Mystery of Providence Chapter 12c

The Fifth Case: Stability Under Approaching Afflictions

Okay, all right, so we're finally at the end. It took forever. You may have noticed, though, this fifth case in this chapter was quite extensive, but we are going to do the fifth case, and then we're going to just do a shotgun summary of the whole book into some point, like major point and some points to take away from the whole study.

Then we can get into prayer. So, you know, as we might be a bit quicker than normal, which should be good, because more time for prayer, the thing we're mostly here for, right? So, the fifth case, it's similar to some of the other cases we had.

There are questions about our own stability and questions about how we should be thinking about God's providence and how it should be leading our thoughts when we interact with reality, because reality can, in some ways, challenge us greatly around God's providence.

So here, John asks us to consider, how can a Christian stay stable and resigned when afflictions are approaching? So, he decides to go through, as he's been doing, almost a negative and positive case again.

So he asks us to consider, what does the question not intend, and what does this question intend as well? So something his question does not intend, it does not intend that the heart and will of the Christian is at his own command and disposal.

So it's not as if we are fully in control of our own response to affliction itself. And so, he asks us to consider that, not to feel powerless, but to feel, instead, empowered by the Spirit, and to, again, ask God to empower our reactions.

He points to Philippians 4 .13 and John 15 .5 for this. So Philippians 4 .13, I can do all things through him who strengthens me. In John 15 .5, I am the vine, you are the branches, whoever abides in me, and I in him.

He it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me, you can do nothing. He's pointing out that God, God both tells us that we can do nothing without him, and commands us to abide within him, and to be fruitful in that abiding.

So this is part of that tension of God's sovereignty in human's responsibility, is that God asks us to submit to him, and to recognize his power, so that we can benefit from that. And now, what does this question actually intend, then, for us?

Christians should have some foresight of approaching afflictions. It does not mean we have perfect foresight, like God, but he asks us to be wise. God asks us to be wise in considering what's coming in the world, what's coming before us, and the legitimacy of the dangers that are coming.

We can all remember COVID. We can all remember the way that a lot of us responded to that, some of us responding in panic, thinking that everything was really going to fall apart. But God would ask us to, instead, consider these approaching afflictions, what he's maybe trying to teach us through it, how he wants us to actively interpret those things.

And so, let's look at Matthew 16, three, and some of the other passages here. Matthew 16, three. And in the morning, it will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.

This is a rebuke of these people. It's a rebuke that they can feel that they understand what weather is coming. We have a lot of this in our society, where, because of our attachment to science and what we've been blessed with, understanding about creation, we act as if we can guess and predict and know everything that is occurring.

But God points out that it is because we are lost in that thing, that we cannot interpret the signs of the times, but we should actually expect, to some degree, to be able to, if we have his wisdom in us.

With Zephaniah 2, one through two. Gather together, yes, gather, O shameless nation, before the decree takes effect, before the day passes away like chaff, before there comes upon you the burning anger of the Lord, before there comes upon you the day of the anger of the Lord.

So, he pointed to this passage to show us that God is pointing out, before I do these things, before my anger comes upon you, gather together, repent, recognize what is coming for you. So, God wants us to be in active understanding and relationship with him.

In 1 Corinthians 10 .6, now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. So, taking events as examples, recognizing that when affliction, again, is approaching, there's a purpose to it, and it is something that we should be actively considering ahead of time.

And this is, again, for maintaining stability. That stability is of our emotions, of our actual response to activity that the Lord is doing in our lives. As well as that, usually those things which would give us foresight are also the things which may disturb our peace.

This was a sort of interesting point, because it's effectively that having knowledge and having a foresight can itself also lead to anxiety. So, 1 Kings 17 .18, and she said to Elijah, "'What have you against me, O man of God?

"'You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance "'and to cause the death of my son.'". So, this is the woman that Elijah is coming to whose son is very ill, the son that she has been blessed with because of a previous visit.

But she, recognizing the supernatural nature of just this whole situation, is interpreting having this disturb her peace, is bringing her anxiety, seeing this man of God come to her again, knowing that something is about to happen.

Now, even though we should hold every thought captive and obey Christ, there's a quote from him that I felt really slotted in well here. "'Grace is but incomplete, and natural corruption "'riseth up against it and causeth many mutinies "'in the soul.'".

