Lord's Day 10 is one of my favorite ones in all of the catechism. The question 27 and 28 are two of my favorite, among my favorites. I like to read them. Question 27, what does thou mean by the providence of God? I love this answer, this is so cool. the almighty and everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were, by his hands, he upholds and governs heaven and earth and all creatures, so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come, not by chance, but by his fatherly hand. And the next question, 28, What advantage is it to us to know that God has created and by his providence does still uphold all things, that we may be patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and that in all things which may hereafter befall us, we can place our firm trust in our faithful God and Father, that nothing shall separate us from his love, since all creatures are so in his hand that without his will, they cannot so much as move." Wow, what a powerful, powerful pair of statements. And so last week, we looked at and considered God Almighty. And as the creed begins, we believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible. And I tried to emphasize in all that was being said You can't really appreciate all of the benefits of the gospel if you do not have a proper concept of God as being almighty. If there's anything in which that is not God that can thwart him, stop him, slow him, then all of the benefits of the gospel can be stopped or thwarted. God creates all things, he sustains all things, he holds all things together. And in your more full confessions of faith, such as our confession, the Baptist confession, you see it in the Westminster Confession, the Savoy Confession, and others, there is a pattern that'll start with, as in ours, chapter one is on scripture, chapter two is on God. Then it goes to decrees, creation, and providence, in that order. And there's a reason for that order. That's not random. It starts with who God is, right? And as the almighty God and the infinitude of his person and his attributes. And that God acts by decree. And in that decree, he decrees, as our confession puts it, God has decreed in himself from all eternity by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, unchangeably, all things whatsoever comes to pass. Yet so, as thereby is God, neither the author of sin, nor the fellowship with any therein, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established, in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree." Now there the decree says, from all eternity. So God has, before he's created anything, because this is from all eternity, he has decreed whatsoever will come to pass. But again, thinking a little more broadly, If we believe, as the Bible teaches, that God created out of nothing, or the Latin phrase ex nihilo, out of nothing, there were no eternal things existing apart from God that he could just pull together, like there weren't light photons, I said last week, that he could somehow organize and create light. There was God and there was nothing. He makes these decrees. This, this, and this are gonna happen. Well, if there's nothing other than him and now his decree, where will those things take place? There has to be a place for those decrees to be actuated, lived out. And so the heavens and the earth were created specifically, as some older theologians said, as the theater by which his decrees could take place. God created the world to put on display his glory. And how was his glory put on display? Well, it's done in part by the beauty of creation itself. Think of Psalm 19, which we could have sung, where the heavens declare the glory of the Lord. You look at the heavens, you look at the earth, And the hands and fingerprints of God are all over it. Michael Chambers introduced me to the book many years ago by a guy named Dr. Sanford, I think it was, not to do with anything to do with the hospital, but he was one of the world's leading experts on the human genome. And he was an atheist. And now with a lot of the modern technology and able to get down into more minutiae of things, and he was able to see in the human genome the highly complexness of that genome. And he came to understand there is no way out of pure random chance something this complex could ever come into existence. What was he seeing? He was seeing the glory of the Lord, as in like again in Psalm 19, only not in the heavens, here in the smallness of the human genome. And he eventually became a believer. And he wrote two books, one which was both on the same subject, but one he wrote for the scientific community and one he wrote for the rest of us. Wonderful, wonderful book. And so God has these decrees, this almighty God who can speak the world into existence. He can say, where there is nothing, let there be light. And in that nothingness, now light shines for no other reason than the fact that he has spoken. That God decrees what will happen and creates a heaven and earth where he might put his glory on display first, as we've said, through what has actually been made. And Paul even talks about this in Romans 1, that speaking of unrighteous men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them. For God made it evident to them, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes and his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through that which has been made, so they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks." So in this world, he's put on display