All right, let's turn to Proverbs 3 this morning. Proverbs 3, verses 5 through 12. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes. Fear the Lord, and depart from evil. it shall be held to thy navel and marrow to thy bones. Honor the Lord with thy substance and with the firstfruits of all thine increase. So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction. For whom the Lord loveth, he correcteth. even as a father, the son in whom he delighteth. Let's pray. Glorious and ever-faithful Jehovah, unchangeable, unchanging, ever true to Thy own, we bow before Thee this morning, thanking Thee so much for all that Thou hast given us in the days gone by. And as we begin this last week of lectures, we pray, Lord, that our heart and mind may be taken up with Thee and with the things of Thy salvation, and that the doctrine of providence that we hope to conclude today may be exquisitely precious to us, because it comes to us through the right hand of Thy benefits, merited by Thy dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Give to each student perseverance this week and next week with the exams, and let all things turn out well. Help them to complete their papers, and grant that all the assignments of this semester may be completed within the framework that they might be helped in these weeks. Let's give them clear minds and warm hearts, and that their affections may also be moved toward thee. to finish the marathon of another semester, looking into Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. We ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. We're looking at the Doctrine of Providence, and we have seen something of the definition and the mystery of providence and its sovereign control by God, we began to look at the miraculous within providence. We looked at the biblical conception of miracles and God's purposes of miracles. So now I want to say just a few words about the scientific problems of miracles and contemporary expectations. Scientists in our day are still coming out of a long period in which their thinking and their philosophy of science has been dominated by what we call positivist deism. This deism, in the sense that it regards this world as a self-contained system, into which God doesn't break in. And it is positivist in its conviction that the account of reality given by natural science is definitive. In other words, this is the ultimate account of reality. So the deistic positivist worldview, thinks that if there is a God who sets things going, well, that's all right, but he's really out of things now. Things are run by scientific principles now. So we ought not be surprised to find that scientists as a body, have been very skeptical about any creative intrusion by God into this world. So they've been laboring for a long time, and unfortunately many biblical scholars at their side, to find naturalistic explanations for everything that seems supernaturalistic. in the Bible. On the other hand, there are Christians today who believe strongly in miracles, and they, for a long time, have been inclined to maximize the supernaturalistic element in miracle as a way of exposing the skepticism of the scientists It's as if they say, well, you scientists don't believe in any divine creative intrusions into the world. And so to counteract that, we'll do everything to see miracle everywhere in our presentation of Christianity. That way we'll show how foolish you are. It's sort of like the old anecdote of the scientists that came to the the devout believer and said, do you really believe now that the fish swallowed Jonah? That he lived three days and three nights in its belly? And the woman said, I believe everything the Bible says, and if the Bible said that Jonah swallowed a fish, I'd believe that too. Well, it's not necessarily the best reaction to a scientist. We don't win them over by exaggerating. what they have underestimated. You never, remember that old Puritan principle, you never get balance by imbalancing imbalance with imbalance. When you imbalance imbalance with imbalance, you get imbalance. You imbalance imbalance with balance and gradually it will win the day. And by the way, that's a very important principle. in preaching, in congregational life, particularly for beginning ministers, because when you see a problem in the congregation, what are you going to want to do? You say, well, there's not enough emphasis here on blank, so I'll bring that emphasis all right, I'll bowl them over with it. And what happens is you tilt it the other way, and these people get upset with you. and you end up ruining your ministry, because you're not balanced, and they sense it. Politically, our president is, I think by all accounts and purposes, by the left and the right, many people are saying at least, he's taken this thing so far, spending money for example, that now there's a reaction. And people will always react when they have a sense deep in their consciousness that you're not just correcting them, but you're going to the other extreme. So the answer vis-a-vis science is not that Christians exaggerate the miraculous. It's that they present what the Bible has to say. So, this kind of imprudence is not helpful. Now let's look at this just a bit more carefully. Some miracles, some miracles definitely involve God's creative intrusions into his world. Other miracles are more what we could call miracles of timing. I suppose the world would say coincidence rather than miracles of creation. They are in a sense still, however, miraculous, at least in that sense of coming to God's people as remarkable arresting signs that God is present with them and at work But the event itself may not have anything miraculous in it. The miracle element then just lies in the timing. You say, wow, this happened at the right time. God had to do this. God was in charge. So we might say there are two kinds of miracles. The so-called hypothetical coincidence. is a special providence to us when it happens to us because they transpire in a particularly significant way. But other miracles are more than special providence. They undoubtedly involve some creative intrusion by God. These are things that consist in happenings and various states of affairs which can't be explained in terms of what went before them. Now to that category belong things like the virgin birth of Jesus, or the bodily resurrection of Jesus, or the raising of Lazarus, The feeding of the 5,000. These are all creative intrusions by God. Now, just a footnote on the former kind of miracle, the so-called special providences because of timing. When we are young believers, at the beginning of our spiritual pilgrimage. It seems to me, in my own life and in the lives of others I watch, that God often gives us more of these things than later on in our spiritual pilgrimage. And I've thought quite a bit about why that's so. As we gain more experience, these special providences seem to become more scarce. And some people tend to react to that and say, well, I must be backsliding or I must not be as close to God as I was or all that it were with me as in days past. But actually there may be a very simple answer to this. That may be the opposite of all these things. It may be that you are spiritually maturing and God is teaching you to walk by faith and not by sight. And that in the beginning, you needed to walk a bit more by sight because your faith was so weak, so