you know, and other allies and friends, but one of the ways we spoke about this during our time in the life of Jacob was speaking of the
Christian life as a mold, right? Truly, that's what sanctification is.
It's a process of being set apart unto conformity in Christ. So, Jesus Christ is the mold, and God's sanctification in our lives is surely, slowly, but surely, filling us into that mold, conforming our lives to be more like the life of our
Savior. And one thing that I know, one of the few things that I could take away from many years in a plastics factory, and this is something we spoke about, is molds require immense pressure.
When you have these massive steel plates that come together with the cavity that will be plastic injected, that plastic injection will seep out if there's not enough pressure holding the plates together.
If there's not enough pressure, then there'll be some air that escapes, and that plastic will end up being misformed.
It won't reach all of the contours and all of the edges, and as soon as the plates open and that malformed piece drops out, there's nothing to do but to throw it out.
Molds require pressure. And God loves to use pressure in the lives of His people.
He loves to mold us into conformity with our Savior through the pressure of trials and difficulties.
What has the pressure been in the year 2022? What do you anticipate the pressure might be in the year 2023?
What is God doing in your life? So we look at Jacob, and God's sanctifying grace is evident in his life.
The question that all of us have to ask, is the sanctifying grace of God evident in my life?
Is it evident in my life? Well, secondly, let's look at Joseph.
So if Jacob is a picture of God's sanctifying grace, Joseph is a picture of God's providential grace.
The life of Joseph is, if anything, a study in the providence of God.
We've traced, in many ways, Joseph's faith from the very beginning. As a teenager, he seemed to have such spiritual sensibility about him, such maturity to his relationship with his father, such earnestness in the way he dealt with his siblings.
They were murderous. They were usurpers and twisters, just like Jacob. But Joseph seemed to be a work of God's grace at a young age.
Praise God that he does that. Praise God that he does that. We've traced
Joseph's faith in God's sovereignty over his life, the sovereignty that he had early by revelation, that many -colored robe, that brothers, look, you will all one day bow down to me.
Maybe that was his most uppity moment, but he really recognized this is a revelation of God, and he submitted to that.
Even when God's providence threw him to the polar opposite of what that might look like, not being at the head of the family receiving honor, but actually being cast down into a pit of death.
Even there, Joseph depended upon the providence of God, never losing faith in what
God had revealed to him. So Joseph is a study in the providence of God, the multifaceted meaning of the providence of God, what it is and what it requires of us.
What does he say in chapter 45 as testimony to this end? It was not you, he says to his brothers, it was not you who brought me here into Egypt, it was
God. It was not you who did this to me, it was God.
Remember at the very end in chapter 50, when the brothers began to fear that he would retaliate against them now that their father
Jacob had died, and what did Joseph say to them? Am I in the place of God? He recognized that this was
God's doing. First of all, you aren't the reason ultimately that I'm here, God is, and then am
I gonna retaliate against you even though it was your evil action, your evil intent, your hands that dragged me down into this place?
I recognize it was God's providence, and I am not in the place of God, far be it from me to retaliate against you.
How different would your life be when sudden turns and twists and difficult times erupted, if you could say like Joseph, am
I in the place of God? Deep in unfathomable minds of never failing skill, he treasures up his bright designs and works his sovereign will.
What a beautiful, beautiful line from William Cooper. Deep in unfathomable, how deep are these minds?
You can't fathom the depths. Deep in these minds, think of the dark, confusing, perplexing pit that Joseph found himself in, truly an unfathomable mine of despair and gloom, but he recognized that God was in those minds of never failing skill, treasuring up bright designs.
The brightness of coming out of the darkness of difficult providence, the brightness of seeing what
God had always been angling at, what God was moving Joseph's life and all of redemptive history toward.
Remember, this is what Joseph says in chapter 50, God meant it for good.
Joseph's faith in God's providence compelled him to look into the eyes of his murderers with compassion rather than vengeance, with mercy rather than hatred.
Behind their evil actions, the wounds that they brought into his life, he saw God's desire was to bring salvation to many.
And so he submitted to being torn from his father's side, he committed to being sold as a slave, subjected to humiliation, put to an open shame.
Remember, he had to run away from Potiphar's wife with nothing but his undergarments. And all of this took place so that he could be exalted, but more than be exalted, so that in his exaltation, he would be used by God to save many.
