Works of Providence Chapter 9a

OK, now I hear it. I wanted to start with something that Tasha actually just texted me before we even got here, which was that she sort of feels humbled upon listening to this chapter and realizing these guys didn't have search engines, they didn't really have the same level of reference material that we have, and yet they're able to glean and gather so many scriptures to support what they're talking about.

Just admonish yourself accordingly with that information, right? All right.

So in this chapter, if you went ahead and did the whole thing, you'll know it's split up into six sections.

We're doing the first three, which are part of a first group of four, actually, in this, which is that there are directions and then warnings.

So there's four directions given, meaning things that we should start doing, should be doing around God's providence and remembering it.

And then two warnings, just sort of, I guess, ditches, you could say, as to how you could do this wrongly and what it can potentially cause you to do wrongly.

So we're going to start with the first directions, and then next week we'll finish the last direction, and then we will go into the warnings.

So first direction he gives us is record as many of God's providences as you are able.

This is something we have read already throughout the book, but it's something that he tries to really give. We get a lot more detail here of what he means by that and ways that we can practically do it.

First off, from Psalm 77, 11 to 12, which I'll go ahead and bring up, do not just start to record now.

Instead, also look back in time. We've started a document, Tasha and I, to track these things when we realized, hey, we should probably work backwards.

A bit ago, and then I read this. I'm like, yes, we should definitely be working backwards. I will remember the deeds of the

Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds.

It's not that he only starts them once you start caring about them. He's done them your whole life. So the more you've lived, the more you have to look back.

It's good to do it sooner than later in case your memory really does start to fail you. On top of that, record his providence with detail.

Don't just make it a tiny little cliff note. Really consider there's a joke about programmers that we go back through our code and we don't understand what we wrote like a week ago.

This is true with really anything that we write down. We should be caring about our future selves reading this and other people without context reading it so they can give proper praise.

I mean, there's been a few situations in this book where he's told a story and I feel like the context is not enough for me to appreciate what really happened, but it was enough to at least be mentioned.

So we should be thinking about that, especially. How can we provide details so that we can properly know this?

And now I, interestingly enough, the detail he goes into about how to give details is quite impressive too.

While knowing, we're supposed to record these providences with detail while also expecting and knowing we can never plumb the depths, as he put it.

Again, in Psalm 77, but in verse 19, we have your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters, yet your footprints were unseen.

He uses this to explain that God's, his ways are deep. They are much mightier than us.

Whenever you see waters, especially in scripture, they're talking about something both chaotic and wonderful to them.

They don't understand what's there. We still don't understand what's in the great sea, right? And so we should really consider that with what

God has done in our lives. We don't know the full implications. We often learn about the implications over time as we think further upon how something has happened again.

Like my wife's grandfather entering the Air Force line instead of the

Army line early on in his life, ended up causing her to know about the school that we met at.

There's just even these things that don't seem related that God works to his greater glory and to the providence of his people over time.

And so recording these small things so you can recognize later what all was meant in them.

And eventually we will know in eternity everything that he meant for all acts that we ever took. Another point he makes is that the specific time that a providence is given to us may increase its value itself.

God gives us stuff in opportune times, in times that we don't necessarily expect them to come.

But upon looking closer at them, we really can recognize that that's exactly when we needed it.

On top of that, not even just right when we needed it, but rather he does leave us sometimes to greater turmoil and a thing that we're already suffering through so that his redemption of us is so much greater.

It's similar to even man being allowed to fall. Man is allowed to fall so that he can be, that God can get ever more glory from having redeemed his people.

So let's look at the passage he mentions here is Isaiah 41, 17 through 18. When the poor and needy seek water and there is none and their tongue is parched with thirst,

I, the Lord, will answer them. I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights and fountains in the midst of the valleys.

I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land, the springs of water. It's not that he made the slightly moist valley into a wet place, it's that he made a dry place where the people were parched already with thirst into a place that redeems them.

So he may leave you to an actual thirst for him and you may need to desire him more greatly before he really grants these things so that you can properly recognize him.

Another point, there are seemingly small providences which introduce great multitudes of blessing as time passes.

Again, very similar to the entering of one line over another may lead to the building of a family that wouldn't have otherwise existed.

