But I really want to talk about the theology of it. The thing that I love to ascribe to God and to rely on is God’s sovereignty or His providence. Everywhere I go in the world, I go out relying that there are things beyond my control that God is governing, that He is opening and closing doors. That when we’re pursuing God’s will, really nothing can happen to us that is bad, that isn’t good for us in the providence or the sovereignty of God. We are all now struck by this example of the extraordinary moment in which Trump was almost killed, but by the grace of God, he wasn’t. So I want to make some observations to help you understand what we mean by the providence of God. The word refers to a kind of biblical worldview. The word providence is not in the Bible, but it summarizes the worldview of the Bible that God created the world with a purpose and that God having created the world is governing over the affairs of men towards a historic culmination or consummation point. We’re not just drifting but being driven in a linear point throughout all the generations according to a divine plan. God governs over the events and the affairs of men. That’s what providence refers to with a divine purpose in view.
The contrasting view would be that God creates a world and then doesn’t interfere with it.
We call this deism. Yes, he created the world, but now it’s all up to human choices as to what happens. Perhaps the opposite view of deism would be called pantheism, which believes that God created the world and that God is actually in everything, and therefore nothing apart from God actually really exists. We reject both of those. Some people twist and turn the idea of providence to mean that there’s sort of a determinism or a fate in the world. Determinism means that we’re actually in a kind of a mechanical world that God is governing and we have no free choices that we’re making, that we’re not morally responsible human beings. People don’t really believe in determinism because our whole reality shows that we’re always making choices. Sometimes we talk about fate or chance, but this means that things happen without a divine purpose or a plan behind them.
Providence refers to the fact that God is governing over the affairs of man according to His divine purposes or will. While human beings make choices, providence refers to the fact that God is working through the choices of human beings in their good choices and in their evil choices for His good choices. In Scripture there’s some examples of divine providence. Proverbs 21, verse 1: “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord.
He turns it wherever He wills.” This is the kind of verse a lot of people are going to skip over because it makes them uncomfortable, but this is where I love to stop and contemplate what’s going on here. The king’s heart means his desires. He has choices to make, he has preferences, longings and decisions to make. Yet it’s saying all of that comes through the hand of God’s providence in which the heart desires of the king must always serve God’s heart desires for all of human history. There’s another example in Proverbs 19:21: “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” Doesn’t this ring true with you? We’re always making plans. We always have a sense of our moral agency that we have to make decisions to do this or that, to watch me today or to move on, to have an apple or a banana. We’re always making choices, but it is the purposes of the Lord that stand. In other words, He’s always triumphant in pursuing His plan through the affairs of man. That’s providence. Ephesians 1:11 says that God is working all things according to the counsel of His will. This is the biblical understanding of providence.
How do I know or how will you know if you’re grasping the idea? I think that you are understanding the biblical idea of providence if you don’t put the idea of God’s sovereign power against the moral human responsible choices that we all make as human beings, but keep them together. In other words, providence says that God is ruling in concurrence with the human choices that we make. So we look back at the events of last Saturday, a five mile wind, a turn of the head, why the assassin shows at that precise moment to actually pull the trigger and all the other thousands of choices that went into preparing that moment in time. When we saw what happened, the fraction distance between feeling relief and going through a moral tragedy together as a nation, you think of Providence.
I go all over the world together and I rely on providence. What this does for me at a practical level is it gives me a great sense of peace and confidence when things are not working out well. Remember some biblical examples, such as Joseph who was hated by his brothers. They wanted to kill him but at the last minute they threw him into a pit. Then they decided to leverage his life to make some money, selling him into slavery. Many years later God’s providence worked through the life of Joseph to be the savior of his brothers and the nation of Israel. The brothers said they were afraid to meet with Joseph. And Joseph said to them: you sold me into slavery, but God sent me ahead to work this work of deliverance. So that’s providence in which you affirm the evil choices that human beings make, but you are trusting that God is working even through the choices, good and evil, for His good purposes.
Judas is another example, one who was guilty of betraying his trust in the Lord for 30 pieces of silver. He had a choice. Yet even betraying Jesus for 30 pieces of silver was a divine prophecy. He fulfilled something that was stated would happen many years before. And, of course, the crucifixion of Jesus is perhaps the ultimate example in which the evil, corrupt, wicked, hateful rebellion of mankind worked through Judas and the enemies of Christ, the Jewish leaders at that time. They crucified and killed the Lord Jesus. And when the apostle Peter was confronting some of these leaders, he talked about how they crucified and killed them, but he used these words: this same Jesus that you killed, that you crucified and killed, this same Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan or the providence of God.
There are some mysteries in our faith, but this is one of them that I really encourage you to lay hold of. For me, it just means that whether I’m going to Cuba, or someplace in Africa, or in Vietnam, or somewhere in Asia, bad things can happen. But if I am content that I am pursuing the will of God, then I have the faith to say that nothing bad could happen to me, that isn’t good for me. That’s providence. However you feel about the politics of the country, it’s one thing. We’re in one of those unifying moments as a country to reject this kind of violence. But larger than that, I would encourage you to lay hold of and give God glory for His sovereign power to work through events and to actually begin to praise Him for it and to rely on it in your own life. Nothing bad can happen to us who trust in Him that isn’t good for us. I’ll take my stand there.