Joseph is a study of the providence of God, not only in terms of Joseph's own life, but the providence of God in terms of all of history.
Because we recognize in that very summary that God was providentially creating a foretelling of what
Jesus Christ would come to do as the Savior of many. Jesus and Jesus' faith in God's providence compelled him to look into the eyes of his murderers with compassion and mercy.
And behind their evil actions, he saw God's desire to bring salvation to many.
And so he submitted to being torn from his father's side, sold as a slave, subjected to humiliation, put to an open shame, all so that he might be exalted.
And more than that, in his exaltation, he might bring many sons to glory. Joseph is presented ultimately as a picture of Jesus.
There's this Christ -centered dimension to everything that we've read in Joseph's life.
But at the same time, we don't want to neglect the simple example that Joseph gives to us of submitting to God's providence.
Jesus said what Joseph certainly could have said. The cup which the
Father has given me to drink, shall I not drink it? Can you say that as a believer? The cup that has been given to you, shall you not drink it?
What does Jesus say when he's praying and his robe is beginning to be saturated by the blood that's pouring out from his skin?
And he confesses, Father, you are able to do all things. Take this cup from me.
You're able to do it. Take this cup from me. You've never not answered a single thing
I've prayed because in my prayers, I never ask amiss. I always ask according to your will. So take this cup from me.
But not what I will, Father, what you will. That's the faith of Joseph.
That's the faith of a believer. Not what I will, Father, but what you will. How do we know what God has willed?
How has God's providence unfolded in your life? How has God moved and maneuvered your life, your resources, your relationship?
Are you able to see it as the cup the Father has given to you when the time is difficult? Do you bend your knees to his will because his will has unfolded in your life?
You understand providence by looking backward. But that's not enough to bring your heart into submission.
That's not enough to cause your faith to lay hold of his promise and to live according to hope. You can be thrown in a pit just like Joseph.
And you can just stay down there in misery and start to begin to question the righteousness of God like Job. We don't find
Joseph doing that at all. There's no chapter 38 rebuke that comes to Joseph.
There's just a patient submission to the difficult providence of God.
Have you bent your knees to the will of God in your life? And we talk about God's revealed will, his word.
Right, his word rightly interpreted, rightly understood. That's God's revealed will. How do you know
God's will for you? Look at his word. If you're rightly reading the word, rightly understanding it, rightly applying it, that is
God's will for you in Christ Jesus. But not only do we have God's revealed will in the word, we also have
God's will being revealed as providence unfolds. Sometimes the tension that we feel is we don't know how to react as God's providence unfolds.
What would he have me do? What should I not do? Where would he have me go or where should I not go?
And that ought to drive us on our knees in prayer into the word to seek his revealed will and apply his revealed will to his providence.
And so God reveals his providence in our lives and we are called to submit to it.
We're gonna spend some time talking about that in a moment. God appoints the times,
God appoints the days. Not all days are like other days.
Not all Wednesdays at 3 p .m. are like every other day. A lack of understanding of God's dynamic agency, of God's work and way moving in the vicissitudes of life and in the sort of details that surround us and the atoms that he's upholding by the word of his power.
In all of these ways, we can recognize God is active and he has appointed times, days.
Christians need to learn how not to be surprised or overtaken by those difficult turns of God's providence.
We understand that the father's always working, we should not be surprised. Peter says, don't be surprised with the fiery trial which is to try you.
Don't be surprised. We're always surprised though. Didn't see this coming.
I can't believe I have to deal with this now. I can't believe this is going on in my life. Who else has to deal with this?
No one at GRBC but me. Why me? Why me, God? We're always surprised that the father is doing his work.
Always surprised by the providential grace. Always surprised by the sanctifying grace.
God appoints the times and he calls us to wait upon him. And it's in the waiting that often our hopes begin to faint.
Our hearts are discouraged. We end up saying like Zion in Isaiah 49, the Lord has forsaken me.
The Lord has forgotten me. That's what waiting upon God in times of dark providence looks like.
It looks like wrestling with the providence of God. And we see in Joseph's life the right way to wrestle.
We see it not only in what is said but what's not said. We have a study of what wrestling with the providence of God looks like.
Joseph lived by faith. Joseph submitted to God's providence by faith.
Joseph never lost sight of the promise and was always seeking to do whatever he could do as God worked in him and through him.