The instruments of God may have been designed for evil by man. This is,

I'm pretty sure this is talking about Joseph here. We speak about Joseph, what his brothers intended for evil, the

Lord intended for good and for a great good. Because of what Joseph, how he was saved, in his circumstance, we have not just his own family surviving a horrible plague and horrible famine, but probably millions of people, or at least everyone who lived in a greater region of Africa at the time in the

Middle East would have been saved by the act that was done there. So him being pulled up out of the hole is itself something that affected great numbers of people.

And so that great evil they were trying to commit caused great good for a lot of people and gave us a type for Christ throughout the whole story.

Remember that all that happens does work together for the good of those who love God. This is a very important passage to keep on our minds, especially as we go through discussing how evil can be done for good.

And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.

So as we remember through a lot of what we've been reading, we should expect that God will fulfill the promises he's given to his people, no matter the circumstances that come about that make us think it's not going to.

Our family is finishing Revelation tonight when I get back. And something in these last few chapters we just went over the wedding to the church and Jesus actually taking his bride.

And we recognize that in this passage, you finally see a fulfillment of all things. We see the new

Jerusalem given to man, that he's given entrance into it. We're given a promise that never again will evil enter, never again will a lie be spoken in the presence of this new

Jerusalem. So we need to recognize really not only that these things will be fulfilled, but the great things that are going to be fulfilled by every single act that occurs here on the earth.

And backing up a bit to a specific application he has for recording these providences. We should remember specifically the providences that have come because of our prayers, especially as we're here tonight.

We should do a good job to actually not only ask for great things, but to remember when those great things have occurred.

We've had a child recently that we've been praying for this child for the whole time of his gestation.

Now that he's out, we've been constantly thanking the Lord for him and asking how we can, asking for strength and growth in order to raise him well.

But we've stopped mentioning him here. Whether or not that's a good thing to do, maybe not. We should be asking continually for all the children in this church, for all the things that he grants us.

If it makes it a two hour prayer night, maybe Conley can stop me there, but hey, maybe it would be a good thing if we continue to grow this as we recognize the things that he has fulfilled and granted us over the course of this meeting, right?

Now moving on to the second direction he gives us, we should be paying special attention to providences that are noted by Scripture itself.

Let's look at the Joshua passage, Joshua 23, 14. And now

I am about to go the way of all the earth and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed of all the good things that the

Lord your God promised concerning you. All have come to pass for you, not one of them has failed.

And so a lot of this section is about, you know, there are providences that are mentioned in Scripture and also ways in which providence is fulfilled in Scripture.

And those are the most important ways to really consider what he has done for us, right? So the first sub point being,

Scripture's truth is confirmed to us through the accuracy of its claims. He likes to point this out, that the accuracy of its claims should be something that lays upon our trust in it, right?

So there's always these things mentioned about the Scripture maybe being exceptionally accurate in its way of explaining how the world was formed.

If you're a young earth creationist, as you actually look at science a bit better, you can recognize that a lot of the falsehoods that we believe about the world don't really line up with logic and don't line up with what you have in Scripture.

We also have the prophecies that Scripture has around militaristic history, especially, is it

Cyrus? King Cyrus? You're talking about Persia? Persia, yeah, especially.

Yes, Cyrus. Right, Cyrus and the ransacking by the Babylonians, right?

And so these different events throughout Scripture, they are things that everyone, even external to the church, looks to and is like, oh, this is, it's fascinating that it even has it in there.

And so this is something we recognize God, in His providence, has set all things to occur, and this itself lends to the credibility that we have in Scripture, right?

Now, the Word is also vital to our growth and prospering. We can see this all throughout the Psalms, but he has a few here.

We'll just skip on by them, though, because there's some other things to consider within this.

We should be following God's precepts because they bless us with wisdom, and following His precepts will bless us with wisdom.

It's both things. There is a benefit to following the Lord, both in eternity and here and now, in understanding the world and understanding its ways.

Deuteronomy 4 is especially famous for this. So Deuteronomy 4, five through six. See, I have taught you statutes and rules as the

Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

This was spoken to the Israelites, but we can apply this to the church now today. There's a sense in which if we actually follow what the

Lord has commanded us to, not only are we following the greatest wisdom, but that is something that can and will be recognized to an extent by the rest of the world.