God gave you special occurrences in your life, special timing on things, so you could see his hand more directly, so as to encourage you. Yes, he's a living God also for you and to draw you back to the scriptures and to love him more and love his word more. But now that you've grown in this way, God takes these things away. He doesn't want you to walk with the crutches of special providences anymore, but he wants you to walk freely in the green pastures of his word and throw away the crutches. Not saying that This never happens to you anymore, that God doesn't encourage you. But that's what it is now, when something happens in God's special time, it's kind of like an encouragement for you. It's not something that you say, oh yeah, now I have my assurance of faith back. You see, because a special thing happened. But in the beginning, when you were waffling and you were struggling, Every time God gave you something like that, well, your faith got a big leap, and then you were down, and then it was up, and then you were down, and now your life is hopefully more steady, more mature, and on the incline toward trusting in God, growing. But you see, if God kept giving you these special providences, and this is an important pastoral point to make on the pulpit with people too, You'd keep walking in dependency on these things and you'd stay like a baby crawling. You wouldn't walk with freedom. So, just a pastoral footnote there to keep in mind when it comes to these providences. It doesn't mean that the more miraculous that we see in our lives, the more mature we are, or the better off we are, or the more impressive our lives are. Yes. The miraculous makes for good stories, but what makes for good faith, often what makes for good faith is not seeing anything happen miraculously when we're in the midst of trial, but trusting in God in the midst of the burning fiery furnace. All right, that leads me then to contemporary expectations of miracles. What about people today who embrace high expectations of miracles, miracles of divine intervention? We haven't addressed the question yet whether these expectations are justified. I want to say a little bit about that now. The first thing we need to say in this discussion is that the question has to do not with God's power, but more with God's will. In other words, it's not that God is not able to do miracles like He did in the New Testament times. So we're not challenging God's ability here, but it's a question of, is it His will to do those things? And is it His will to do those things through a set of people today, perhaps ministers or something, or Pentecostal leaders, who are successors in some way of the apostles. When we address this question, we need to ask ourselves, do we need miracles for the same reason it was needed? by the apostles. They needed their message authenticated. The Bible wasn't fully written. They needed miracles to operate as their divine credentials. Do ministers need that today? Or is the completely written scriptures, is the Bible our divine credential? Well, you see a little bit what direction I'm going in. So first of all, we need to remember that no new special revelation is being given us today. There's no warrant in the New Testament to expect special revelation from any except Jesus and his apostles. in that first century circle of inspiration. And now that we have the whole Word of God, we've got all the more security that we have all the special revelation, and if we got more, it would actually be a distraction from the Bible, not an asset to the Bible. We argue against latter-day revelation, and this is a weaker argument, but it's still a real one, by looking at the specific supposed revelations that are offered as examples. Specific supposed revelations offered as examples today. You see, much of what purports to be prophetic revelation among Pentecostal and Charismatics, for example, is nothing more than repeating what's already been said in Scripture. And for other things that don't fall into this category, like predicting some future event, the book of Deuteronomy tells us very plainly that if the things predicted don't come to pass, the prediction does not come from God. Now, you don't have to be astute. I mean, any objective observer would conclude that the track record of predictions made today, supposedly by inspired men or ministers or church leaders, is dismal. Whether you turn to a high-powered evangelical or charismatic prophet of sorts, or a Jehovah's Witness, or whatever it might be. This poor track record reinforces that the New Testament itself doesn't warrant us to expect any revelations from outside that New Testament circle of inspiration. The canon is complete until Christ comes again. So we press home the question then, is there any reason to think, any reason to think that miracles will abound today when there is no new revelation to be authenticated? And when miracles are no longer needed to authenticate certain men as the messengers of God? We would argue there's nothing in scripture to warrant that expectation today. We look back at all these periods of biblical history and church history in which miracles were not part of the scene. They didn't happen. People lived by faith in truth that had been confirmed, confirmed in miracles that were given, but given within the context of the building up of the canon. But they didn't see miracles around them in most parts of Bible history or church history on a day-to-day basis. But that then raises the question, can we rule out a priori the possibility of creative intrusions? Can God is always a very different question than, does God normally? Can God still intervene creatively in situations, in feelings, or in any other way, if He really wants to? Well, when you put it that way, you're asking a different question. Then you're saying, do we reject miracles in every sense of the word? And we don't feel free to do that. In fact, we would say that though we ought not live in expectation of such things, it would be wrong a priori to say that these things cannot happen. Particularly, we're talking now about expecting God from showing his hand from time to time in what we were calling moments ago special providences or miracles of coincidence. If we would never be expecting miracles or coincidence or special providences, if we never expected God to heal our sick loved ones, if we never expected God to manifest himself in some way that would, through his timing and his providence, confirm what he's given us in Scripture and and show us his reality. If these things never happened, then the Pentecostals could raise the objection, your faith is not all that it ought to be. And they might have some valid point. As believers, we ought to expect indications that God will manifest from time to time that he is with us. After all, that is the biblical picture of the saints of the scriptures. There's nothing in scripture that says this has ceased. So we make a distinction here between God's providential miracles of special timing or doing wonders such as Healing someone who doctors have said there's not much chance should be healed. And we distinguish that from this creative intrusive action of God. When we believe in miracles in one sense and in another sense say the canon has been completed and we believe in their cessation in that sense, we really are not giving grounds to the Pentecostals to