Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counselor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto Him again? For of Him and through Him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. Amen. Let's pray. Glorious God of providence, wonder worker, life sustainer, we ask of Thee to be with us in this hour and fill our hearts with gratitude at this wonderful truth, this precious doctrine of divine providence. Help us to expound it in a way that brings Thee glory, informs our minds, warms our souls, and leads us into the mysteries of Thy counsel without probing beyond where we are called to go. And Lord, may we also marvel at thy particular providence in our own lives, such that we men may be sitting and standing here in this classroom this very day, as well as, when we look back, seeing thy bountiful, merciful, and amazing hand in our lives, tracing our way through every detail so that we might say, even this morning, by the grace of God, I am what I am. Lord, we lift up my colleague in the ministry and pray that thou wouldst graciously restore him to health and encourage him and lift him up emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically, encourage him and enable him to cling to his Savior, his Sender, his Lord and his God. Bless us now, we pray, and bless each man here. Fill our week with a sense of profound thanksgiving as we go up to thy courts to commemorate it on Thursday morning. But may every day, Lord, be a day of thanksgiving, yes, a day of thanks living, to thy honor and to thy glory, from whom and through whom and unto whom are all things forever. Amen. All right, today and next week, Tuesday. We don't have class on Thursday, of course, for Thanksgiving. Today and next week, Tuesday, we want to look at the doctrine of God's providence. And then our final class will be next week, Thursday, as we look at the angels and Satan in particular. When we speak about the doctrine of divine providence, we're actually bringing together our doctrine of the divine decree on the one hand, and our understanding of the implications of the doctrine of creation on the other hand. Romans 11.36, which I just read to you, in a sense, is a rubric that brings together all these doctrines, expounding to us that all things are from God, particularly focusing on creation. All things are through God, and all things are to God. providence and decree and of course there's overlap here as well but in this sense you see providence is really the outworking of God's decreed purposes for the world he has created the outworking of God's decreed purposes for the world he has created the southern theologian Dabney calls this the execution, quote, the execution in successive time of God's eternal, unsuccessive purpose. The execution in successive time of God's eternal, unsuccessive purpose. So providence is the way in which the divine decree which is universal, remember, in its comprehensiveness, engages with the divine creation. That creation to which God has committed himself by the very act of creation. So we might say, As closely as providence is related to creation and to decree and serves as a bridge between them in a way, still providence must be distinguished from both of them. Providence describes God's ongoing activity. with respect to the space slash time continuum. And in that sense, it should never be confused with decree, or for that matter, with creation. Now, some theologians in church history have spoken about God's sustaining of the universe as a continuous creation. In one sense, I guess we could say that when God sustains the universe by his providence, there is a continuing, a kind of creative continuing activity. But when scriptures speak about the providence of God, they speak of something more than an ongoing creative work. They speak about a sustaining work, a governing work, a maintenance work. Now, the doctrine of providence is extremely rich. And if you've never preached on it, some of you have, I know, others of you haven't. If you've never preached on it, you're in for a great treat. It's a wonderful thing to preach on the providence of God. Confessionally, the providence of God is also very rich. Questions 27 and 28, of the Heidelberg Catechism are classic questions of the Catechism, famous questions about providence. And the question that tells us what benefit do you get from providence? I get patience and adversity and firm trust in God for the unknown future and thankfulness and prosperity. That's a wonderful sermon to preach. But also Westminster Confession of Faith, maybe not quite as famous, but Chapter 5 is one of the best summaries ever put together. I'll just read you one paragraph of it, and just think of how the Puritans have have chosen word for word of this doctrine. Every word weighs a pound here. God, the great creator of all things, doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures' actions and things from the greatest even to the least by his wise and holy providence. According to his infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy. Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly, yet by the same providence he orders to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently. God in his ordinary providence maketh use of means. He is free to work without, above, and against them at his pleasure. Now, you sense right away, don't you? This is a remarkably full statement, packed into a few words, that really is the outworking of centuries of thinking and theology. The Puritans have done their homework. on the doctrine of Providence. Well, what I want to do in the two lectures I'm giving you on Providence today and next Tuesday, I want to just give you the basics with basic terminology. And the further ramifications that we won't cover in class, I'm assuming you'll pick up in your reading. And do make sure you do the readings here, because this is certainly too broad of a subject to cover in detail in class. So what I want to do now is look at some, so much for introduction, but I want to look at some models of providence. Some models of providence. The first model is what we might call general sovereign control. general sovereign control. In fact, we could put nearly every model of providence under two categories, general sovereign control and then specific sovereign control. What is a model of providence? Actually, a model of providence is some kind of explanatory attempt to correlate divine sovereign control and actual government of this world that coincides with the actions of God's creatures and particularly human beings. So a model of providence is some attempt to explain how divine sovereign control, governance of the world, correlates with the actions of God's creatures, particularly human beings. All models of providence in evangelical Christianity agree that God preserves the created universe in being. So if you're an evangelical, you believe in providence. That's not the question. Likewise, all evangelicals would agree that God establishes a system of moral governance for this world. There is a system of moral governance. Where they disagree is over how and how much God intervenes in our world to achieve his goals. And particularly, and this is where the rubber hits the road, what that intervention does to human freedom. And the response to that question is what divides into two camps, between general and specific sovereignty. General sovereignty, I'm painting with a broad brush first here. General sovereignty models of various kinds hold that in creating our world, God gives people free will. And the argument goes like this. If humans have freedom, a kind of libertarian free will, God cannot control their free actions. And therefore, to the degree that God gives us freedom, He doesn't control our earthly affairs. So the idea here is that not that God doesn't get his goals accomplished, but only that he sovereignly chooses to create a world in which he sets up general structures for an overall framework. And then he allows his creatures some significant input into how things will actually turn out. So in general sovereignty models, God does not have specific purposes, detailed purposes for everything that occurs. Now under this general sovereignty model, we might say that there are three significant viewpoints today, all of which belong to free will theism. First, you can see in your outline, you have the traditional Arminian view. Arminianism, of course, holds it. Man has free will. And Arminian systems answer the question, if we have free will, how can God exercise sovereign control over our world in different ways? But usually, Arminians are agreed that God has basic plans and goals he wants accomplished. And then he leaves the rest of what occurs up to his creatures. Many Armenians teach that God's power is limited. In fact, some say he has only a limited amount of power. Other Armenians say God is absolutely sovereign, just as a Calvinist would say. And yet they make room for free will, finding some way to say that God often forgoes exercising His power, so that God freely limits His own sovereignty, since the decision is To believe, for example, is not forced on him, forced on man, but it's our own free choice, and therefore God withholds his sovereignty in some way so that we can make that choice. Now there's a second general sovereign model. that we might call paradoxical indeterminism. And this model holds stronger than the typical Arminian, although these can be Arminians as well, but holds stronger