his glory in how it was made. So Paul can say his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen. Now just because it's seen, as we see it from the text he just read, doesn't mean everybody who sees it's going to believe it, but it's there. But God has put his glory, he's created this world also to put his glory not just in the creation, but in what takes place in the creation. And so in chapter nine, he talks about the vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy, as you will remember. And he makes this comment about how God has decreed all these things. And the question at the beginning of the chapter is, has God failed since not all of Israel has believed? And Paul goes on to argue, no, This is happening exactly according to his plan that some have believed and some have not believed. Jacob I've loved, Esau I've hated. This is not a failure. This is exactly as he says in verse 11, for the two twins who were not yet born had done nothing good or bad so that God's purpose according to his choice could stand not because of works, but because of him who calls. But then he goes on to say, The imagined objector that Paul is doing battle with says, well, what shall we say then if everything is decreed by him? You know, why does he find fault with anybody for who resists his will if he's doing everything? And Paul responds, on the contrary, who are you, oh man? To answer back to God. The thing molded does not say to the molder why did he You make me like this, will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, I love this statement, verse 22, what if God, though willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom he has called, not from among the Jews, but also from the Gentiles. And so God, who decrees all things, creates a world that is so magnificent, so wonderful, so complex, so absolutely glorious, that to apprehend the world at all, as it is in creation, is to see and behold the glory of the Lord. But it doesn't stop there. It goes all the way down into the individual things that take place. He is, in the decisions that are made for every person who's lived on the earth, he's doing so in such a way, as Paul writes, to make known his glory. He says it demonstrates his wrath to make his power known. He had vessels of mercy to make known the riches of the glory upon the vessels of mercy. He prepared beforehand for glory. So God creates this world where his glory can be put on display by right of creation and by right of his divine providences over creation. This is why we must always fight the temptation of having a God who's too small. God is over all things, and that's why in the passage we read from Acts 17, he reminds us Twice in here, in verse 24, that God made the world and all things in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth. And he goes on to say, in the end of the next verse, as though he needed anything since in himself, he gives life. He gives to all people life and breath and all things. There's nothing that is alive that has not received that life from him. Nothing. But it's more than just that he's given us life. He says in verse 26, he's determined their appointed times and boundaries of their habitation. And I've said on other occasions about that, about this verse and other things, why is it that there are people in this world today, to this very hour in which I am speaking, there are people in this world who have never heard about Jesus once. And yet here you are, you live in a time and place where while others have never heard of Jesus, you hear about him all the time. You own Bibles, you own more Bibles in some of your homes than some people can even count. that you open and others you never read anymore because you've got another one you like. And you go to church and we read lots of scripture, we preach, and we sing psalms. You're inundated with the hearing of the name of the Lord Jesus all the time, while others on this planet have never heard Jesus once. Why do you get to have that? Why has God blessed you? I don't know. But he has. And what Paul is saying in Acts 17 is that's not accident. That's not random. That's not chance. You're just not really lucky. Luck is a four-letter word that should never be on the mouth of Christians because he says that He's determined and appointed the times and the boundaries and the habitations. You were born by divine determination to be here at this moment, at this time, to where you could hear Christ freely. And others were not. And then he goes on to say, in order that we might seek him, for in him we live We move and exist. And I told you when we preached the book of Acts, that statement is Paul intentionally taking his finger and poking the Greeks in the eye. Those three statements, in him we live, move, and exist. To that moment in history, life, motion, and existence were the three things that all of the Greek philosophers, all the way back to Aristocracies and all those other guys, before Plato, before Socrates, before all those guys, all the way back to Pythagoras and all those guys. Those are the three things they were trying to figure out. How was their life at all? How was their motion? You know, it's like these communion things, sitting there, They're just sitting there and they're not gonna move. What could possibly make them move? And yet we can look out into the heavens. We see the sun, the stars, they move. The planet rotates. How did that start? How did that happen? Why does anything exist at all? And they