So, that grace being incomplete is that, I mean, we still struggle with our flesh. We are not yet glorified. And so, there is imperfection in the grace and peace that we experience here now. And so, there should be an expectation that our peace can be disturbed.

But that peace being disturbed, that is something we should be wrangling to Christ and that we should be trying to avoid at all costs. With 2 Corinthians 10 .5 being a good verse to remind us in this.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. And so, that is our answer, is that when we have these thoughts that we can see may disturb our peace and we see things coming.

I mean, this is relevant to us now where we're watching a war happen. Everyone is, I have a lot of friends, Christian friends even, who are constantly like inquiring of me, like, what my thoughts are on it, whether or not they should be really worried, their stocks are down, all these other things.

And I just continuously remind them that they shouldn't be responding in the way that they do. Like, they should be aware, but they shouldn't have their peace so disturbed. So, we have to instead take our thoughts captive to Christ and ask how instead we can glorify Him in that moment.

So rather, it is our duty to resign our wills to God when we see approaching affliction. Let's look at Proverbs 16, three for this. Commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established. And that should be what we continue to preach to ourselves often, is that our work is to the Lord.

If we actually submit it to the Lord, we know that He is going to do with it what He desires, He's gonna do with it what He wills, and therefore, we can have peace about it. And so therefore, given all this, what helps and directions are necessary for the Christian when dealing with approaching afflictions?

And so he gives us five different helps, and that is how this book ends. The first help being, work into your hearts a deep and fixed sense of the infinite wisdom of God and of your own folly and ignorance.

So a lot of this book has harped upon the wisdom of God and our own failure to recognize it or the wisdom of God and how we fall short towards it and how when we look at what God has provided us, the mercies He's given us, we should be seeing that distance between us and the Lord and how Christ has been bridging that.

And so Ephesians 1 .11, we'll look at the three verses here. Ephesians 1 .11, in Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.

In Psalm 147 .5, great is our Lord and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure. In Psalm 92 .5, how great are your works, O Lord. Your thoughts are very deep. I think this sub point here, it struck me very deeply in regards to just how I witnessed people and even witnessed my past self and even current self, how I'll interact with the world.

So we recognize that we should be submitting to counsel from wiser men. So how much more should we desire to submit to God's infinitely wise counsel? A lot of people will follow thought leaders. They'll create thought leaders even like within their churches.

They'll find thought leaders on the internet at their work and they will be at peace when their thought leader says to be at peace. They will be in panic when their thought leader says to be at panic.

But they do not, we as Christians are not called to have these earthly thought leaders. We do have the fathers and mothers above us who we should be gathering wisdom from, who we should be consulting.

But how they respond is not how we should be responding necessarily. We have to first look to the Lord and say what does His wisdom and counsel say about what we are going through, what we are seeing come to us.

Second help, consider how you sin by having your own torturous thoughts. For all our anxious and solicitous emotions, what else are they than the immediate issues and fruits of pride and unbelief? So he, John is pretty plain about it in this chapter that anxiety is itself sinful and anxiety is coming from our unbelief, it's coming from our pride.

If you really like, if you struggle with that concept, write it on paper and also look to the scripture then what it says about this. But write it out and really consider all the implications that come from your anxiety.

Right, I sort of don't wanna go through the exercise here because you should do it yourself. But you should be able to find that it is proud, it is unbelief, it is because you are not submitting to the Lord and see what ways it is that.

And we are also indeed vain for torturing ourselves with anxious thoughts. Let's look at Isaiah 31 too for this. Yet he is wise and brings disaster, he does not call back his words but will rise against the house of the evildoers and against the helpers of those who work iniquity.

When we, when we fail to submit to the Lord and we torture ourselves with our own interpretations of the world, it's as if we're setting ourselves up as many gods, we're rejecting how the Lord is responding, we're rejecting his plan for how everything is going and we are like this house of the evildoers, those who work iniquity.

One that God will be rising up against because God has his will, his intentions. And as we see in the third petition of the Lord's prayer as well, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. How can his will be done when we reject the counsel of his will, when we follow the counsel of our own hearts, the counsel of man first?