Whether I'm at the top of Potiphar's house or the bottom of the dungeon, I'm going to be faithful as unto the
Lord in every respect. And so wherever he is, he can only ever be exalted in some relative scale.
And for him, it's as unto the Lord, whether he's Lord of the dungeon or Lord over Egypt, it's as unto the
Lord. That's the way to wrestle with God's providence. That's faithfulness. And so it is with us.
Thomas Watson says, in this life we have but pieces of God's providence.
And it's impossible to judge his works by pieces. I love, it's been some time since I've been there, but I love going to the
Worcester Art Museum. And when you first go into the main lobby, they have this incredible mosaic that was excavated from Antioch.
They have a mass, it's massive, it's huge. It probably was the equivalent of an entire living room floor from some ancient villa.
And of course, it was painstakingly preserved and transplanted. And I think they own a section of it, a few other museums own others.
You look at the mosaic and there's just these little tesserae, these little cubes, pieces of stone or glass.
And they're all ornately arranged. And if you look at the excavation photos that they have as they were working on this, you'll see there's just huge piles sometimes where bulldozers scraped or nature ravaged.
And so you have some pieces of the mosaic worked out and other pieces that are just piles of tesserae.
There's no scheme, no organization to them. And some master puzzler has to go in there and figure out where each one of these little cubes goes and follow the logic of the design and what could possibly be made.
And they rely on other examples of mosaics. Okay, this most likely is a wild boar in a hunting scene.
So we're gonna try to recreate that over here on the left corner. That's what looking at God's providence is like.
These little pieces and we don't know where they go. We know they belong somehow, but how and where specifically?
And so our lives have some things worked out. Marvels of God's design, but then we also have these providential piles of pieces.
And Watson is saying, you can't judge God's work by pieces. You judge it by what
He's worked out. What's clear in His design? What has He been doing that you understand and you see?
And more than that, others see. Others see how He's worked and what He's built and what
He's doing in and through you. They see fruit that maybe the darkness of the providence has blinded you to.
So don't look to the piles of pieces as you're filled with anxiety and concern.
Look to what God has worked out. Follow the logic of what He's been doing in your life. And of course, ultimately this mosaic of redemption is never complete until that great day.
That's when we see His providence completed and it's glorious to behold.
That, as Watson said, is how all of God's providence moves to fulfill
His promise. Everything that God had promised Joseph was answered by the end of Joseph's life.
Everything that God had promised, God fulfilled. Even when the providence seemed so upside down from what
God had promised, God was faithful. As we wrestle with God's providence, what an image, right?
Think of Jacob wrestling with God. What was the point of Jacob wrestling with God? To overtake?
No, to submit. He wasn't gonna win.
The point was for him to tap out. The point was for him to be humbled. The point was for this stubborn, rebellious twister to get on his knees and behold the mercy and the love and the presence of God.
That was what Jacob had to encounter before he could be reconciled with Esau. As we wrestle with God's providence, what is the purpose of wrestling with providence?
Is it to overtake? No, it's to submit. You wrestle with providence until you're brought to your knees in submission.
Until you can say with Job, though he slay me, yet I trust him. And so we're meant to submit to God's providential work in our lives because providentially, he's bringing sanctification into our lives.
A greater sense and enjoyment of his presence even in the difficult valleys. So third and last, let's talk about submitting to God's providence.
Submitting to God's providence. Let me give four points. The first is simply the difficulty of that.
And then three things that we need if we're to submit to God's providence. So first, the difficulty of darkness.
The difficulty of darkness. God's providence leads his people into dark valleys.
Psalm 23. And there's great difficulty in our faith, in our hope, in the means of grace, in the evidences of grace when we're in these times of darkness.
It's confusing. Think of darkness. It's confusing. My girls are young enough now.
We always have a few nightlights. And for a time, we didn't have any nightlights because they play them and hide them and who knows where they go.
So we keep the hall light outside their bedroom on with the door cracked. And that's enough light for them to feel comfortable. Well, every now and then, we'll go by and maybe the door will get shut.
And as soon as they realize they've gone from that little crevice of light to pitch black darkness, they all start crying.
They can't see. They went from being able to make out some things. Now they can't see anything and they hate it.
They immediately jump up and try to clamor after the door to get some light. That's what it's like to be in a dark valley.
We can put up with darkness, but once things go pitch black, we can't handle it.