call us substandard Christians, as they sometimes do. Now that doesn't mean to say, even with the creative intrusions, that we're going to go down positionally and say that God can't do them. But we certainly are not to live by them. The purpose of miracles, when given, The authenticating purpose does indicate that we have no right to expect from God the same sort of plethora of miracles now, as was the case in the New Testament times. One area where Christianity might look a little bit more like the New Testament time of miracles is on the mission field. It's interesting that missionaries often talk more about amazing things happening than Christians in established churches. And I think there's a reason for that. I think that pioneer missionary situations among tribes are in situations very similar as to what the apostles were placed in when they went out into a Hellenistic world taking the good news of Jesus to people for whom this was absolutely new you see, in the case of the pioneer missionary the Bible is not in the language of the tribe yet so that tribe doesn't have the completed canon And therefore, that pioneer missionary is very much in the same situation that Paul was in when he was going to the Greeks or to the Romans. And if God chooses to authenticate his ministry, to give it credibility among the people by performing some wonders, calling attention to his own power and his own reality and presence, Well, we ought not be overwhelmingly surprised. But we're not in that kind of situation, are we? And even if we were, I think we need to be careful to base everything on that and to plead with God to perform miracles in order to authenticate the gospel. You've always got to be careful to ask God for various power encounters. We need something more solid, something more enduring, which we have in the scriptures. There are plenty of pioneer missionaries who have gone out into situations where there were no miracles, at least nothing of the nature of which we're talking about. All we're saying right now is that it's not impossible for God to do. So, what is necessary is not the power encounters, but that the Word of God takes root in men's hearts and that lives are changed. And if a pioneer missionary goes out and preaches the Word of God and this happens, this is the most authenticating of all. Even among the peers and the colleagues within the tribe of the individuals who are saved, when they see the changes in the lifestyle, in the commitment, coming from the heart of the converted tribesmen, their converted fellow tribesmen. That is authenticating, even to a higher degree. Now, there's tons and tons more, I know, on this whole issue of miracles, but I just thought I'd give you a bare-bones thumbnail sketch of a position on it that I think is reformed, and sometimes we reformed people can take too simplistic a view of the whole thing. It's not terribly simplistic. There are some nuances here, and I hope I've tried to convey them a bit by showing the two different kinds of miracles. All right, I open that for questions. Yes, Marty. I have two questions. Is it okay to pray for miracles? What do you think? I think so. All the time? In special situations. Even necessary urgencies. What do you guys think on that one? Get you all to get your thinking cap on here. How many of you think you can pray for miracles or you should? How many of you think you should not? How many of you don't know? Yes, okay, Scott and then Rob. But still there's power in His name, too. He does strengthen. But to ask for a miracle of creation or a miracle of providence is two different things. So you're saying you could pray for a miracle of providence, so you could pray that the Lord would bring you through it, but you shouldn't pray for a miracle of creation that suddenly you'd be like Philip and you'd appear on shore miraculously. Okay, okay. Well, you're making good use of the lecture. That's good. Rob? Okay, good point, good point. So how do you pray as a pastor on a Sunday morning when the doctor has said, There's no hope for Mrs. X, and it's your dear elder's wife there, and everybody loves her, and everybody would love to see her live. No hope, and probably another week or two she'll die. She's really coming to the Jordan. How do you pray at that point? Do you not pray for a miracle at all? I think you can still pray for a miracle, but from an eternal perspective. Okay. And pray for submission, right? If this does not occur. I just keep going back to the Lord's Prayer and how we need to pray for God's will to be done. I think that's the most important thing. We can pray for a miracle, that he would work in a miraculous manner, but we want his will to be done. That should be our heart attitude, whatever that will may be. Good point. Good point. What about if you're in a real pinch and you don't know which way to go, is it right to set out some kind of getting his fleece and say, Lord, if it goes this way, then I'll go that way. If it doesn't go this way, I'll go that way. Is that always wrong? I don't like the word always. Okay. Is there a difference between asking Lord, please make thy will known in this situation, so I know how to follow thee. I think we'd all agree that's okay, right? The difference between that and saying, setting conditions for God, Lord, if this happens, then I will know thy will. See, the danger there is not only the extra-biblical revelation. The danger there is you're trying to force God's hand, right? And that's a problem. And again, maybe in the beginning, when we weren't very solid in our Christian life, and we did this out of ignorance, maybe God suffered it. I know in the beginning it happened to me a few times. I laid out a couple of Gideon fleeces at the beginning and didn't know. I didn't know this was not the way to go. And God did answer a couple of times. I really believe that God answered. I believe that God suffered me in my ignorance and shored up and solidified my own faith through it in some way. But when I continued to persist in that method, thinking that was the method, then God began to take away those fleeces by not giving answers and began to wean me away from that until I saw this is not the way to know the will of God. And I bet there's other men in this room that had similar experiences. Yeah, Seth. Yeah, that's a very good question. There are, in certain books, a lot of this type of thing. It's a combination, I think. Obviously, I don't know. Only God knows all the details, but certainly some of it is hagiographical, some of it is over-the-top in some of these books, and the stories have been told and retold, and they get more and more miraculous as they go along. Secondly, you do have situations of extreme urgent need that God can give special encouragements or special providences of so-called coincidences or whatever. And then there are these things that you just simply can't explain. Well, how do you explain someone getting an urge to go on his horse and let the horse go in whatever direction it wants to go and the horse stops at a home and the guy has a pack of meat in his saddle because he feels this urge and he has to give it to some poor person who's dying in the midst of the storm and the horse stops at the front of the house and he gets out and knocks on the door The family is starving to death, or whatever. I don't know. I'm just making up a story right now. But there are a