Sermon Details

Sermon Notes

Please note that these are only notes, not transcripts, and as such are not identical to the recorded sermons. They also contain frequent abbreviations.

Introduction

1. Last week we saw that the God who made heaven and earth, the Almighty is our Father for the sake of Jesus Christ.

   1. We noticed that God is Almighty which means that He has ALL the power.

      1. Everything else is creature and serves Him and serves His eternal purpose.

      2. There is no secondary power beside Him: even the devil and all wicked are under His sovereign, supreme power. He rules them absolutely.

      3. And we saw, too, that God’s Omnipotence is our comfort: we have a Father who is able to save us; and we have a Father who is willing to save us.

   2. We noticed that our Father is the greatest of all fathers, and that even the best earthly fathers are a dim reflection of our Heavenly Father.

      1. He is the Eternal Father: never did He begin to be Father; He always was Father.

      2. He is the Father who in mercy has adopted us (sinners) to be His children: He cares for us, He cherishes us, He protects us, He provides for us.

      3. Therefore we have nothing to fear. For if God can create the world He can save us for our help is in the name of Jehovah who made Heaven and earth.

2. The doctrine of Providence reminds us that not only was God powerful in the past when He created all things but that He remains all powerful. That He has never stopped exerting His power but that His power is “almighty & everywhere present.”

   1. It is our comfort that the One who rules the universe is God, our Father.

      1. We need to believe that when we see what a mess mankind has made of the world morally, socially and politically.

      2. And we need to believe that when we see what a mess our lives are: how sinful & weak we are, how we are often the victim of circumstances, impossible situations.

      3. If we did not believe that God our Father ruled we would be constantly afraid.

   2. Prov. is for the child of God a beautiful doctrine, a doctrine we love to study.

      1. The wicked are rightly terrified by this doctrine: for it means that everything works against them, to their destruction and they can never escape the absolute sovereignty of God.

      2. But we are comforted by this doctrine. Our Father rules. This is our Father’s world. He has not left it or us in it, but He rules in such a way that He works all things together for our good. Consider …

“OUR FATHER’S RULE FOR OUR GOOD” 

I. Our Father’s Rule

II. His Good Purpose

III. Our Trusting Response

1. OUR FATHER’S RULE

   1. As Xians we believe that God is the Creator of all things; and after He created them, He continues to rule them for His own glory and for our good. We call that rule Providence. About providence the Bible teaches two things.

      1. First, providence is God’s power to uphold all things.

         1. Nothing which God has created can continue to exist by itself.

            1. That is not b/c of a design flaw. If I made something which fell apart as soon as I left it, you would call it shoddy workmanship. But with God it is different.

            2. Creation, by its very nature, must be dependent on God for its continued existence; otherwise, creation would not be creation. It would be independent.

            3. If creation were independent of God then God would not be the only independent, self-sufficient, sovereign, transcendent God.

         2. Psalm 104 is the Psalm which teaches God’s providence in a beautiful way.

            1. Verses 27-28 teach that the animals depend on God for their food: You might object, but do not animals find their own food? Some forage, some scavenge, some hunt, some are hunted. True, but God gives them existence, strength, energy, instinct and everything else in His providence.

            2. Verse 29 teaches that God takes away the breath of His creatures and they die. God upholds everything He has made: the sun shines because God makes it shine; the grass grows because God makes it grow.

            3. We can look at these things and try to understand some of the processes at work in God’s providence, how God does certain things, but we cannot answer the question. Why?

      2. Second, providence is God’s power to govern all things.

         1. Government goes one step further than mere upholding.

            1. The things which God has made do not remain static, suspended in mid air. The whole universe is a moving, working system. How does it move, why does it move? God moves it!

            2. The earth revolves around the sun; the tides of the oceans move in a certain way; birds migrate in a certain direction; even a spider spins a web in a certain pattern. God directs the movements of all things both great and small.

            3. That is the clear teaching of the HC: “all creatures are so in His hand that without His will they cannot so much as move.”

         2. That government or movement of creation includes men, angels and devils, rational creatures. But God governs in such a way that man remains a moral agent and responsible for his own sin.

            1. That’s why the HC says that the providence of God is “the almighty and everywhere present power of God.” God’s providence works in the big things, & the little things. God’s providence determines where we are born, our movements throughout life & the exact moment & circumstances of our death.

            2. In fact says Jesus a sparrow does not fall to ground without your Father and even the very hairs of your head are numbered by God. God, then, governs every blade of grass, every raindrop, every cell of your body as well as the ebb and flow of human history.

            3. But does this not make man’s scientific efforts useless? Is not the answer to all questions: God did it? How do crystals form? God did it! How does blood flow around the body? God did it! Remember that the fact that God has made an ordered universe enables us to perform science, and God has given us minds to explore His creation, but we must explore to the glory of God.

   2. The HC does not teach providence abstractly but as part of its teaching on the Fatherhood of God. LD9-10 are together an exposition of the 1^st Art. of the AC.

      1. Who or what upholds and governs all things? The answer of the HC, following Scripture, is our Father.

         1. This, of course, is in stark contrast to unbelieving theories about the world. And this shows us how unbelief has no comfort for anyone.