Josiah?

Is there a nuance here though with like?

Mm-hmm, I would ask in that case, who is he requesting the counsel from? He's directly requesting from the Lord. I mean the other verse here was Psalm 33, 11. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.

If you're going to have these questions and these supplications, they necessarily should go to the Lord and then secondarily go to those in authority above you. Third help, consider how scripture says that we should submit to the Lord and have some shame in regard to how you argue with the Lord about it.

I found that just sort of funny in reading it in this chapter, just like having shame about how you're interacting with the Lord. Isaiah 41, two, well, let me explain that. The having shame here, it's not like having shame because you've interacted with the Lord, like in even a wrongful manner.

He was saying as well shame as in recognizing your low position before the Lord. But the way that we read it is quite funny. Isaiah 41, two, who stirred up one from the east whom victory meets at every step?

He gives up nations before him so that he tramples kings underfoot, he makes them like dust with his sword, like driven stubble with his bow. Again, if he is, like we are so low before the Lord and he is so much higher, that is what is being stated here.

Nations fall before him. The things we consider great and powerful are nothing to the Lord. They are things he has placed in position. Acts 20, 23, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.

And so this is again, Paul recognizing in a matter of shame, in a lower position before the Lord, that imprisonment and afflictions are going to await him as part of the church. That is something guaranteed to him as a believer.

Acts 21, 14, and since he would not be persuaded, we ceased and said, let the will of the Lord be done. This was, I believe, about Paul willing to go on to Corinth and they were desiring that he not go there, saying in the spirit, but in their own spirit, for him to not go, for he would be bound.

But rather, they realized that they were even being sinful in doing that and so they, again, took their shameful position before the Lord, their lower position, to say, rather let the will of the Lord be done.

And lastly, Mark 14, 36. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will. And so, especially applying this to Christ, Christ, in the incarnation, his human will, his human nature, is in subjection to the Lord, is in submission to God the Father.

And so he is displaying this here for us as, again, the perfect man, as the second Adam. He is putting himself in a condescending position and a lower position to God the Father and asking that not his will, but the Lord's will be done.

Which, for Christ, is unique because it's even the will within him, the second will. The fourth help, study the benefits of resigning your will to God. A comment from John here. Such a spirit hath a continual Sabbath within itself.

Now, you'll hear people talk about resting in the eternal, like the continual Sabbath of Christ in a different context. You can look to that separately. Usually it's by people who want to reject the Sabbath.

But rather, he is, John is pointing out here, not a doctrine about Sabbatarianism, but he is talking about the peace and rest that we have within Christ. This is indeed very true. Proverbs 16, three. Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established.

We already heard this earlier in Psalm 127, two. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep. So the Lord gives his beloved sleep, he gives them rest, he gives us Sabbath.

Another quote from John. Till a man come to this, he doth but too much resemble the devil, who is a restless spirit, seeking rest but finding none. So if as a Christian you find yourself a restless person, one who's coated with anxiety, one who's days are mostly defined by such a thing, you are essentially as the devil.

The devil known as more of a restless spirit is what John is trying to point out to us here. And so you really should consider how rejecting the peace of the Lord, having anxiety, is really committing these ancient sins.

And just doing, it's just acting in pride. It is just going against the Lord. Rather, our spirits have been created and are well-fitted to being in communion with God. And we are never nearer to mercies than when we submit to the Lord.

Earlier in this book, he's mentioned that we are never nearer afflictions than we have mercies, and at the same point, we are never nearer than when we submit to the Lord. So if we do desire to lessen our afflictions, if we do desire to experience the mercy of the Lord more, we should first take the step to submit to him.

Especially, this is in the context of witnessing afflictions coming to us. And so we still may, we are going to have to experience these, but they are greatly lessened by submitting to the Lord, even as we engage with them and as we live through them.

And lastly, the fifth help. Recognize how ugly and repugnant an inconsistently submitted mind is. Again, one more quote from him. You profess to have committed your souls to his keeping and to leave your eternal concerns in his hands, and yet cannot commit things infinitely less valuable unto him.

Again, it relates to an earlier point about us having peace and finding calm and listening to the words of people in the world who we respect, rather than listening to what the Lord has actually and actively promised us.