number of these things that have actually happened in history. Well, we just can't poo-poo all those things. And we can't de-supernaturalize them all. But at the same time, this isn't the normal way to live for a Christian, 21st century North America. This isn't the norm. And it can be a providence of so-called coincidence that God puts an urging in someone to do something. We can't deny that that never happens. So I agree with the brother over here that the word always is a very strong word in this situation. At the same time, when you don't maintain that this is the norm, that God doesn't do these things, that helps protect you from idolizing these things, certainly. But at the same time, we leave ourselves vulnerable to the charge that we're allowing extra-supernatural revelation. And that's why I think we need this kind of distinction in the miracles, to keep away that charge. Anyway, I hope you have some things to think about. These are not easy questions. Be careful how you bring these questions on the pulpit. I once preached a sermon on Romans 8.13, I think it is, or 14. As many as have the Spirit of God are led by the Spirit of God. I talked about different ways the Spirit leads us through the Word and also sometimes through impulses within us, and that even though that was rare, that he could do that. Well, I got some feedback on that sermon. Some people loved it and some people hated it. But I think we need to distinguish here between the norm, the normal way to live, and what God can do in extraordinary situations. I do think that there can be times where God simply does not let a person do a certain thing on no particular textual basis, but he just can't go forward with something. Something in his conscience holds him back and that later providence proves that this is God's special intervention. I was talking with a lady in the airport just a few weeks ago. She had nine, or maybe a few months ago now, she had nine workers under her, and then she... God was dealing with her soul, she was trying to push him away, and one day the nine workers and she herself had to fly to another village, and she had to give a presentation, and the nine workers were going to learn from her, and then they had to do their work with the people that came, and so on. The next morning she got up, she was just completely, thoroughly sick, vomiting, just could not go forward, couldn't get on the plane. Well, all nine people died that day in the plane crash. Now, how could you not feel such a woman? This was God's special providence intervening, keeping your life. That spoke volumes to this lady. All right. Yes, Marty. Yeah. Well, if you trust God, you see, even in a small measure, you believe that God can do great things. So I believe that God can convert all my children. I believe that God can convert all the church. I believe that God can do wonderful, wonderful things. I believe that God can heal my diseases, sure. But that's still different from, that doesn't give us a license per se to say, to set out Gideon Fleeces and ask for some kind of super special revelation. But yes, that's an important thing to maintain because we do want to maintain the supernatural in our religion. And we do want to maintain that God does great things and exploits. And so we do ask him great things. He's a great king, so we bring great things. So anything we believe, in terms of cessation of miracles, ought not impact our belief that God does great things. Somehow those two can be held in tension. All right, let's move on to Providence, disciplinary purposes, section E, disciplinary purposes. Here, a lot can be said as well, and I'm not going to be exhaustive, but I want to pick three disciplinary purposes presented in scripture. Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 5, section 5, says a great deal about this point. I commend it to you. It's a wonderful, wonderful paragraph speaking about why God orders providential things the way he does. Some of the reasons that he does so are actually more important than the things that happen themselves. And that's something we've got to bear in mind. Like you were saying, the will of God, that the will of God be done in effecting these things. I've listed them for you, to perfect believers, to protect the church, and to parade the heinousness of sin. It's actually more important than getting answers and solutions for the problem itself. So this is something we need to remember. We can't understand why in the world is God doing this? I don't understand. Please, Lord, take this away. And God's saying, I don't want to take it away, Paul. I want you to keep that thorn in the flesh because I want to perfect you as a believer. I want to mature you as a believer. So God's reasons behind his providences and his disciplinary purposes in his providences are far more important than we often give him credit for. See, we're always looking for relief and God is always looking for maturity. Yesterday I had a conversation with someone who was disappointed about some of my advice, but I said to that person, Really, it's God who's been disappointing you in His providence in these situations because they haven't prospered. And God is maturing you and teaching you things about life. Things aren't always going to go your way. You're a young man yet and you've got a lot to learn. But this is one thing God's teaching you. You need Him. You need Him far more than you realize. And so, maybe this is one reason why This isn't working, and that isn't working, and the other problem is coming. To throw you in dependency on God. You see, we want to use providence to have everything go our way, but really deep, deep, deep down, our human nature wants all that so that we can be God. And God says, no, no, no. I'm going to work my providence in such a way that I discipline you, number one, to perfect you or to mature you in godliness. Westminster Confession, Chapter 5, puts it this way, The most wise, righteous, and gracious God does often time leave for a season his own children to manifold trials and the corruptions of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins, or discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts, that they may be humbled, and to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for sundry other, that is, many other just and holy ends." Well, if you take all these just and holy ends mentioned here, really what they're saying is God in his providence disciplines and chastens us for our profit for a spiritual profit so that we might be partakers of his holiness that's what it's saying and so here's the point and this is a very important pastoral point for your congregation as well we are always looking congregation will always be looking for solutions to cross providences that is to difficult providences, that fancies their liking. Easy way out, smooth way out, comfortable solutions, health and strength and help. And God says, I'm not looking so much for external solutions, I'm looking for internal maturity. And whatever it takes, I'll make you more like me. I'll make you more godly. And then sometimes the sickness doesn't get taken away. And the problems don't get removed. Because he chastens us like a father. Secondly, to protect the church. To protect the church. God orders a providential course of things to protect the church from destruction. Here I'm thinking of the assurance he gives