            1. Unbelief actually admits this. Here is Richard Dawkins, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

            2. Unbelief says, “There is no God. The universe is the way it is because of blind, purposeless chance.” We are here because of a random movement of molecules over a period of billions of years.

            3. There is no reason why you should be here as opposed to someone else. There is no reason for anything, and if good things happen you are lucky, if bad things happen, just try to make the best of it. And then you die, and cease to exist. You were here for a moment and then you die; and what was the point?

         2. Other unbelievers teach a form of deism, open theism, chance or freewill.

            1. Deism is the idea that God made everything & left it to develop on its own. A true deist denies that God intervenes in history. Thus, miracles are impossible.

            2. Open theism says that God has left the history of the world “open,” so open that not even God Himself knows what will happen. He knows all the possibilities but has left it up to man’s freewill to shape history and the future.

            3. But all of these theories deny that God rules. God either was never on the throne or He abdicated and leaves us all to muddle through as best we can.

      2. The Bible teaches, not only that there is a Ruler on the Throne, not only that He is God, but that He is our Father, who loves us, cares for us & seeks our salvation in everything He does. We speak of “Father’s hand.” [“as it were by His hand; all things come by His fatherly hand; all creatures are in His hand”].

         1. That hand is Father’s hand, not the devil’s hand, not a blind man’s hand, but Father’s hand. What does a father’s hand mean to his children?

            1. Father’s hand is a providing hand: Father opens His hand give us good gifts.

            2. Father’s hand is a guiding hand: Father takes us by the hand to lead us in the way we should go. He does that through Providence (Read. Psalm 73:23-24).

            3. Father’s hand is a protecting hand: Father hides us in His hand and shields us from danger. We feel safe when we know we are in Father’s hand.

            4. Father’s hand is even a chastening hand, a hand which administers correction and discipline, but that hand, although heavy at times, never comes to crush us; it is always tempered with love.

         2. But God is not the Father of all: God’s fatherly hand is against the wicked especially the wicked who rise up as enemies of His church.

            1. God’s providence rules the wicked: He has His hand in their lives too; He governs all of the circumstances of their lives but not in His grace. Providence is common, grace is not.

            2. Nebuchadnezzar said of God’s hand, “Who can stay His hand and say unto Him what doest thou?” (Dan. 4:35).

            3. God stretches forth His hand to destroy the wicked: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hand of the living God” (Heb 10:31).

2. HIS GOOD PURPOSE (God’s purpose in all things is His own glory. But the comforting truth of Scripture is this: God is most glorified in the salvation of an elect church in Jesus Christ. If all things serve that goal, all things serve our salvation).

   1. That’s the beautiful truth that the Holy Spirit gives us in Romans 8.

      1. Rom. 8 is about the many glorious benefits of salvation which are ours b/c of Christ’s death & resurrection.

         1. These blessings of salvation more than outweigh all of the sufferings which we endure in this life. Verse 18 says that there is really no comparison.

            1. Verse 1, “there is no condemnation;” verse 11, we have the Spirit of God; verse 14, led by the Spirit of God; v. 15, we have the Spirit of adoption.

            2. And all of these present blessings are foretastes of greater blessings: glory, the liberty of the children of God, the redemption of the body.

            3. All of these things are ours, not b/c we earned them, but b/c God in His grace gave them to us after Christ purchased them for us by shedding His blood.

         2. But there is one possible objection that the HS puts to rest here. Is it not possible that certain forces in the world could deprive us of these things?

            1. Are we not sinners? Do our sins not continue to plague us? Do we not have a deadly enemy in Satan, the ungodly world, the hordes of the demons? Are we not persecuted? Are we not, writes Paul, “killed all the day-long and accounted as sheep for the slaughter?” (v. 36).

            2. Paul answers these fears. The answer is that “all things work together for good.” These forces are so far from endangering our salvation, separating us from God’s love, that they work together to serve our salvation.

            3. But this does not happen automatically, so that things just work that way. God causes all things to work for our good. He governs all things in His Providence for that purpose so that everything contributes to our final glory. So that the devil, despite himself must serve us.

      2. But notice that careful qualification in verse 28 (“to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose’).

         1. Some have misused this passage to apply it to all. That is the background of the popular saying, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”

            1. But God does not love all men or have a wonderful plan for all men’s lives. All things work together for good to the elect. A few verses later Paul writes, “whom He did predestinate, them He also called.”

            2. God’s calling of a person is grounded in His election of him, and that call brings a man to faith and causes him to love God.

            3. So, do you ask, “Do all things work together for MY good?” Answer this question: Do you believe in Jesus Christ for salvation? Do you love God? Are you sorry for your sins? Then, yes, all things do work together for your good. But to an unbeliever you can never say that.

         2. Take, for example, two men. One man was called Jacob, the other was Haman. One was a believer, the other an unbeliever. God directed both their lives by His providence but in only one did God work all things for his good.

            1. In Gen. 42:36, Jacob cries out, “All these things are against me!” His wife was dead; he lost two of his sons, and risked losing a third and a famine was in the land. But, God was working all things for Jacob’s good. He could not see it.