We should not expect that the world will be necessarily charitable to us for that wisdom in all that they do, but especially in American society, there's at least an inkling of Christian culture and understanding that what we are subscribing to and applying from the scripture has really built up our culture to be what it is foundationally.

And so we do see, in a way, people recognizing this, even when you see the cultural Christian, even though in a sense they're a mockery to God, they're also a recognition exactly of what this passage is saying, where the world will recognize the wisdom of the

Lord even if they reject him as their savior and reject him as the Lord of their life.

They're still going to, in a practical sense, subscribe to that and recognize his wisdom.

Departing from God's law will never profit you. It may profit you temporally, but it's not gonna profit you eternally, and that is what we are asked of.

We're asked to have minds like God and to actually think about reality, think about eternity as best we can in the light of what

God would understand it to be. And so we should recognize that putting ourselves against an eternal, greatly, infinitely powerful being is never going to profit us in the end, even if he sort of strings us along with some profit to make us, to make his glory all the more well understood.

First Samuel 12, 21, and do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty.

And also Proverbs 3, 5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.

God has cursed every way of sin. He's not going to bless these things if you think about blessing as actually getting more intimate with the rewards that he's promised to his people, actually getting closer to his eternal prosperity and blessing that he has promised to us.

Sin will only take us further and further away from that, even if we hit some kind of temporal blessing again.

And he lists a lot more scriptures that we could look at. Let's go ahead and look at one of them.

Let's look at Job 11. If you prepare your heart, you will stretch out your hands toward him.

If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away and let not injustice dwell in your tents.

Surely then you will lift up your face without blemish. You will be secure and will not fear.

Even again, if we may have some kind of fear circumstantially as we follow the

Lord, if we actually have our minds eternally targeted, we're going to recognize that there is no one else to fear.

And even the destruction of the body is completely really of no warrant to be afraid of.

There's only the one who can destroy both body and soul is the one we should be worried of. And that is not Satan, like I've heard some people misunderstand it to be, but it is

God himself, the one who owns and holds everything about us. Within the second direction, there's a bit more that he wants us.

Yes. Not on the conviction level, so there's an idea of like providentially, he will not believe us in our sin, which is nice.

Right. Again, my favorite part of the Confession 5 -5 where it talks about us being allowed to continue in sin so that we may be under his, really may understand his punishment a bit more.

We may be delivered from it. It reminds me of that for sure. Again, because we may be delivered from it, unlike those who will not.

Knowing the word should reduce our trust on creatures. I especially liked this one.

Micah 7 -5, I thought was one of the more compelling verses from this section. Put no trust in a neighbor, have no confidence in a friend.

Guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your arms. It's just interesting because when he says creature here, he really is speaking of every created thing.

There is not just those who can interact with us, whether it be an animal or a person, but it is all of creation.

There should be no reason to put trust in any of these things. We put trust in our. Now, there's a practical sense in which he does desire us to give honor and respect to hierarchies, like to those who are in authority over us and to our governments, but that is different than putting trust into these things.

He's speaking about trust in a very high level sense and a much higher order than I think we generally think about it.

He wants us, when we're putting trust in something, it is that thing in which we have all of our confidence in. Right here.

All of our confidence in how reality is shaped, how we are going to go forward in life and eternity.

What is that pointed towards? He wants us to, he's pointing out that God wants us to have it pointed only at himself, not at anything around us.

It's not about our retirements, what we can leave our children, what good things to build up. Those things are not going to give us any kind of value over time, and they're not going to save us.

They're not going to justify us in any way. That is only the Lord who can do so.

A quote from this passage I especially liked. It has to do with the Jonah Gord passage, which I think we went over last time.

If Jonah be overjoyed in his gourd, a worm is presently prepared to smite it.

I might have mistyped that. Hence it is that so many graves are opened for the burying of our idols out of our sight.

It could be money, it could be any comfort in relationships we have, even the homes that we own.

These things are not necessarily promised to us, especially if we make them an idol. God is completely willing, especially to his elect, to bury those things as deeply as possible so that we can recognize again, who is it that we must have our trust in?

Because he is not going to wane the same way, or is it wax?

One of the two. He's not going to be diminished the same way that these things are diminished when they go down. When they're diminished, our eyes only open further towards how important and grand he actually is.

Another point he makes, sin is the cause of our sorrow. If you think at a meta level, we only have sorrow because of sin to begin with.