to Simon Peter, Matthew 16. Our Peter, and upon this rock I'll build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. God's saying, the church is going to last. It will be preserved. It will triumph in its conflicts in this world. And I and my providence will ensure that this church doesn't perish. Those providences often take surprising twists and turns. As God matures individual believers to be leaders of the Church, you see, all those providences can seem to be so contrary, but actually God's whole purpose is to make mature men and women, to be stalwart sons and daughters of the Church of Jesus Christ. Like A.W. Tozer said, God will not use a man greatly until he's broken him deeply. That's not always perhaps 100% the case, but that's a general principle. And so, God's providence in your life or God's providence in my life, I'm a real living testimony of that. I mean, God broke me very deeply. in the very areas where he broke me deep was probably the areas where he uses me the most today. People coming to me for advice in those very areas because they know I've been broken in those areas. And that's all to protect the church, to keep the church and to give the church wisdom and guidance. So, when God comes in your life and takes you into his gymnasium and buffets you, don't run away from the gymnasium. and don't wallow in unbelief, but say, my father has dealings with me again. He must want to perfect me. He must want to protect the church. He must want to work in me in such a way that this can benefit the church. Everything he does within me is to benefit the church, especially as a minister. That's why the old Puritans used to say, I know it sounds kind of scary, but they used to say that ministers will probably have more trials than other people in life because they have to be able to understand all the various conditions of the flock to identify with them. Third, to parade the heinousness of sin. God wants to paint sin in all its ugliness and guilt. And one of the principles that you see working its way through scripture is that God wants people to see the very nature of things. He lets the badness of evil come out in His providence. So people see what an ugly guilt it is. So when the Bible speaks of people filling up the measure of their iniquity, it speaks of people that God gives up. Remember Romans 1. to do the things that were in their hearts so that they can produce on the stage of human society a demonstration of what it is like to live out a refusal to keep God in your knowledge, to suppress the knowledge of God. God wants the whole of the world to see that that self-seeking results in all sorts of ungodliness and failure. an inability to love God and to love men and becomes ugly so that people have no doubt through God's providence that the path of disobedience is a path that has a bitter end. Now that doesn't mean that God always destroys people who give themselves up to that life. Sometimes he does. We talked about that last Sunday. God killed the first son of Judah, Ur, and then killed the second son, Onan, just murdered them, as it were, because they were living wicked lives. But that's not always the case. Sometimes God just lets them live on, and lets the ugliness of their sin be displayed. to everyone. It wasn't, oh, maybe last week, I think. Yeah, last week. I was talking to my wife, and we were reading the newspaper, and I was just mentioning to her, you know, what amazing patience God has to let the world go on with so much sin. And I said, sometimes it's just amazing, isn't it? You read, and you talk with people, and you talk with Christians, you talk with non-Christians, and the attitude is so different. so different towards things that happen in life. I mean, the Christian is obviously so much happier, so much more content, so much more reconciled with God's will, and the unbeliever is just so unhappy, so miserable. Why can't people see that? Well, sometimes people do see that. Sometimes it does impact them. And sometimes God uses it for their conversion. For other people, God just allows them to continue on in their blindness, but this is still a purpose of His providence, that it might be visible for all the world to see the heinousness of sin. All right, what about the question of prayer in providence? Prayer in providence. People often scratch their head over this question when they say something like this. If God is foreordained, what He'll do in every point, every respect, what's the use of praying? That gets compounded through simple questions, simple situations. Say your daughter is going to have an outdoor wedding next week, and you'll be praying for good weather, of course. On the other hand, your farming friend may look at his dry soil, and being a Christian, he's praying for rain a mile away the very same week. And you look at this situation and you say, what a strange situation. What an absurd situation this is. How can God answer both sets of prayers? I mean, is God going to come down and drop rain on the farmer's field and a mile away give you sunshine for your daughter's wedding? Well, the answer to this, all these sorts of things, and this is one example, is that God has planned that we should pray within the parameters of Scripture. within the parameters of Scripture, for the things which he has shown us is his will to give us, so that then he may give them, not just as surprising and delightful gestures of his generosity, but specifically as answers to our prayers. You see, God is concerned about enriching and deepening our relationship to Him. A relationship that is not only a matter of faith and hope, but also of love. And there's nothing that so increases love as well as joy as to be given a present by someone who loves you. When you receive that gift, The person tells you, I love you, as he gives you the gift, or she gives you the gift. It gives you joy. Your heart is drawn out to that person who's so generous to you. I mean, this is one of the joys of giving presents to your children. You tell them that you love them, and you give them a present, and that, well, they're just so grateful, and they hug you, and it's just wonderful. Giving something. to someone that needs something, and in this case has actually asked for something, can be very rewarding. And so when we come to God and ask for something, and God gives it to us, we feel a gratitude swell up in our hearts. And we recognize deep down as all good reformed theology teaches, that God not only is answering our prayer, but actually God is giving us the grace to pray the prayer in the first place. So the prayer is actually part of the means of his decree to bring about his end. But that doesn't mean that prayer is not important. It's part of the important process of the fulfillment of God's answering providence. You know, I've used this example quite a bit from the pulpit. People always smile when I do. I know when they do smile, I know that they recognize exactly what it's like, at least those people that have children. You know, your wife comes to you. I don't have this so much anymore because my kids are older, but in the early years, Mary would come to me and say, you know, it's your birthday next week and the children want to get you a present. So I slip her some money. She slips the money to the kids. The kids go out, get me a present. Actually, my wife probably helps them do that too. Then they come