            2. In the book of Esther, Haman was wealthy and powerful; Haman thought he had everything; but God did not have a wonderful plan for Haman; all things in H.’s life worked against him:. Even insomnia of king worked against him.

            3. But all those things, the things in Jacob’s life, and the things in Haman’s life worked for our good, the good of all God’s people because all of them were used of God to bring Jesus to the cross to deliver us from sin.

   2. Rom. 8:28 and our HC both say that all things are in God’s providence and that all things come to us by His fatherly hand. Those things come in two categories: prosperity and adversity. But the emphasis of Rom. 8 is on adversity.

      1. We do not have much problem seeing how prosperity (the good things) work together for our good but it more tempting to think that bad things harm us.

         1. The HC and Romans 8 give a whole list of “bad things” (adversity).

            1. Drought, barren years, sickness and poverty (Q&A 27).

            2. Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword (v. 35).

            3. But the firm conclusion is: none of these things can separate us from the love of God, and if they cannot do that, they cannot harm us at all!

         2. Does that mean that the bad things are not “bad things?” No, of course not.

            1. Of themselves these things are bad: and when they happen to us they make us feel pain and misery. We weep and we tremble in fear and we cry out to God “WHY?” when these things happen to us.

            2. It is not good to watch a loved one die of cancer. It is not good to have a heart attack or to be involved in a car crash which leaves you unable to walk; it is not good to lose all your possessions in a fire; it is not good to lose a child. It is not good to be thrown in jail or to be tortured or to be put to death.

            3. Of themselves they are bitter experiences and when they happen to the wicked they are not good for them, but they work together for our good.

      2. But they can only work together for good if God is in control of them to bring them upon us, to direct them and to govern them.

         1. If anything in the universe is outside of God’s control, that thing, big or small could conceivably harm us and prevent our salvation separating us from God’s love in Christ Jesus.

            1. Take the stone that killed Goliath: if God had not directed that stone Goliath might have killed David, destroyed Israel & where would we be today?

            2. Take the plot to murder Paul: if God had not had Paul’s nephew overhear that plot, Paul might have been murdered and we would have no NT.

            3. There are so many situations in our life where something seemingly small made all the difference. Nothing in our salvation is left up to chance.

         2. But, we do not understand all these things. We receive the general principles by faith. “We know,” writes Paul, “that all things work together for good …”

            1. Does that mean that God always reveals to us what His plan is for our good in the details. As a grieving mother buries a child does God tell her how the death of that child serves her salvation?

            2. Does God show us how war, famine & pestilence work together for our good? Perhaps we can look back later and say, “It was good for me that I was afflicted.”But often we do not know. God’s purposes are deep and hidden.

            3. God makes everything without exception serve our salv.. That’s providence.

3. OUR TRUSTING RESPONSE (LD 10 enjoins upon us a threefold attitude to God’s providence. This is immensely practical doctrine [“What adv. is it to us to know …?]).

   1. First, we are patient in adversity, and thankful in prosperity.

      1. Patience means cheerfully to bear up under the hand of God without complaining or becoming bitter.

         1. We have the tendency as sinners to complain, to grumble or to doubt God’s goodness and wisdom when He sends adversity.

            1. We sometimes demand that God remove the affliction right now and we become angry with God when He does not; or we despair by thinking that God is against us.

            2. Or we muddle through and try to make the best of a bad lot but we really do not believe at that point that God can or will do anything to help us. So we look to ourselves. Or we worry ourselves sick with fear for the future.

            3. But those responses are sinful: God expects us to be content under His hand.

         2. Patience is more than enduring what comes upon us as if we bite our lip or tongue so that we do not let a complaint pass our lips. Patience means that we are thankful and that we praise God even in the midst of the affliction.

            1. We can only do that by grace; that is natural to none of us; and often God afflicts us so that we learn to be content. We must be practiced in this grace.

            2. We can only do that if we have the assurance that God is our Father and that He is working all things for our good.

      2. Thankfulness in prosperity is difficult as well. Prosperity is more dangerous for the Christian than adversity.

         1. When we are prosperous we become self-satisfied and proud, and we begin to think that we are the authors and maintainers of our good fortune.

            1. When God afflicts us, we often pray more; read more; repent more.

            2. But when God prospers us it is a real temptation to forget God.

         2. Providence reminds us that God is the author of our prosperity & adversity.

            1. Is your life one of many joys: do you have many blessings in your home? When you look back at your life, the directions it took, what do you see? You see the hand of your Father! He brought you here. It was not you.

            2. Is your life difficult with many trials and disappointments. Your Father brought you to this point in your life for your good. You must believe that.

            3. It was God who took you from your mother’s womb, who ordained your childhood, who brought you into a marriage or kept you single, who gave you children or withheld them, who made you healthy or sick, and it is God who brought you to this worship service this evening. All praise must go to Him.

   2. The response of the child of God is “firm trust in our faithful God and Father.”

      1. We do not know what is around the corner, but God has ordained it already.

      2. Our calling is not to know or even to seek to know but to trust.

      3. God’s hand will guide us, and God’s hand upon us is always good. Amen!