Systematic Theology (part 46)

Providence as God’s Continuing Care for Creation

So today we're going to be looking at Providence. Last week we looked at creation. Now this is a subject we've actually touched upon about six months ago, but there are some elements about it that I think would be helpful for us to dig into and then have and discuss.

So but before we begin, let let me open us with a word of prayer. God, dear God, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for providing, we thank you for your providence that governs this universe and each of our lives.

Help us, Lord, this morning as we open your word to to grasp the immensity of your hand in all that transpires every moment, every day, every year. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen. Okay, so I have a few things to just get us started and then I want us to read a bunch of verses and I want to kind of direct your thinking towards some questions that I think will be helpful in engaging with the subject and maybe I'll give this as a preface.

I want you to think of three groups of people. One of them is maybe unbelievers that do not know the God of providence that we are talking about and how do we communicate something very vital to them about providence.

Then I wanted to think of those who are Christians but don't have a good handle on the sovereignty of God, the hand of God that touches upon every aspect of creation, of life, and how would we communicate this aspect of providence.

And the third one is like most of you here who have a very biblical handle on what sovereignty of God is and what are some of the challenges that providence provides. What are some of those places where we come up against a wall and how must we live in light of the providence of God.

So those are the three things, broadly speaking, I would like you to keep in your mind as we go through this material and my hope is that we will be able to engage. There is a lot of questions that should come up as we go through this and I hope we'll be able to engage, expose the questions, and then be able to interact with it.

So the question right on top you have is providence. If God controls, and I think the key word there is control, all things, can our actions have real meaning? And a side note from that is what are God's decrees?

And so the first one will deal with the issue of freedom, responsibility, and our ability to make choices, and the second one will talk about, the second big subject we're going to talk about is the problem of evil.

Preservation: God Upholds All Created Things

Hopefully we can cover this today, if not we'll finish up by next week. So the definition right on top, God is continually involved with all created things. So last week we saw creation, now he is involved with his creation, so that first he keeps them existing and maintaining the properties with which he created them.

We touched upon this last time. He creates with certain properties, but you're going to see that he sustains those properties of his creation. The second one amps up the problem a little bit more where we see this, he cooperates with created things in every action, directing their distinctive properties to cause them to act as they do.

So there is a relationship between God and the created universe in which he enables them to accomplish what he has designed them for. And the third one is that he directs them to fulfill his purposes.

God's sovereign purposes happen through the agency of his creation. So those are the three elements. The first one is preservation. God keeps all created things existing and maintaining the properties with which he created them.

Let's again, as we normally do here, if you can raise your hand for these verses, I'll have each of us read it. We'll go quickly through them unless there are questions. Who'd like to read Hebrews 1 .3?

Thank you, Linton. Colossians 1 .17? Thank you. Acts 17 .28? Thank you. Nehemiah 9 .6? Thank you. And 2 Peter 3 .7? Thanks. And the last one, Job 34 .14 -15? Thank you. All right, let's go through them quickly.

So who has Hebrews 1 .3? So here you see this, the word, he upholds the universe by the word of his power. Again, pop quiz, does anyone remember what that upholds refers to when it's talking about the work of Jesus Christ?

Pastor Mike preached on this a little while back. The word there is pharaoh in Greek, and it has got this idea of carrying, but not just like a static way, it is taking and delivering it to its destination.

It is God making this universe, and it's talking about Jesus Christ, bringing the universe to where it needs to go. So he is the one who sustains it, who makes sure it gets to where it needs to go. So I'll just stop with that.

The next verse is Colossians 1 .17, and in him all things hold together. And I think one of those things that we really want to remember is, especially that first category of people who don't believe in God, this world holds together rather beautifully.

It's got a lot of properties, it seems to be functioning, executing things, but what they do not realize is that you have Christ holding together all these things, all the properties with which he has made them, they sustain because you have the God of the universe holding them together.

If for a moment God were to say, I'm taking a break, you don't have a universe anymore. So it is Christ, again last week we saw Colossians 1 .16, talking about creation, and today we see the way in which he sustains it.