back, they wrap it, and they give it to me. That's all part of the process. And it multiplies love on all sides. They feel love in giving it to me. I feel love in receiving it. I don't break it down and say, you know, this is really my money to begin with anyway, you guys. You know, I'm not really appreciative of this because this is my money. I would be dreadful. And you know God doesn't do that to us either, does he? We come with prayers. He's not saying, oh, I gave you that prayer anyway. No, he gives us the prayer and he delights because we're his children. He delights to hear us pray the very prayer he moves us to pray. And we give back to him the praise and the honor and the glory and he just delights in it. Because he delights in relationship, in love. So prayer is a means to build relationship. It's one half, one way of the communication street. You know, my dad used to always say to us as boys, can't have a relationship without two-way communication. I must have heard it a hundred times. Can't have a relationship without two-way communication. When you talk to people, you've got to talk back. Not talk back, but you've got to talk in return to them. You've got to have two ways. So God comes and speaks to us through his word. We speak back to him through prayer. And so in his providence, he allows prayer a major role in fulfilling his own decree. Yes, of course, technically, theologically, coldly, robot-likely, prayer doesn't change God. Nothing changes God. He's unchangeable. But prayer is part of the means God uses to bring about what He's determined to bring about. So prayer and providence are just like that. They're interwoven. They're enwrapped. And any number of scriptures will confirm that for you. Jesus said, ask and you shall receive. James said, you don't have because you don't ask. So what has God planned? Not that He's going to give just this gift or that gift, but first He's planned that He'll stir His people up to ask for it, so that when it comes, they may know it's coming in answer to their prayer. And that will deepen their relationship with Him. And that's all part of the plan. So there's a lot here that affirms prayer in scripture. I know one thing that really touches me all the time when I read this, and Jonathan Edwards is so good at bringing this out, is that when revival comes, God almost always precedes it by allowing an effusion of prayer on the part of his people. That's God preparing his people for revival. They feel the need for revival, they pray for it, then he answers. So there are all kinds of things we may pray for and we should pray for, because this is God's way of answering for the welfare of the church, for the welfare of our families, for the welfare of our own souls. We have to pray for rulers, those in authority, all as part of providence's way of guiding us. So there are very broad encouragements in scripture to pray for anything which you can tell God will somehow serve for His glory, somehow serve that His will may be done. If you can see that something is going to work for God's glory, that's always right to pray for it, because you say anything that hallows His name. anything that brings glory to Him. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. Be it daily bread. Be it daily needs. Be it daily pardon. Whatever it is, we may pray for those things. So yes, we are not to make our prayers kind of like a grocery list in which we just kind of ask God for all kinds of little trivial things. I want God for this. I want God for that. Use God to get the things we want. But the point of prayer in relationship to providence is that we use prayer to build relationship with God and aim for God's glory. So as was pointed out already by one of you, the best way we can do that is by saying in every situation, hallowed be thy name in this situation. Thy will be done in this situation. And so even as you pray for that person from the pulpit, for a miraculous healing, you say, but Lord, thy will be done, thy name be hallowed, thy glory be brought. And give grace to submit to whatever thy will will be in the situation. All right, any questions on that? Well, let's look then briefly at the moral character of providence, part G on the outline, and the suffering of the righteous. The moral character of providence and the suffering of the righteous. God's providence must be more, for it manifests His holy will. The manifestation of God's holy will and providence is not always readily readable from his providence, however. That's part of the mystery. There are many things that take place in God's providential governing of this world that leave us wondering. They seem to be riddles. They seem to create tension in our understanding of providence. If God really loves us, why is this happening? When we look at circumstances of providence, many, many times we won't understand if we don't look beyond the circumstances. You remember how William Cooper writes about the providence of God, probably drawing on Psalm 77, verse 19. He said, God plants his footsteps in the sea. It's interesting how cheerfully we sing that. Isn't it a great thing? God plants his footsteps in the sea. But Cooper is really saying to us, that's just a problem for us. When you go looking for footsteps in the sea, you can't see them. Feet have been there as it were. You've seen Jesus walking on the water, but you don't know where his footsteps are planted. The very language you see indicates the perplexity of providence. We're not able to detect where God is going with this. So we need to work on this from the inside out, not from the outside in. Now, this question, theologically, becomes this very classic riddle. Why do the covenant people of God, why do the righteous suffer? Now, that's not quite the same question as why is it that bad things happen to good people. because radically the Bible tells us there are no good people. But why do the righteous suffer? That's the quintessential providential problem. And it's answered in a number of ways in Scripture. Let me give you four of them briefly. First of all, there's this whole principle of chastening for our prophet. The righteous suffer because they're chastened for their profit. That's the theology of Hebrews 12, 5 through 14, the best chapter, theological chapter in the Bible on affliction. It's also the point of Proverbs 3, 5 through 12 that I read for you this morning. And it gets repeated in Psalm 119, 67 and 71. And all these places were, and many more, were told that chastening is a functional, character-building part of God's program. Now, it's hard for us to look at this problem. If I came home today and found out, my wife was in tears and she tells me, A doctor told me today I have cancer. I mean, I would be devastated. My first thought probably would not be, sadly, but it would not be, well, God wants to make me more mature now. And he's chasing me. Hopefully that thought will enter the picture quite soon. But you see, we don't naturally, as children of God even, transition to that thought as quickly and as readily as we should. That takes active faith. But this is precisely one of the reasons why God allows all these chastenings and problems in our lives to cultivate that active faith. So we learn to walk by faith and learn to see that we need the very chastening He gives us to be mature children, to be partakers of His righteousness and His