Get us out of this place. Something else has to change. Something different must come.
It's difficult to be in the darkness of God's providence. It's difficult to be cast down into the pit when you were promised to be the head with your brothers bowing down before you.
And so our thoughts are overwhelmed. Our thoughts are turned inside out, upside down. It's difficult to understand what
God is doing, why He would allow this. How am I going to submit to this? Why should I submit to this?
What's going to come out of this? What more is going to be taken from me? I can't hold as it is. And now this, we become entangled in our own thoughts.
We don't know what course to take, what course to avoid. We say, behold, I go forward. He is not there.
Backward, I cannot perceive Him. The left hand where He works, I can't behold Him. He hides Himself on my right hand.
I can't see Him. Job 23. Where's God?
Where's His light? That's what dark providence looks like. And so we pray like David that God would make
His way straight because the way has become crooked and dark and we're filled with despair.
So our hearts begin to sink. How do we make sense of that difficulty? I had some time to read.
You know, I would highly recommend you read this. You can get it as a Banner of Truth paperback.
John Flavel, The Mystery of God's Providence. Just read a chapter. A chapter of Flavel is like a book today, a whole book.
A paragraph of Flavel is like a chapter of a modern -day book. The Mystery of God's Providence, John Flavel.
He talks about this. This is around chapter 12. He talks about the sinkings of the heart, the despair that comes because of dark providence in our lives as believers.
And he says, the causes of these sinkings of heart are partly from ourselves and partly from Satan.
We must say that. The sinking of the heart, that the despair when God's door shuts out the light and we're in the darkness and we're so confused of where he is and what to do next and what's going to happen to us.
And it's in those moments that the heart begins to sink in panic and that's of ourselves and that's of our enemy who roars about like a prowling lion seeking whom he may devour.
And Flavel says, if we examine our own hearts about it, we'll find that the sinking of the heart is the immediate effect of unbelief.
This is the part that we play. The instinct of difficult providence is just to pad the person that's lashing out.
You say, oh, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. And Flavel's saying, and he's seen this, you think life's tough in the 2020s, go back to the 1660s, life's really tough.
And he's thinking of his brothers and sisters and he's saying, don't let your heart sink because of unbelief.
God is on the throne. The sinking of the heart, he says, it's the immediate effect of unbelief.
Don't you see the serpent in the wilderness? Boy, did you say your father was good?
If I was your father, I wouldn't let you starve. Hey, don't you have power to make the stones bread?
Is he really good? Is he really God? Is he really trustworthy? Flavel says, we don't depend and rely upon the word with that full confidence that comes from knowing that God is faithful and God is unchangeable.
That's something we see with Joseph, don't we? I don't know why I'm in this pit and not at the helm, but I know that God is faithful and I know his promise is sure.
So the thing that we bring to it is the immediate effect of unbelief. Not depending on his word, we begin to have a distorted view of who
God is. That's what happens with Job. Begins to mutate who God is and what his character is like.
He begins to impugn things that are not true of God because in the darkness, he's beginning to be filled with a heart of unbelief.
In his despair and agony, he begins to lose faith in the God who changes not, in the
God who does all things well, in the righteous judge who governs the world in righteousness. What does
Psalm 27, 13 say? Confession of David. I would have lost heart. My heart would have sunk and drowned unless I believed.
That's the trust. Unless I believed, I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
That's an amazing confession because he's essentially saying, I won't even have guarantees that I'll see the goodness of the
Lord in this specific trial. I might die and be buried, but I'm still believing in the goodness of the
Lord. At least I'll see it in the land of the living. Most likely, that's what
James has in mind when he says, if one is sick, mortally ill in the congregation, let the elders come and anoint them and pray over them so that they may be raised.
Interesting sort of double entendre there in the Greek. That's sort of an uncommon way to talk about being healed, but it makes sense.
The translation you'd read right past it is that they may be kind of lifted up or restored, but it's a very specific verb.
It's the verb that's always used in the New Testament for the resurrection. It's Psalm 27, 13 right there in James 5.
So that whatever the Lord's will is, however his providence may turn, whether they're restored and given more years or whether they die and are buried, they too will see the goodness of the
Lord when they are raised. That's what he's saying. So darkness often prevents us from trusting in God who is infinite and unchangeable.