The next verse is Acts 17 .28, and again we covered this passage last week, we touched upon this passage last week, Paul here in Athens talking to the Stoics and Epicureans, and here he is giving them, taking what pagans actually had with an understanding of this divine power, and then talking, and Paul takes what is right in the sense that it is in God that we live and move and have our being, but then he redirects them from this plethora of gods to the one true God to which to them was the unknown God.

And again for us today, in him, in God, we live and move and have our being. We think of living, moving, and existing as properties that belong to us. We are pretty capable of living and moving and having our existence, except for the fact that we need to be conscious every moment that we live is because of God.

God is the one who enables us to live. Nehemiah 6 .9 .6, thank you, and again you look at creation and all of created things and he is the one who gives life to all that we see. 2 Peter 3 .7, thank you, and again this verse talking about the judgment to come, in the passage it talks about creation and the destiny of all of created order, but then you see that word that he keeps them up until that point in time.

God is the one who preserves, that's the point of all these verses, he sustains these things. In the last verse, Job 34 .14 -15, and once again the breath of life that we have is, we are on lease, if you will, if God were to expire the lease, we expire, we cannot sustain ourselves, it is God who gives us this breath.

And all of these verses hopefully give you that sense of even from the grand scheme of all of the universe being upheld to every single life that lives is because of God's preservation. And just a comment and then maybe if there's questions we'll look at it.

So the point B that you see there, God is not continually recreating everything. He preserves what has already been created. There were two views on this, one of those was, you know, he created everything out of nothing at the beginning, which is what we hold, and then he preserves it, and there is another view that was held, I don't know how many people hold it now, but I don't know if it was Edwards.

There was someone who held, someone popular or famous who held this, Schofield, is that right? I don't know. So his thing was, there is a recreation happening every moment, so it's like creato ex nihilo from this moment to the next moment.

That's not what we hold. We hold that there was creation, God gives life to every creature that is born, but he creates them with properties with which they function, and he upholds those properties so they sustain themselves through.

So the point that you have there on C is all created things are real and have real properties. Last time we looked at some of the other world views where, you know, there's an illusory effect to creation or the creation is all, or the universe is all that is real, and what we see here is God endows them with properties that are indeed real, and the basis of this is the creator God who made it and preserves it.

Any thoughts or comments on this section? That's a great question, and I don't have the answer for that. So we know that, I don't know who it was, I was reading someone recently who said, you know, God didn't need the five loaves and two fish to begin that miracle.

He could have done a more explicit creation from nothing right there. So what we do know is that he blessed the food, he broke it, and in that breaking you see a multiplicity, but where that multiplicity came from, I think the text would probably lead us to, a simple reading of the text would lead us to look at something happening there as a creation, there is extra matter that wasn't there before, and I think is that what you were driving to it, and again, when you think of the law of thermodynamics, we're thinking of closed box, you know, this is the sum total of your mass and energy in the universe, and without an external agency, you cannot add to it or remove from it, it can only be transformed, and here you have the God of the universe inside this closed box, and that's what changes the equation for us, but thank you, that was excellent.

And I think that's one of the joys of reading the scriptures, you know, we get to see this powerful miracle that happens, and as we just contemplate and reflect upon the power of God at work there, it fills us with awe.

We can't always understand everything, but it just opens our eyes a little wider. Any other thoughts on this section? Does everyone have one of these? If not, please, there's more near the door, thank you.

Concurrence in Inanimate Creation, Weather, and the Nations

Okay, the next section is concurrence, and so when we look at preservation, we look primarily at the properties of what was created being sustained by God, and I don't think as believers we have any big questions with that.

As we saw, unbelievers may have difficulty understanding this, but it exposes questions like this law of conservation of energy, and even why it is so. But the next one brings up, if I want to say, brings that question up a little bit more challenging, in terms of understanding how God works with his created universe.

And so with concurrence, God cooperates with created things in every action. The keyword that I want to emphasize is cooperate, and again, I don't know if I mentioned this today, but this outline is from Grudem, so I'm using his outline.