holiness. Secondly, there is suffering in the experience of the righteous through which God means to vindicate himself. That too is a function. God vindicates himself. That's really what the book of Job is all about. It's not just teaching Job how to suffer. It's that too. But actually, God is vindicating himself. over and against Satan. A former minister of my congregation, Reverend Lemay, used to say, it was a rather crude expression, but I think you'll understand it, God likes to show off with his people. Interesting statement. In other words, God took Job and said, look at how Job handles suffering. A natural man can't do that, Satan. So God is displaying his own work through his servant Job. Number three. Suffering of the righteous functions to teach us to think eschatologically. Eschatologically. This was what Asaph learned in Psalm 73. You know what Asaph's problem was? Do you remember that? The righteous are suffering and the ungodly seem to have no trouble. This grieved him and he was murmuring and complaining. Verily I have cleansed my hands in vain. Is it in vain to serve God? And he goes on and on for 14 verses. It's really a rather depressing chapter to read. And then, I think it's verse 15 or is it verse 16, where he says, until I went into the sanctuary of God, then saw I their end. He saw hell. He saw their future. Yes. A lot of ungodly people don't have a lot of afflictions that a lot of godly people have. But remember, Son remember, thou hast received thy good things in thy lifetime, and thou hast received evil things, but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. Luke 16, 19-31. So you see, the point is this, that when we suffer as righteous, when we suffer persecution for Christ's sake. This is all to make us say more eagerly, eschatologically, come Lord Jesus, I'm weary of this sinful world, this affliction strewn world. I long to be with Thee where all good will be walled in and all evil will be walled out and affliction will be done away and there will be no more tears and I will enjoy Thy fellowship forever. Finally, fourthly, there is suffering in the life of the righteous because of our union with Christ. Our union with Christ. This is Paul's language, that we are filling up that which was behind in our experiential quaintness of communion with Christ with respect to his sufferings. Not because our sufferings atone for sin, but God's blueprint, you might almost say the imprint of the Gospel in our lives, is that we will suffer like our Master suffered. We, to a lesser degree, but ought the Master to have entered into glory and we, through suffering, and we not suffer as well? This is the pattern of the Christian life. We enter into life through death. We wear the crown through the cross. The meek inherit the earth. The mourners are comforted. The poor in spirit receive the kingdom. Calvin says it so beautifully. From the beginning, God has so constituted the church that death is the way to life. and the cross the way to victory. Well, let's then have some concluding comments and maybe we have a few minutes for questions and then Thursday we will look at the doctrine of the angels and the devils. In terms of conclusions, let me give you some practical benefits, and I've outlined them here in terms of the Heidelberg Catechism language. Patience and adversity, thankfulness and prosperity, and a firm trust for the future. I believe it's one of the best and most famous answers of the Catechism. First of all, then, patience and adversity. This patience referred to is the patience of resignation. Joyful resignation to the will of God, trusting in His Word, in His Spirit, in His Fatherhood. Many are the afflictions of the righteous. Many are the afflictions of the righteous. Psalm 34, 19. But Jesus says, though in the world you have tribulation, be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. So He will give us, through His promises, what we need to rest in His will and to resign ourselves, to submit ourselves to the will of God. Now what does that involve? Well, I like to say it this way. I think it involves four things. First of all, When you submit to God, you acknowledge. The very first thing is you acknowledge the Lord. You say when affliction comes, it is the Lord. It is the Lord. If you don't say that, then God can't relate to you in this affliction. And you can't relate to Him. There's a disconnect. It's like Larry King said, The day after 9-11, he got four ministers together, or three ministers and a rabbi, and said, where was God in all of this? And three of them said God was nowhere. John MacArthur said, God has everything to do with this. You have to begin with this. If God isn't in your afflictions, He's an impotent God. So that's the first step. You acknowledge it's the Lord. Secondly, you justify the Lord. You say it is right. You say, God never gives me what I deserve, no matter how bad it is. If I went home today, I use the example, my wife had cancer, I'd have to justify the Lord and say, I'm a sinner, I deserve even worse. I deserve that she would, I'd find her dead. I deserve that I would die. So like that woman said to me on the elevator, my mama always taught me anything above ground is the mercy of the Lord. See, that's the point. If you learn that, if you learn the heinousness of your own sin, that you deserve nothing but death and hell, well, the end result is that you justify God. You say not only is it the Lord, but you say it is right. So first you say it is the Lord, then you say it is right. The third step is you approve of God. That goes deeper yet, isn't it? You say it is well. Job could say that, when his children, at least at the beginning, when his children were taken away, all ten of them. You know, you'd think he'd say, Lord, couldn't I at least have one? He says, blessed be the name of the Lord. The Lord's given. The Lord's taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. It is well. Well, Job, with all 10 of your children dead, that's amazing grace. It is amazing grace. But that's what, when God applies his providence, these are the steps of submission that he can work in our lives. And these are beautiful things, actually. And the fourth. is to cling to the Lord. There we say, though he comes out against me as my greatest enemy, so it seems, I will cling to him as my greatest friend. I mentioned recently in a sermon these steps of submission and I mentioned on this step four of being in a park in London where there was a lady who had an instrument. She had a ball on the end of this instrument. She'd take this thing and she'd release it with her thumb and she'd wing this ball at her dog. I don't know how she did it, but every time she hit this dog, BAM! That ball would hit him so hard, I thought the dog would get angry. No, the dog just picked up the ball and brought it right back to her. And she'd go through it again. God would bring it right back to her. I couldn't help but think, wow. This is an illustration of step four of my view of submission. You know, we cling to God. When He strikes us with something, we don't run away from it. We don't kick up our heels. We don't rebel. But when providence teaches us patience in adversity, we bring it back to Him. Say, Lord, Thy will be done. It's beautiful. And then the fifth and final step is to honor the Lord. Honor the Lord. I think this is where you reach that stage of Jonathan Edwards where he