really wrestled with these questions. They were not simple, Saturday afternoon at the bar, smoking a cigar, kind of kicking things around, going, hey, what do you think about this? I was, you know. No, these were serious, academically challenging, philosophically oriented people wrestling with this stuff. And Paul is using this as, this is gospel preaching? What Paul is saying here, many of us would never be exposed to this kind of stuff unless we took at least a bonehead philosophy class in 101 at the local university. And here Paul is, he's introducing Jesus Christ to these people with this kind of thinking. And so what does it mean that we believe in the providence of God? We believe that we have this almighty God who out of nothing creates the heavens and the earth. He creates it for a place to put on display his glory, the glory that will be manifested in the accomplishing of his decrees. He decrees the actual existence of this heaven and earth and all things that will take place in this heaven and earth. So that's why the logic of the confession, God decree creation, and then providence. He is not a God who simply starts the world, creates the world, pushes it in motion, and leaves it alone. As one writer put it, he's not like the man who builds a ship and then turns the ship over to somebody else to pilot on the oceans. That's not the biblical view of creation. God creates it. He maintains it. To the smallest degree, remember Jesus will say in Matthew chapter 10, not a single bird falls to the ground apart from my father, not a hair falls from your head. Why did he pick the sparrow and the hairs on her head? Because can you think of Two things that are more insignificant in creation than the number of hairs on your head and the little sparrow birds that are everywhere. These things cannot move, live, or fall to the floor apart from God. And all of this is so that we would apprehend his glory. And so, again, as the catechism puts it, The Almighty, notice he's tying back to the previous Lord's Day, Lord's Day 9, where we focused on the almighty power of God. The almighty and everywhere present power of God, where is it? It's everywhere. It's here. Think of Psalm 139, where he says, where could I go? And you're not already there. I go to the remotest place of the earth, you are there. I go to the darkest cave, you are there. And as God, when he gets there, the God, he arrives at that remote island, the God who was there is what God? The almighty, all-powerful God. There's nowhere you can go where God isn't already there, and the God who was there is that all-powerful God. Whereby, as it were by his hand, he upholds and governs heaven and earth and all creatures. There's not a single thing. There is not a random atom in the universe. If there was something as small as one random atom that was not under control of God, complete control of God, then God would not be God. He would not be all-powerful because there's something outside of his control. Whereby, as it were, by his hand he upholds and governs the heaven and earth and all creatures. Why? So that, or what's the result? Not why, but resulting in what? So that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, all things come to us not by chance, but by his fatherly hand. We live in a time of Too much water. Oh, how unlucky are we? We live in a land of drought. Oh, how unlucky are we? You're healthy. Oh, man, I'm so healthy. I'm so thankful. I took those vitamins. Isn't it great how smart I am? I'm healthy. You're sick. How unfortunate for you. We talk and we act and we speak as if all these things are totally random and maybe we can influence them. It's like in my household, we have this debate. My wife is probably the healthier of the two of us from the perspective of germs. And so she wants to wipe everything. When one of us gets cold, then you're banned from the kitchen. Everything has to be wiped down. Me, it's the other way around. It's like, who cares, right? Now, you can decide for yourself who's right, who's wrong. But she'll want to clean it all, and that's good, right? But do all the peril on your hands. do parole on your hands, and you wipe out a couple hundred billion germs, let's say. That's not even deciding whether or not you should actually have those germs on your hand to help protect your health, but let's assume we want to get rid of all of them. A couple hundred billion, all right? How many other trillions upon trillions germs will you be exposed to in the next couple hours? No, I'm not saying, and do not listen to me too quickly, Do not say, well, I'm not saying you shouldn't take care of the germs, you shouldn't wash your hands, or anything. Please don't hear me. The pastor said it doesn't matter. No, that's not what I'm saying. Is that, yeah, you use wisdom, you use common sense, you do what you need to do to be healthy, to be prepared for the rainy seasons, for the drought seasons, for health and for sickness. You do all those things. But in the end, we are, in all things, all creatures, totally dependent upon God. As James says, if God wills, tomorrow we will go to such and such a city. Our lives are in his hand. Ursinus in his commentary on this writes it this way, he says, intimately connected with the doctrine of creation of the world is the subject of the providence of God, which is nothing else than a continuation of creation. because the government of the world is the preserving of the things created by God. So providence is simply