We have some supplemental material that we'll be touching upon, but all the content of your sheet is from Wayne Grudem. And he directs their distinctive properties to cause them to act as they do. So you have these properties functioning in a certain way, but there is God directing, and that's really those two elements that I want us to be thinking of as we go through this, because it'll help us answer the bigger questions of agency and evil later.

I think if we understand this well, we'll be better prepared to answer those questions. So would someone like to read Ephesians 1 .11? Just raise your hand. And here you see, and of course, if you remember Ephesians 1 as a whole, we have the Father, Son, and the Spirit.

We have the purpose of God in the life of his believers, and how he plans it and executes it. And here you saw we are being predestined, and God is the one who works according to the purpose of his will.

But in the next section on, we're going to go from the simplest to the more complex. And I'm not going to read all the verses, we'll just read a few of these just to set the base as we move along. So if someone can read Psalm 148, verse 8?

Thank you. And then, actually, let's do Matthew 5 .45. Thanks again. Can you read that one more time? A little louder. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Coming out of our winter, or maybe still going through winter, I don't know.

You look at the snowstorms you've had, and then you saw the end of that verse, fulfilling his word. Not one flake of snow drops without God's ordaining them, or directing them. And that's really what I want us to be thinking of.

Here is inanimate creation functioning as God ordains it, as the word of God directs it. So that's the thought I want you to keep in your mind. And the next one is Matthew 5 .45. Again, the purpose of the text there, as Jesus is talking, the Sermon on the Mount, is the way in which God handles both those who trust in him and those who do not.

He gives this common grace of sun and rain. But I want us to just take a moment to think about this. So go back to a science class. Why does the sun rise? Because the earth rotates. And why does the rain fall?

You have evaporation, the water cycle, gravity to bring it down. And there are some conditions, atmospheric conditions. Now you know, I was talking about watching the weather. I like watching TV when there is bad weather because you get to see all these cool graphs and maps.

You know, you get to see. And actually, the last storm we had, the previous day, was such a beautiful sunny day. I was like, oh, come on, there can't be any snow tomorrow. And sure enough, all day snow.

And here was this thing. And humans, made in the image of God, were able to detect those, whatever, pressure and temperature and wind directions, and then create a computer model that predicts how these things are going to happen.

And science has helped us understand the conditions that bring these events to pass, whether it is the rising of the sun or the falling of the rain. So once again, thinking of the definition that we have here, God cooperates with created things in every action, directing their distinctive properties to cause them to act as they do.

The problem with the first group of people that we talked about is that the more we understand the properties of, in this case, inanimate objects, we kind of say, okay, we know what causes them to function the way they do, the sun rising or the rain falling.

And we don't need any more additional explanation. You know, God would be redundant. You know, what is that Occam's little razor, right? I don't need more than one reason to explain this phenomenon because I can understand what causes it.

And then here in the Bible, what Rachel read for us, it's God's word that causes the hail and the snow to come. It is God who makes the sunrise and the rain to fall, both on the just and the unjust. And this is really where we are talking about concurrence.

It is God who made the sun and the rain and the snow. It is God who directs them to function as they do. And now right between them, you have the properties with which he has made them, the sun or the earth to rotate, the pressure conditions to change as they do.

And God is not the God of deism where he just made it and he's stepping back and he's like, I don't care if it rains today or it doesn't rain tomorrow. He is, and I think the word, you know, going back all the way up to Providence, he controls or he ordains all things so they happen, come to pass according to the properties that they possess.

Does that make sense? Maybe I'll stop there. Any questions on this section? Because I think if we get this, it'll be easier for us to move along the chain. Straightforward. Yes. Amen. Actually, you know, here in New England, we know that no matter what computer model you have, God can change that equation rather quickly for us.

And it just reminds us, you know, we are made marvelously in the image of God, but we are not God. Things can change. Did I? Yes. Yeah. And I think the Newtonian physics, for example, I think, you know, there is this discovery into the handiwork of God to understand it.

And, you know, here is this guy on the seashore picking a few curious pebble or two. I think that's how he described it. But then the subsequent generations are like, oh, we know how the universe works.