said, greatest moments of my life have not even been those that involved my own salvation, but those in which I've been risen above it just to be carried into the presence of the honor and the glory of God and He's been everything to me. so that, as Edward said, even if I were to see my loved ones go to hell, just to be with God forever and see Him honored and glorified, both in His justice and in His grace, I would be perfectly reconciled to everything, because God's honor is at stake. That's a very deep step of submission. But you see, If Providence didn't cross our path, if Providence always gave us everything we wanted, we wouldn't end up learning these things, would we? Well, maybe number one, but not number two, three, four, and five. And the problem with that is we'd be spoiled brats. We'd be like little children, always asking for candy and always getting what we wanted. So it's through providential afflictions that God teaches us patience in adversity. And then secondly, he teaches us thankfulness and prosperity. Thankfulness and prosperity. And I know that deep down all of us think this is a much easier thing to do than to be patient in adversity. But actually, true thankfulness is also an act of faith. A broken heart and a contrite spirit, O God, thou wilt not despise." True thankfulness always grows in the soil. It's a plant that grows in the soil of unworthiness. In a sense, it's connected with true patience and adversity. Think about it this way. If I were to give Metelius $100 right now, And he were to say to me, well, I earned it because I worked for you for 20 hours. In fact, you're only paying me $5 an hour. And he were even to grumble. He would not be thankful. If I gave him $100 and he were to say to me, You know, I didn't really do anything to earn this. I'm really thankful. I'm unworthy to receive this gift. He'd be more thankful. So many times people, even church people say, you know, you should stop talking about sin or you should stop talking about unworthiness. And they don't realize that only when you become unworthy, only then can you be truly thankful. If I thought I was such a great husband, and my wife was deeply honored to have such a wonderful husband, I would be very thankful for my wife. But when I realize how sinful I am, also as a husband, and then I see my wife and how good she is to me, I'm just so thankful for that woman. So it's true in every area of relationship, but it's particularly true in my relationship to God. The more unworthy I feel, the more potential I have for Thanksgiving. Now, a problem is when people only feel their unworthiness and then can't believe that God loves them in any way, shape, or form. And they wallow in their unworthiness. That's a different problem. Pastorally, you have to deal with that. But what I'm saying is this. When we can hold these two things together, where we are totally unworthy, but we believe the promises of God, our thankfulness just soars. And there's no end to it. Just as there's no bottom to our awareness of our wretchedness, so there can be no top end to our thanksgiving. Who am I? And what is my house that thou hast brought me hitherto? Me, a big fat sinner. Oh God, I don't understand thy goodness to me. It's amazing. But if you're not aware of your sin, your thankfulness will always remain shallow. So you see, providence, God uses providence to teach us our sin and then to teach us how to be thankful, that He's still so good to us in all that He gives us. And then thirdly, we trust, we trust firmly in God for the future. We trust not in our faith. We trust not in our obedience. We trust not in anything of us, but we trust in God's providence, God and His providence. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? We say, my times are in thy hands, O God. And so what happens when God shows His providential care over us for, in my case now, for 56 years, God has such a proven track record with me that my natural tendency now, hopefully being redeemed by grace, my natural tendency now would be to trust Him. And yet I'm still grieved at how quickly I don't trust Him. But He's made Himself trustworthy 10,000 times. So I believe He's going to help me today. He's going to help me tomorrow. He's going to help me get to the end of this semester. He's going to help me with exams. You see, you trust in the Lord and Providence helps build that trust through God's trustworthy character being shown to you again, and again, and again, and again, and again, every day. 100 times a day. Actually, if you see it rightly, every blink of your eye, every movement of your hand, every thought of your mind, God is proving himself trustworthy. the plan of the master weaver. You've heard that poem. But this is really what it's about, trusting God for the future. My life is but a weaving between the Lord and me. I may not choose the colors, for he can view the pattern upon the upper side, while I see it only on this, the underside. Sometimes he weaveth sorrow, which seemeth strange to me, but I will trust his judgment and work on faithfully. "'Tis he who fills the shuttle, and he knows what is best. "'So shall I weave in earnest, leaving to him the rest. "'Not till the loom is silent and the shuttle cease to fly "'shall God unroll the canvas and explain the reasons why "'the dark threads are as needed in the weaver's skillful hand "'as the threads of gold and silver "'in the pattern he has planned.'" Well, you can see, I think, just from the ten minutes I gave you of these three conclusions, how rich this kind of material can be developed from various biblical texts as well, as well as from the catechism, for your people. And a sermon that really unpacks these three thoughts, it will speak volumes to the people of God in your midst. So, be encouraged to preach the doctrine of God's providence. It's a rich doctrine for the people of God. All right, that brings me to where I wanted to be to complete this lecture on Providence today. Then we have one more lecture on Thursday, where I'll just give you some summary thoughts about the angels and the devils. And then next week, we have our exam. Tuesday, I believe. I believe today, next week, this time. 8.30 to 10.05. Any questions? Let's turn to close. For we have a lot of things that we would like each one of us to learn. For that, before we are ministers or instruments, it's our humble prayer that we should be the vessels to your Lord. Not vessels of the plague, which bring dishonor to your name. Thank you for this wonderful topic of Providence. And there are so many things that we are paralleling. And Lord, you are really working in lots of great things. And all we submit ourselves unto you, so that the rest should be done by you. Thank you for the day and the rest of the day. And we pray for your divine indigestion. That we are not only putting this material into a knowledge, The Lord, we trust that you will change our hearts and you'll change our lives that we will live as martyrs in this world. We praise you and we give you glory for this. We pray even for our professor. Thanks for really putting in him so much that he could be shared with us. For you give down his heart, you're sharing testimonies of how he has lived proudly in this world. Continue to be with us. Bless each one of us and grant us your peace and your presence. Do not forgive any sins. Transform in us a new spirit in Jesus name we pray.