And what Flabel's getting at is if you deny the lies of Satan and you deny the corruption of your flesh, that very same darkness, rather than causing you to doubt and despair, can actually help you to trust.
And the darkness of that trial now is not the confusion and the pain, but as you submit to it, as you trust
God, that darkness becomes the shadow of the Almighty. Puritans love to speak of the way
God uses afflictions. One of my favorite images. And if you ever have a chance to go to the Highland Games, you ought to go and watch the sheepdog competitions.
I think it was Spurgeon who said, afflictions are the sheepdogs of the Master. And he uses them to herd and guide the flock to safety.
What an image, if you've ever seen, I think I've shared this before, a shepherd call and command and the dogs bolt out around the sides and they begin to bite and sort of stalk and they move the sheep around all of these obstacles and get them safely into the pen.
And Spurgeon says that's how God uses affliction. Like a shepherd using sheepdogs to guide us around obstacles and pitfalls into safety.
Another image they often use is a nipping providence. Nipping, something biting, something sharp.
We woke up maybe this week to 20 degree weathers and it's nipping, right? Every part of you is kind of like looking for warmth somehow.
You know, with the early frost, we understand what that nipping providence can look like. Flaval. Such hard providence
God uses in the lives of his people and his people cannot live without them. That's a statement.
God's people cannot live without difficult providence. The earth does not need more chastening frosts and mellowing snows than our hearts do nipping providences.
You see? If the earth needs leaves to fall off the tree and fruit to fall and decay and ice and snow to cover the fruitful land, how much more do we need that providentially in our lives if God would make us fruitful?
Let the best Christian be but a few years without them. Let me say that again.
How's your year been? What's next year gonna look like? Let the best Christian be but a few years without nipping providence and he will be aware of the need of them.
He will find a sad remission and decline upon all of his graces. That's how
God uses affliction in the lives of his people. This is what Heidelberg Catechism question 26 says.
We're still examining the difficulty of darkness and this is the last for this particular point.
Heidelberg question 26. This is the answer from it. The eternal Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ who of nothing made heaven and earth and all that is in them who likewise upholds and governs the same by his eternal counsel and providence.
So notice what it's front loaded here. How are we gonna understand and wrestle with God's providence? First, who is
God? God is Father, Son, and Spirit and we approach God by the
Spirit through Christ unto the Father. The eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and now speaking of Christ who of nothing made heaven and earth and all that is in them and upholds and governs the same by his eternal counsel and providence is for the sake of Christ his
Son, my God, my Father on whom I rely entirely in such a way
I have no doubt he will provide me with all things necessary for my soul and my body and further that he will make whatever evil he sends upon me in this valley of tears turn to my advantage.
He is able to do it. He's almighty God and he's a willing faithful Father.
That is glorious. You begin with the largest conception of God's infinitude.
The one who upholds every molecule at every moment by the word of his power and governs all things whatsoever that come to pass by his providence.
That God is my God and he's my Father and so I know there's no eternal need that I have for my soul, no immediate need
I have for my body that I cannot trust with him. And even if he sends evil to me in this valley of tears, even as he sends evil to me in this valley of tears,
I know he'll turn it out to my advantage. Is that not the life of Joseph? He's able to do it and notice how they close.
He's able to do it because he's almighty God. Yes, but he's more than that. He's your faithful, willing
Father. He's not some abstract deity. He's your
Father. So that's the difficulty of darkness. Second, and this is the first of three needs, so that we have a difficulty, what about the needs?
How are we going to submit to God's providence? Well, first let's talk about that. We have a need for submission. We need to submit to God's providence.
As Spurgeon says, our happiness lies very much in our complete submission to the Lord our
God. Oh, it's a blessed thing when we know that God is ordering every event of providence.
Complete submission, as Spurgeon says, complete submission to God's providence is where our happiness lies.
Thomas Boston, another great book, if you have time to read it. I don't think, Banner Truth probably publishes this.
I know Christian Focus does. The Crook in the Lot by Thomas Boston, one of the great
Scottish Puritans. Whatever is crooked in life was made so by God and therefore must be received in submission to God.
Whatever is crooked in life was made so by God. It wasn't you who sent me here, it was
God. Am I in the place of God? Whatever is crooked in your life this morning was willed by God to be so and you must receive it in submission to Him.
What happens when Satan buffets and trials come? But we're lacking peace that rolls over us in our soul.