We don't need God. A sad reflection. And I think just back to what you mentioned, Charlie, the, um, this, this two sides, like you rightly pointed out, we have the universe displaying the handiwork of God.

Psalm 19, Romans one. When we see these things, we ought to, it ought to evoke awe at the creator of all this wonder and splendor that we see. And yet we don't have God standing in heaven, like, you know, like one of the Greek gods and you can look at him and say, oh, if I don't obey him, I would be incinerated or my existence would go away.

Like we looked at some of these verses, um, there is faith needed in order to trust in God. And on the other side of the equation, you have an inherent, uh, problem inside of humanity after the fall where we have this, um, this awareness of the divine that is intentionally suppressed.

Uh, we call that depravity. So there is, that's why I think you said we need a supernatural work for our eyes to be open to stop from just, oh, I can describe what is happening to why we have this instead of nothing.

And to look at the, uh, foundation of this universe as it were, and the sustenance of this universe and the, and actually the direction, what we saw in Hebrews one, three, where this is heading all that it's only by faith as God makes that reveals that to our, to our eyes.

But again, um, the, the context of this inanimate creation is we, we observe this physical universe. We see how things are happening. We'd have certain properties and we are able to discern them. But the Bible is explicit that God is the one who controls directs and ordains things to come to pass.

And, uh, the, he uses the properties or directs the properties of these, uh, the universe that he created to do what they do either on a regular basis or as he, and actually some of the verses we skipped, it talks about how, um, in war, you know, there are like you have examples in the old Testament, uh, hail comes down.

These were not, you know, just coincidental that they happened when the enemies of Israel were routed, God directed them intentionally. So there, he's not just, there is a purpose with which he brings about things.

Providence Over Animals, Chance, and the Affairs of Nations

Um, so that's inanimate creation. The next one is animals. Again, we'll just do maybe just one verse. If someone can read, uh, actually maybe we'll do both some 104, 27 to 29, who would like to read that?

Thank you, George. And the next one, if you can read both of these verses, Matthew six, 26 and Matthew 10, 29. Thank you. So we'll begin. Thank you. Psalm 104 is at the end of the verse. Thanks George.

So here you have, uh, animals, you know, if you, who you can think of your kitty cat or your pet dog, or you can think of the lions and the predators out in the wild. And you can think of any, any of creation, the birds and, um, actually let me reserve my thought.

Just keep what George said in mind when we have the next verse read Matthew six. And again, you're looking at the providence of God for that little cat, the little bird, the big, uh, lion and the elephant in the jungle when they're food, when it comes to their life, the way, again, when you look at the mechanistic universe, uh, in the physical creation to now this animate creation, what do, what do birds do?

They wake up in the morning, they go and pick for that worm and they eat that worm. And then they go to sleep. And after, I don't know how long sparrows live at some point in time, they die, or you have a hawk that finishes the business a little earlier, uh, or you have a predator, you know, there's a drought in Africa.

And then, you know, they have a challenge finding that water source. They migrate, they, they grow weak and then, and some other predator comes and gets it, you know, so you look at national geographic, you look at PBS and that's what we get to see.

We get to see, you know, this beautiful ecosystem of everything that is set there and you kind of expect some things with predictability. There are some things that happen that you wish didn't happen.

And again, we're getting ahead for the problem of evil, but, but what does the Bible say about this, uh, uh, these animals and birds, they look to their father or your father provides for them. Not one of those two sparrows falls down without your father, no, you know, without your father's ordaining them, um, their breath returns when God takes it away.

And once again, you know, it becomes a little more challenging because now you see things that actually function. They don't just, um, it's not like the earth's rotation, right? It's fun and it is spinning and it is spinning and it's spinning.

Here is a bird that has to wake up in the morning and go and scrounge for its, uh, worm. And yet it is the father who feeds them, who makes sure that that worm was there when that bird been looking for it.

And uh, you have, uh, this bird that is breathing and, you know, it's not like I've got a breath strike today. It, God is the one who gives that property to that bird and make sure that that bird is functioning.

And once again, I want you to just think of this, these things function the way God created them. God is the one who gave them that property and sustains that property. And the key thing I want you to be thinking of is God directs those properties to function the way they do.