He asks us to commit everything to him. All these things are of infinitely less worth to us than the salvation he has promised us, than the gifts he has actually promised us. And he can take away these things that we refuse to give him anyways.

So that was the end of that chapter. It's a good time to transition into the summary of the whole book then.

Providence in the Whole of Life: A Summary of the Book

Go for it.

And more and more you hear that kind of language where people do good to put these things out in the open. It's almost like the transition that you saw happen with homosexuality, where it went from being this thing that more people were okay with, but it was kind of behind closed doors, and then it became something that you need to be out and proud about.

So it is, the unsubmitted mind, the anxieties and depression, et cetera, is something you should be out and proud about. This is part of what makes you special. But really, it's ugly and shameful, and you should learn to see it that way.

So that you can really modify it yourself.

Like when you see that kind of behavior in yourself,.

You should really,.

You should have a little bit of disgust with it, not want anybody to see that, you know.

Really, really go after it.

And something I've encountered more than once now at this point are people who define them, say that definitionally they're going to be anxious. In particular, someone I know who says that because they are a woman, and specifically a mother, that they are going to be anxious, and they are going to be this nervous wreck.

And instead, that allows them to just hold on to their sin. They refuse to read the verses about anxiety being wrong as anything to correct them. They say it just does not apply to women. It does not apply to mothers.

So it is something that becomes an idol.

It doesn't apply to veterans.

There's all kinds of categories, yeah.

My nursing supervisor, that was his story. He was a veteran who had been diagnosed with PTSD, and I forget the whole of the story,.

But after a while, he realized.

That he was just blaming his sin on other things,.

And that he could be free of it all,.

But undetermined for Jesus, and that's what happened.

Nice.

Was he in counseling for ACBC, or did he find it later?

Yeah, I think he did get counseling through ACBC, but now it's, you know.

Anything else before we get into the summary?

No? Okay.

General Providence and Special Providence

So, just really gonna blast through these a bit. The first section of the book, but specifically in chapter one, John told us about the nature of providence, saying that there are, in particular, two kinds.

He likes to categorize. We'll see a lot of this. Two kinds, there's general providence, which is over all creatures. You also call this potentially common grace. There's a lot of different things that fall under this, and then there's also special providence, which is only towards the church.

This can be found even just in the provision of scripture to us, but as we definitely had last week, there is how mercies bring us closer to the Lord and how afflictions remove sin from us as the elect.

So, that is a special kind of providence given to us. As well as this, heathens deny general providence, and scripture and history prove it. So, there are these two ends of the spectrum that you'll find the world denying it in every way possible, while scripture and history will prove it out repeatedly.

Providence in Our Personal Lives

Providence in our personal lives, this is really what chapters two through five were about. Just a bunch of daily topics, things that we encounter throughout our lives, very physical things. Starting with formation in the womb, birth, and our early environments as first acts of care.

He asked us to reflect greatly upon even breathing today, even being alive, especially as, for him, too, there was a lot of child, a lot of child mortality, but then there's even mortality within the womb that we don't really know about and recognize even today.

There is the providence that the Lord gives us in our upbringing. If you had parents who disciplined you, parents who exposed you to the gospel and prayed for you, that is a very special and particular providence that you were given.

For all who are converted, frequently we talk about being converted. They're very unexpected occasions. Really, we should read every occasion of conversion is unexpected. It's not like someone is born and it's like, yes, this seems like an elect individual.

Rather, it is God saving one who could not save themselves. But he did specifically speak to those who you really would never expect, and the ways that they were saved were the result of many winding pathways to get there.

There's more providence as well in our life through just our vocations, our callings, what God gives us day to day, and lastly, in the marriage, children, and our family relationships as further instruments of sanctification and of affliction.

So our families are given to us for both. They're given to us for sanctification and affliction. We can see this even within the church. Our church family is given for both. That's why we have ways to deal with, say, church discipline, a form of dealing with affliction.

It's an instrument for our help, but also sanctification through, I don't wanna say sacraments, but I meant ordinances, through ordinances and through our weekly worship and through our daily worship in the homes.

These are great instruments of sanctification for us. Chapter six through seven, he spoke about the providence we find in our own preservation and sanctification, that preservation being our perseverance in the faith.