Well, the first thing is that we malfunction. We begin to dysfunction.
Means of grace immediately vanish. Because of the confusion, because of the pain, because of the anxiety and the difficulty, it's very hard to follow through with the routines we had established when times were well.
When it was easy to bless God and be filled with contentment and thankfulness, the means of grace begin to lose their attraction and their charm.
They feel more like chores and it's difficult to do chores when you're suffering. Thoughts begin to become disordered.
The soul is weakened, unable to bear the trial. Flavel in The Mystery of God's Providence, he talks about how this anxiety in the life of a believer, it's like a man who knows he has a huge journey to take the next day, but he can't stop thinking about everything related to the difficulty of that journey and so he's up all night fretting and thinking about it and then when he starts out the next day, he ends up only making it halfway.
That whole night of worry cost him the journey. When if he had resigned and committed his mind to trusting
God, that he could have slept in peace and made the journey in completion. So the answer, as Flavel says, is to resign one's will to God and quietly commits whatever events or outcomes may come to him.
Thomas Watson, who I'm getting this right, he said something like your clothes could never fit you as well as God's crosses.
Your clothes could never fit you as well as God's crosses. Every difficult turn in your life, every crooked providence, every dark valley of tears has been custom -tailored for you according to an all -wise providence so that you will be sanctified and brought into conformity to your
Savior. God never came and promised us outward comfort.
If we're disappointed about our lot in life, we can't blame God for that. What did he promise us? That it would be easy?
No, actually, he promised us the opposite of that, didn't he? He said, you will have trouble in this life. You will have trouble in this world.
No servants above his master. We grumble at God. We don't deserve this. You're not keeping your end of the bargain.
We thought it was gonna be easy and our lives are gonna be padded with ease. I've never made that promise.
I told you the way would be narrow, difficult, not the wide path that's so easy to walk on.
It's that thorny path that precious few find. So there's no place to blame
God. We can blame ourselves for misunderstanding what God warned us and promised us. He never said we'd be wealthy, healthy.
That we'd never be unprovoked, unchallenged, untroubled, unpersecuted. He said, you'll enter into my kingdom through many.
Tribulations. But what he does promise us is that he will be with us in times of trouble.
He doesn't say you get out of trouble. He just says, you get my presence in your trouble. When the poor and needy seek water,
Isaiah 41, and there is none to find and their tongue is failing for thirst, I, the Lord, hear them.
I, the God of Israel, will never forsake them. That's what he promises his people.
He doesn't say you won't thirst. He just says, I will hear your cries. And whether long or short,
I will deliver you. Flavel, speaking again to this discontentment, this rebellion that begins to boil in our lives.
We begin to misunderstand God, misunderstand ourselves. We find it harder and harder to submit to his difficult providence.
Flavel says, all of our discontentment will never prevail with God to call back the word that he has rendered or to make void his word, right?
Grumble and complain all you want. God's providence is God's will. He is of one mind.
The thoughts of his mind are everlasting. He sits in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. Please remember,
Heidelberg 26. He doesn't do this arbitrarily as a cosmic tyrant. He does this as a faithful father.
And so Flavel says, set before you those choice, scripture, patterns of submission to the
Lord's will in deep, yea, much deeper points of self -denial than this before you.
AKA, study the life of Joseph really carefully. And then, shame yourself out of this quarreling attitude with God's providence.
Isn't that wonderful? Look in scripture and see the examples of painful self -denial in submission to the
Father's will, trusting in the goodness and wisdom of God's purpose. Look at those examples, reflect upon them, meditate upon them, hide them in your life and in your heart, let them expose all those ways that you're discontent in grumbling and quarrelsome.
Look to the Lord Jesus. If not Joseph, look to the Lord Jesus. And then shame yourself out of quarreling with God's providence.
Samuel Rutherford wrote so many wonderful letters on this theme to Lady Kenmore said, the submission of faith writes a blank sheet of paper and says, let my
Lord write on it as he pleases. There's this resignation.
My life is yours, my life is hidden in you. You write into my life by your providence what seems best to you.
It's Samuel, it's Eli responding to the news. It's the Lord, let him do what seems fitting to him.
So that's the need for submission. Secondly, the need for submission. So the difficulty of darkness was first.
Second, the need for submission. With that, the need for examination. So third, the need for examination.