So, um, if you are like me and watch this beautiful nature shows and in PBS, it's tempting sometimes to forget that the direction of God that moves these things, because they describe beautifully what happens, but the why and the grand scheme of the father, that not one sparrow falls down without his care, that not one animal of all this immense life on this planet, uh, none of that can sustain without God giving them breath and they die when they expire.

So I just want you to remember that direction of these animate creation by God. Any thoughts on that before we move? Praise God. Thank you. Just the grandness to the little, littlest details. Our God is sovereign.

All right. So let's look at the next one, a seemingly random or chance immense, um, good luck, right? That's what faster. Thank you. Okay. Uh, once again, you know, a lot was used, um, uh, in the old Testament and by non Christians as well, you know, in terms of playing a game or gambling or whatever it is, you know, the seems random.

Actually, let me ask you, is the casting of an unloaded, well, loaded dies is not random and unloaded die. Is it actually random or is there some way you can predict the numbers that come out of it? It, it, as I was preparing for this, one of the things that someone said was, you know, do a science experiment with like, you know, this particular number loaded on the top and provide a certain amount of force and the, and the topography on which it is actually being pushed, you know, at the most simplistic level, if I had one on top and I pushed it this way, you know, it's going to slide all the way down and I know that I'll have a one on top.

But once it starts tumbling, maybe I can get complicated enough in my physics and it's friction and whatever the rotation weight of the die as it moves along. And I might be able to predict it to some degree, but in realistic, you know, I don't know where I'm starting from, where I'm throwing, where it's going to land.

And it is random on a human sense. And again, we may not be able to define the what at this point, but let's say a couple of generations from now, the Lord tarries and we're able to define it. What this verse actually wants us to remember is what we think as random and chance on this side of eternity, God is the one who directs it to fall where it may.

And which is why we don't use good luck because there's no like some random events that could come and we hope that they randomly fall along a line with the goodness that it may occur to you. But rather it is the providence of God that brings about what from our standpoint may still seem random, you know, whether it's calamity or it is a blessing in a positive way, whether it's health or wealth or anything else.

So whatever it is that comes about from our perspective, it may seem random. And once again, those the properties of these things here, we don't discern those properties, how they come to pass. We just think it is random.

And we see that God is ordaining those events, even the random ones to accomplish his purpose. The next one, let's actually, let me just read the next one. Events fully caused by God and fully caused by the creature as well.

And really, that's what we are trying to get in all of these things. God directs, God works through the distinctive properties of each created thing so that these things themselves bring about the results that we see.

So when we look at the results of inanimate, animal, random things, there are certain things in them that causes the results. We can observe those results. But the Bible tells us that he is the one who controls and directs those properties to bring about what he intends.

Now with that, the next one, the affairs of the nations. Let's just read, let's read two of them, Job 12, 23, who would like to read that? Thank you, Pauline. And then we'll have Acts 17, 26, who would like to read that?

Pastor Steve, Job 12. Once again, whether we are in our country at this point in time, we know that God is the one who is working in our nation. When you look back in the passages of time, the Roman civilization, the Greek civilization, you can go back as far as you want, or whichever country you came from, and what God did and what happened in all those circumstances.

People were greedy or people were flourishing. You see how God is the one who directs those, the paths, not just of these animals, but of nations as a whole. Pastor Steve. And this one is a little more comprehensive, starting with Adam to Babel and to Noah, and with Noah and then Babel, you get to see these boundaries that he allots and executes.

And when these people were settling the earth, they weren't saying, well, where is my boundary that God has given for me? I, you know, well, Abraham had a little bit of that coaching, if you will, you know, get out and you don't know where you're going to go, but I'll define it for you when you get there.

And he does. But these people went where God had ordained. They just said, I like this China and I'm going to China and whoever, wherever it is that they went, but it is God who had ordained those. And we want to just remember that in the nations and the broader scope of life on this planet.

Providence in Human Life, Salvation, and the Problem of Evil

Now we have this next section. Maybe we'll stop with that section for today. If there's no questions, we might get into the problem of evil. This one touches upon all aspects of our life. And I need us to read a few of these verses to get this settled in, because I think with this, we'll be equipped to get into the next subject, the challenge of evil.