God will guard our souls from temptation by both internal grace and external hedges, so external hedges being those things we set up physically to prevent us from sin, whether it be various helpful softwares, whether it be accountability within the church with individuals or just plain discipline, but internal grace being that working of the spirit that causes you to truly hate sin, not to just avoid it.

The Lord preserves our bodies from illness, war, and danger. My family is sick, but we're not that sick right now. He's still preserving us from deathly illness, right? And even though our nation is at war, he is preserving us in particular from war on our own land.

There are these things to consider even within the throes of these things that are spoken of. And if the Lord brings war to our land, it's not that he's forsaken us, but it is when we experience these particular providences, we should recognize and be thankful for them being there.

The Lord also will mortify, as in he'll cut off and kill off sin through the spirit's work and our outward afflictions, producing in us a holiness and a humility. So our afflictions are given to the elect not to specifically only punish us.

They're given to us to discipline us and to cut off sin from us, to work that sin out of us. Now, chapters eight through 11, what we've been going through very recently, it is the Christian duty to observe providence.

So observing providence as in remembering and speaking about it, bringing it up, reflecting upon it, meditating on it. It's commanded and commended throughout scripture. If you want those proofs, you can ask me for the outlines, or if you held onto the outlines, great,.

Or just reread the book.

In our neglect of commanding and of observing providence, that itself is sinful. The neglect of it is not just doing it. It's not that doing it wrongly is the only thing we could sinfully do. It's that not doing it would be sinful.

And there are four directions he gave us. That is to record providences in detail, to attend to scripture's examples of providence and how to react to them. So it was about rightful praise and rightful mourning.

Attribute all things to God and respond appropriately, as I just mentioned. There's scripture's examples of the kinds of things and the ways to react to them, but also just separately. Just your bare response should be correct.

So you should have joy when there's mercy and grief when there's affliction. It is not more righteous to be specifically joyful in your affliction, but your grief should be paired with the trust of the Lord.

Your grief should be paired with an understanding of what he is working in you, or a growing understanding and submission. There are 10 powerful motives he gives us as well to observe providence as it deepens our communion with God.

It fuels our joy, suppresses our inner atheism, prepares us for trials, supplies us with praise, endears us to Christ, melts our hearts towards the Lord, secures our peace, improves our holiness, and will comfort us at our death.

And last advantages of recording he gave us is that it does combat a forgetful memory, or as he put it, a slippery memory. It's something that we are going to continue to forget and enriches our faith for future trials.

I wanna really harp on the slippery memory as we get to be more and more and more of a digital age. I mean, when we got the printing press, there's evidence to when we got the printing press that human memory suffered dramatically from that.

As oral cultures, you could expect people to have multiple books of the Bible memorized. You could expect people to have much of their life in their memory. Get the printing press, people realize they can't passively realize they don't have to hold onto these things, and now that we have instant access to so much information, memorization is all but lost as an art, because if I know how to find the information, that's the best thing I need.

I remember in college, in my politics class, one of my professors thought it was profound that he, instead of having us memorize all the terms, he would allow us a pretty comprehensive set of notes, because he said, it's more important that you know how to index to the information rather than actually know the information.

And at the time, I liked that, because it was easy. And now I'm like, there is truth to that being a blessing of the Lord, that we can find these things, like I'm glad I can ask AI about something that's deep in the depths of some words somewhere, but I'm also much lesser, because I don't remember so much of what I should.

Discovering God's Will Under Dark Providences

And last, the practical applications from chapter 12. Discovering God's will under dark providences, when we were under afflictions or coming afflictions, we should be fearing God, studying his word, praying, and follow providence, only so much as it agrees with scripture.

And lastly, we should be enduring long-delayed answers, recognizing God's own delay as a mercy to us, so when he delays providing us something, or relieving us from something, knowing that there is a point to that, there is a purpose and a grace to that, we remain at God's disposal, we submit to him, and we trust in his timing.

And so really, I would say, the core idea from this book is that every detail of the believer's life is ordered by a wise, faithful, and loving God for his glory and our eternal good. Observing, recording, and responding to these providences is the believer's lifelong duty and delight.

We made it through the book. Anyone have anything before we get into prayer?