This is essentially what Flavel's getting at. We need to look at these examples so that we can better understand ourselves and where we're falling short of submitting to God's providence and seeking to make use of that providence.
Something we'll come back to. Our prayers reflect in one way or another our desire for how God's providence is to unfold.
That's what James is saying, isn't it? You have not because you ask not, or, I think it's usually the or, or because you ask amiss.
You ask to spend it on your flesh. We ask amiss.
James is saying in your prayers, you're often praying how you want God's providence to unfold, and in those prayers, most likely, you're asking amiss.
You're at least missing God's wiser purpose and better purpose for your life. You wait for good, and the good does not come.
Are you gonna submit to God's will? Or are you gonna abandon him?
You wait for good, and good does not come. Have you brought your will into submission to his providence?
Certainly, God desires this more than anything. Our good is to be submitted to his will.
His will is good. We often begin to falter and murmur because God seems so slow to answer.
I love what Flavel says on this point. This is like Flavel Fest, but I can't help it. It's such an excellent book.
We begin to murmur. God is so slow to answer. Doesn't he know? We've been praying about this till our faces are blue.
Why won't he respond? Why won't he answer? Haven't we been patient enough, Lord? This is what
Flavel says. How long has God waited for you to comply with his commands? How long has he waited for you to follow through on your engagement, on your promise?
You've made God wait long for your reformation. And therefore, you have no reason to think it much if God makes you wait for your consolation.
Surely, we would not think these trials long when we consider how much longer the Lord has exercised his patience toward us.
We've made God say, how long, how long, oh Lord? Well, if God has waited upon you with so much patience for your failed duties, how much patience can you have in your trial?
Marvelous. We recognize that there's a need for this kind of examination if we're ever going to submit to God's providence in our lives.
It's a good sign when the trouble and the trial in our lives is driving us not to groan at God or grumble at God, but to groan at our sin and our sloth and our worldliness.
That's what a trial is meant to drive home. Obadiah Sedgwick, he's reflecting on Psalm 84, verse 11, the
Lord will give honor and glory. No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.
And Sedgwick says, I may lack something that is good, but I will never lack something that is good for me.
I may lack something that is good as the world sees good, but because of God's fatherly wisdom,
I'll never lack anything that is good for me, even if it be a thorn in my flesh. So the need for examination.
Can you find contentment that says the Lord is good, the Lord is wise, he is my father. Even in this valley of tears, he is faithful and wise.
That examination leads to trust. That's the fourth and last point, the need for trust.
So the difficulty of darkness, the need for submission, the need for examination, having examined where you're failing to submit, what do you need to do?
You need to trust, the need for trust. A point I really wanna make here is trusting
God's providence, and look at Joseph's life as an example, it's not passive resignation.
You can have a worldview without God, the God of scripture, and you just have some view of luck or chance or fate, and you can resign yourself to that luck, chance, or fate.
That is not what the Christian does. Resignation, passivity, is not trusting
God's providence. Trusting God's providence is not, as the
Spanish would say, que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. What can I do about it now, right?
Look at Joseph, he doesn't have a passive resignation. Oh, what can I do, I'm in the pit,
I'm just gonna sleep here in my pillow of tears because I'm in the pit. No, he has an active trust in God, an active working trust in God.
Flavel says, unbelievers may grimly resign themselves to circumstances they can't change, believers will persevere in faith, believing that the greatest evils will turn to their prophet, will work for their good in the hands of a faithful God.
By God's grace and in answer to prayer, we can, Colossians 1, be strengthened with all might according to his glorious power.
What's that gonna look like? This is not health and wealth, what's it gonna look like? If you are strengthened with all of God's might, according to all of God's glorious power, what is he strengthening in you, according to Colossians 1?
Patience and long -suffering. What does that presuppose about the Christian life? God, give me the strength to tear down this trial and never have to suffer anything.
God says, oh, that's not the strength I give. I give you strength to have patience and long -suffering in the trial.
That's how I use my glorious power. The best example we have of this,
I think, is Psalm 131, verse two, when David says, surely I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.
It's obligatory for every preacher who has a nursing newborn to bring up this or 1
Peter. But I'm reminded of just how much yelling an infant can do when they're awoken and hungry.
No one's at rest, no one has contentment when a baby is screaming for nutrition.
But David says, yeah, I know what that's like. I know what it's like when the door shuts and the providence is dark and you begin to panic and grumble and lash out, but I also know now what it's like to be in the dark.