Let me actually read, have many of these threads. So please be ready to raise your hand. Matthew 6, 11. It's okay if you've read before. Thank you, Haley. Philippians 4, 19. Thank you. And Psalm 139, 16.

Thanks. Job 14, 5. Thank you. Galatians 1, 15. Thank you. Jeremiah 10, 23. Thank you. Let's stop with that. And then, because we may not be able to keep all these verses in our mind. So let's begin with Matthew 6, 11.

Okay, food from God. Thank you. Philippians 4. From daily bread, which is your daily sustenance, to your needs, it is God who provides for your needs. And this is for believers. Psalm 139, 16. And in the womb to the events of my life.

I can look back at these years. Every single one of them was ordained even before I was conceived. But here in this text in the womb. And Job 14, 5. And when I'm going to die. So the end of my day here is in God's hands.

Actually, maybe I should ask this question before we move on. Don't answer this. Is that a scary thought or a comforting thought? And why? And are you glad you don't know that God hasn't revealed it to you just yet?

Galatians 1, 15. Oh, this is Galatians 1, 15? Okay. So this is Paul talking about this. And we have a similar one in Jeremiah 10. Okay, I apologize. I was thinking of Jeremiah's call in Jeremiah 1, which is similar to Galatians 1, where God, before he was born, he was called.

And here it is. It's not in man's way to order his steps, but it is God who helps. And again, this is just a sampling of the various aspects of our life. And all of these things, thinking of that distinction of the properties, we can see how they function on their own in one plane.

And yet all of these verses, the biblical data says that God is the one who ordains them and brings them to pass. And some of these are not just concurrent in their operation, but God ordains it before they come, that they would happen in line with his will.

And I think, really, that's what I want us to really let settle in our minds as we get into the next subject. You know what, for the sake of time, we'll do the rest of these verses and we'll stop here.

And I'll just throw out some questions for agency and evil that we'll pick up next week. So let's continue with Proverbs. Proverbs 20, 24, who'd like to read that? Charlie. Proverbs 16, 1. Thank you. Psalm 33, 14 to 15.

Thanks, Ted. And Philippians 2, 13. Thank you. All right, we'll begin with Proverbs 20, 24. Can you read that one more time, Charlie? Man's steps are from the Lord. How then can man understand his ways?

Proverbs 16, 1. And here you're looking at an agency type of text. Actually, the last few verses were dealing with agency. You prepare in your heart based on, and I think I want to use that term property again, the way you're built.

You have some data. You have certain ways of processing it. And you prepare your heart to handle the situation that you are in, in this particular case, speaking. And then you're looking for help from God in how you deliver, that you accomplish what you are going to do.

So there are certain things you think of and the way you say it. This one is a little more nuanced in terms of what you do and how God directs them, in almost like dividing them apart. But as you've seen in the broader context, it is everything that we do is ordained.

And here, this is the difference between the cogitation and the vocalization of your actions. The next one is Psalm 33. Fashions the hearts of them all and observes their deeds. And I'm hoping now with all the preliminary verses we've looked at, you can start to see again the properties that God has endued upon each of you.

So I want you to be thinking, he who fashions my heart and then observes my deed. So this is, let me stop and let's look at the next verse and then we'll speak on this. Philippians 2 .13. Can you go to the previous verse and read that too?

Thank you very much. So this is a more famous verse and I think this is, as believers, you can actually grasp this very strongly because God, you committed your life to God, as God saved you and rescued you.

And the first part, verse 12 says, you work out your salvation with fear and trembling. So what God has put in you, he has saved you. You work it out, you energize, you exercise, live out your salvation.

That's your responsibility. That's what you do. That's what you want to do. That's what the properties that God has given you as a believer enable you to do. And then you also have a God who, can you read that again, verse 13, for it is God who works in you.

And this is where I think the issue becomes a contradiction for the first two groups of people we started with, where they say, I can't handle that. You know, I can handle the part where I need to work out my salvation with fear and trembling.