Because of the sin of Adam, we have sorrow. It only continues further that our sorrow continues because of sin.

Whether our actual sin or ordinary sin coming from Adam, or original sin coming from Adam, these are the things that cause our sorrow.

And so there's no reason to put any of our trust into that. There's no reason to be acting as if it's lesser than what it really is.

Denying oneself will cause us to not lose anything in the end. Toby Mack is very thankful to tell us about this, from Mark, which is that we don't wanna lose our souls just to gain the world, which we have from Mark 10.

And lastly, let's read the 2 Corinthians passage associated with this, 2 Corinthians 6, 10.

When we die, we are given God's greatest providence. As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

As poor, yet making many rich. As having nothing, yet possessing everything.

It's a bit of a, it's asking us to parallel ourselves with Christ, in a sense, too, who lived a very lowly life, was born in low conditions, did not own and have much, yet was the greatest man, and yet was and is the king of all creation.

If we are to imitate Christ, we are to also imitate him in how he related to these things. He did not relate to his riches as anything of value.

He did not even have any to relate to. Does that mean that we are to throw everything away? No. If God blesses, we maintain, and if God blesses, we order and steward it well.

But we cannot put our value into it. We cannot put our value into the promise of be as Christ, as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

Now, very related to this, whatever difficulties we have, we know the Lord will not forsake us.

This is really hammered down a lot in this chapter. It's a good thing to hammer into yourself quite well, is that there is nothing the

Lord has promised you that he is not going to give. So, maintain that in your hearts and clutch on to that pearl.

ask yourself, honestly, when has God ever forsaken you and His promises? I'm just gonna let that one sit for you.

We may wrongfully claim that God will abandon His promises to us. I think

He maybe underplays how big of a sin we should consider this even. Maybe He just doesn't spend much time harping on it, but we should really consider how great of a sin it is to act like God has wronged us and to really do that mental exercise.

The Word of God is our only support to our souls when they're in affliction. Let's look at John 16, 44.

I must have horribly mistyped that because that doesn't exist. Yeah, I have no idea what that was.

It's a little hard. In our book that we look through, it is Roman numerals, so I'm surprised I haven't messed up more of these.

Let's look at Isaiah. Isaiah 27, 8. Measure by measure, by exile you contended with them.

He removed them with his fierce breath in the day of the east wind.

More sub points. We are best benefited when we give cheerfully to the Lord from what He has given.

The best way to not make enemies with the consciences of man is to obey God's Word. God's Word is the greatest aid to our inner peace and a tranquil mind.

Amen, basically. There's not much peace and comfort in the world itself.

There's only really peace and comfort found in the Lord, so we should really just sit and consider from what

He has done for us already. Even the things that are not clearly from Him, we have to recognize how those things come from Him.

Spend time really consulting and writing that down, especially as you track the providences He's given you.

On to the third direction. Always attribute God as the author and orderer of providences.

Proverbs 3, 6. In all your ways acknowledge

Him and He will make straight your paths. Again, I have a lot of friends who,

I used to be annoyed by it, which I hate that I even have to say that now. I used to be annoyed by how often they would say, praise

God, just in like normal conversations with normal things being mentioned, and now I recognize how much more they understood than me at the moment.

It's just even the small ways in which we speak and acknowledge Him, God will bless. He wants to be able to bless us, and we should be taking every action we can in order to make that, to give

Him glory on everything. So yes, that we take special notice of certain aspects

God has worked in our lives. We're gonna rapid -fire through a lot of these. The care of God for us.

How wise is God's timing and giving and taking back comforts from us.

The free grace of God and giving us mercies. The condescension of God in granting mercies.

Let's look at that one more specifically. Psalm 34 6, this poor man cried and the

Lord heard him and saved him out of all of his troubles. And if we consider the condescension of Christ, all of humanity is crying out in pain.

We're crying out in anguish within our sin. All of creation is crying out because of the sin of man, yet God hears us and saves us out of our troubles.

He condescends here in the Son, and He saves all man through that.

We should really consider how great of a thing it is. I think it's become commonplace for us to recognize that yes,

God came as Christ to save us. We don't really consider how difficult that should be to understand, and how difficult that should be to even accept.