To be calmed and quieted like a weaned child. That's what my soul is like.
It's essentially Paul saying, I've learned in all things whatsoever how to be content. I've been weaned.
I used to lash out, but now I've been weaned. I've composed.
Notice this is agency. This is not passive resignation. This is agency. I had to grow from that infantile immaturity.
I had to grow in a way that I had self -control. I was hungry, but I composed myself.
I quieted my soul. This is submissive language. I quieted myself.
I controlled myself. That's submission to providence. What does that look like?
David says like a weaned child with his mother. No longer desperately screaming or lashing out, but knowing even if I'm hungry now, my mother will take care of me.
I'll eat eventually. She won't let me suffer. There's good reason. An immature believer, it's just brain, stomach sending signals to the brain and the brain sending signals to the lungs.
That's immature. There's not a consciousness, a will, an affection, and there can't be therefore contentment and quietness like a weaning child.
The weaned child knows he doesn't need to scream until food reaches his mouth. He'll wait. Just like a believer has to wait upon the
Lord. Isaiah 40 says they that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.
It's the believer who's like a weaned child that has renewed strength. Maybe you've known personally.
You certainly can read about testimonies of Psalm 131 type believers. And because they've been weaned and because they've submitted to God's providence over their lives, they're like a contented, quieted child fully embracing and trusting their heavenly
Father. That's what their soul is like. Johnny Eric Santata is an example that comes to mind. One last point as we close.
I think it's an important point to make. I mentioned this phrase and it's a beautiful phrase that the
Puritans use and this gets at the heart of why submitting to God's providence is not passive. It's not resignation to fate.
It's an act of faith. It's an act of trust working out in your life where you're recognizing what
God has brought and you're seeking more of Him and you're examining your own life and bending more and more to what
He's doing and why He's allowing this. And Flavel and other Puritans would use this language of making use of God's providence.
I love that because it's not passive at all. Make use of it. What's exploded like a claymore mine in your life this year?
Make use of it. Make use of it. How do you make use of God's providence in your life?
Well, the safest way to make use of it is to look to His word. What has He promised? What has He commanded in His word?
These are the things that are trustworthy. All else is dark, but you can trust these guiding lights. I'm sure our brother could give us a good illustration of that, of doing a landing at night.
All is dark. You don't know the particular, you know, warps and wefts of the landscape.
You don't know where to land unless you have those guiding lights, which they don't illuminate everything.
You can't see the contours and the dangers of the land, but you know at least those lights are sure.
And if you're guided between those lights, let's say the warnings and the promises, you'll know that even in this dark providence, you'll be led in a straight and safe way.
Make use of the providence of God according to what can be known about His will.
It's revealed in His word. Use that as a light to shine upon your way in what can't be known about His will, which is
His providence as it unfolds. You'll know it when you look back in this life or the next.
You won't know it in this life. Flavel, I think this is just the last point I'll make. As you do this, he says, no smile or success of providence should encourage us to proceed.
On the other side, no frown or discouragement of providence should discourage us in the way of duty.
Whatever we encounter must be accepted by and against the word of God.
That's such an important point. Don't try to interpret God's will based on is this particular life situation going well as far as I can see and desire?
Or is it going poorly? That's how you're gonna land your plane in the ocean. Look at God's warning and promises.
What has He revealed to you? This is screaming wrong in a hundred different ways.
I don't wanna do this. My whole family doesn't wanna do this. I can think of 800 reasons not to do this, but it seems to be what
His word requires. And therefore, I must press forward by faith.
That's making use of God's providence. Or the opposite. It seems like everything about this is going to be great.
Surely, I can see 800 ways that this is gonna be the best thing for me and my family. They all want it. But I can't see it in God's word.
And therefore, I can't go down that path. It's a false landing. The word, the revealed word, that is what we trust.
That is what we have faith in. Blind unbelief is sure to err. And scan
His work in vain. What does He say, a stanza earlier? Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust
Him for His grace. Look at the life of Jacob. Look at the life of Joseph.
Look at your own life. You can trust Him for His grace. Let's pray.
Father, we thank You for Your word. We pray You'd bless it to us. We pray You would use it in the minds and the hearts and the consciences of all present,
Lord, whether they know You and trust You for Your grace or they're strangers to that grace. Do a mighty work in us.