I think as you study, if you can study world religions, try to do so just to recognize how unique this truth is, because it is completely unique.

You'll never see this anywhere else. This is simply the truth of the gospel. It's something that God has given explicitly to His people.

The design of God is to keep us from our sensual appetites and providing us mercies to do so.

He does that through marriage, He does that through communities, He does that through our close relationships to any of our friends.

All these things, and the act is hedges for us that keep us from sinning, that keep us from sinning more than we would otherwise.

The way and method God provides our mercies to you, all coming through the blood of Christ, is especially true if you think of the purpose of the church, both socially and divinely.

That we are given a family through the church, we are given participation in the body of Christ and His bride.

There's also even the social good that we get from that, whether it be the food that we eat, like the food we ate tonight, or whether it be just the gathering together here and actually being able to share what is going on in our lives so that we may give glory to God.

These even go back to the last point, to keep us from sensual appetites, to continue to remind us of His goodness, but also our mechanisms and means by which

God gives us mercies to begin with. How God has chosen you, in particular, to experience

His mercies. Let's definitely look at this passage, Hebrews 11, 37. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword, they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated.

This might be the wrong passage. Let's be honest.

Or maybe it's not and I'm misunderstanding. Oh yeah, 38 helps it a lot.

Of whom the world was not worthy, wandering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth.

There's even a sense in which the persecution that man goes through is something that we're really not worthy of, and that God has chosen us to experience

His mercies within the persecution that we go through, right? And all of God's mercies are meant to encourage and refresh our minds about His goodness.

They're really of no benefit if we don't consider His goodness and if we don't give glory to Him, then what was the purpose of the goodness to begin with?

So just enjoying them for what they are can itself turn the thing into an idol. You should take all of your mercies and all the good things that the

Lord has given you and attribute them specifically to Him, so that you can actually enjoy them properly and enjoy them to their fullest.

The last major point within the third direction, remember that God is the author and orderer of the afflictions you encounter as well.

This sort of goes back, I think, more to Hebrews 11 .37, right? We are in full submission to the

Lord. I like this quote from the book, "'He might have made you the most despicable creatures, worms or toads, or if men, the most vile, abject, and miserable.

And when you had run through all the miseries of this life, have damned you to eternity, made you miserable forever, and all this without any wrong to you.'"

I especially like the all this without any wrong to you as we do street evangelism and continuously hear how unfair

God would be if He's real, as they would put it. Yeah, Flable makes very clear again here that God is the owner of us to begin with.

He owns all of reality. Every which way that it goes is under His control.

I watched a recent debate between Jeremiah, I think it was

Jeremiah Nordier and Leighton Flowers talking about the sovereignty of God, and Leighton Flowers wanted to mention that it's not right.

He's like, isn't it wrong for God to deem some for destruction and not to deem others for destruction?

Why is it fair? Is it fair that God condemns any people?

And of course the Calvinist turns it around into it's actually unfair to God in a sense, and it is also only merciful that He saves anyone at all.

He was like, well what if God only saved Texans? Wouldn't it be wrong because it's like ethnic? He's like, no, it would still be merciful.

It would be merciful to Texans, but it would still just be mercy to begin with. So God is merciful to give any of us a chance and to give any of us salvation itself.

Remember God's goodness when you are afflicted. A quote here along with Lamentations 322, it is not so bad now as it might, and we deserved it should be, and it will be hereafter, and it is a mercy that we are not destroyed.

And lastly, consider God's wisdom in giving you affliction, such as the time and the degree of these afflictions.

Definitely recognize those for myself, where they've been something that was allowed to grow to a point where they could be a great moment for humility later on, and sort of a demonstration of fruits that He's grown up in me.

Remember God's faithfulness when you are afflicted, so when you can tell you're under some kind of affliction, you should be reminding yourself of the ways that God has been faithful to you in the past.

Another good reason to track these things as an encouragement for you to yourself when afflicted, and even as a way to hedge against the sin that you're tempted with while afflicted.

If you know He's been good, and something difficult arises, instead of just falling directly into sin, you should instead look to what has

God provided to me, and what would be the most honorable way to respond to the affliction. Remember how sufficient

God is for us when afflicted, and lastly, remember that God has not changed.

Let's look at James 1 17 to end it. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the

Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Amen. Anyone have any thoughts before we go into prayer?