creation, another stage of creation. We are not to imagine, therefore, the creation of the world is like building a ship, which the architect, as soon as it's completed, commits to the government of some pilot. But we must hold this with the most certain truth, as nothing could ever have existed except by the creating power of God, so it is impossible that anything could exist, even for a moment, without his government and preservation. For it is for this reason that the Scriptures often join the preservation and the continual administration of all things with their creation. We cannot have a full and correct knowledge of the creation unless we, at the same time, embrace the doctrine of divine providence concerning which we must make a particular inquiry. Divine providence is nothing more than the continuation of God's act of creation. And you cannot have a correct knowledge of creation if you do not understand it as not only that God governs it, but must govern it. Again, we live and move and exist, where? In Him. If you are not in Him, you will not exist. I used this joke before, and it never goes anywhere, so why would I use it again? But when I was in seminary, we were studying all these things. make fun with each other, say, you know, we kind of get miffed at one another and say, oh, why don't you drop out of God's decree of will? See, never works. It worked in those days. Drop out of God's decree of will. What am I saying? That you would end up in oblivion, that you wouldn't exist. No record of you. You're gone. You never exist. Drop out of God's decree of will. You're gone. Thank you for laughing, at least smiling. We can't understand creation if we don't understand providence. And we don't understand providence if we don't understand that God is absolutely involved in the caring for and protecting and preserving everything that he's made. And this isn't without its benefits. In fact, I would go so far as to say that you can't really enjoy the life that you live apart from having this kind of view. A lot of people like to live off Christian doctrine without having to be Christians. Easy example is the atheist, right? If the world is meaningless, it's just this eternal primordial ooze that given a couple hundred trillion billion years just randomly by accident evolved into the meaningful world that we know and one day will return to that primordial ooze of no meaning and purpose whatsoever, then why does life now have any meaning or purpose? You don't mean anything. You're just an accident. Your life doesn't mean anything because whatever it is, it just with no intention or purpose whatsoever, it just happened upon, and it will soon fade away and be nothing. And so for the atheist to have any real life, he has to steal from Christian doctrine all the time. I love trying to talk to these guys about this sort of stuff. You know, I know I've told you, but I remember being at NDSU one time at one of these science and religion luncheons, and this man who professed to have at least been raised as a Lutheran, but now was doubting all that, and he was a professor of biology, and he told, he was the main speaker for the day, and he said that he had learned from science that the human life is not any more valuable than any other form of life. I know you've heard me tell this, and I loved it. It's one of my few moments. of, I thought, clarity. And I just said, during the Q&A, I said, it's great. I said, you're saying that science cannot, there's no reason from science to say that human life is more valuable than any other kind of life. I said to him, so come this July and August, I suppose that you're going to be like the rest of us in the room, that when we're outside, you're going to get frustrated with the mosquitoes and you're going to kill some of them. But I also assume that over the course of your academic career, you've been frustrated with certain students and you've killed none of them. Does science tell you where that line is, kill, no kill? He said, no. So how is it that you don't kill your students when they frustrate you, but you'll gladly kill the equally valuable mosquito according to your plan without any guilt or shame? This is a man living off of stolen ideas from Christianity, not from science. And we do that all the time, even as Christians. Even as Christians, rather than submitting ourselves completely to the mind of God as revealed to us in the scriptures, We want the benefits of God doing all these things without necessarily surrendering our mind, our will, and our emotions to him in complete and absolute trust. In other words, we sin. That's why we're told, commanded, not to worry. Be anxious for nothing. In all things, give thanks. I mean, read Paul saying these things and kind of go, yeah, right. Don't you find it hard to give thanks in certain circumstances? I know I do. How are you at giving thanks to God in all circumstances? Right up there, the best thing you do, right? No. How quickly you get fearful and anxious. All the time, right? but having the proper view of an almighty God, who decrees whatsoever comes to into place, creates this magnificent world, both in the macro and micro sense, so that he might fulfill all these decrees, and he providentially governs this or continues to uphold it or create it, sustain it, so that all of his decrees for all of his glory, for the benefit of every last element of that created world, and that each element for the purpose that was created would fulfill its role, whether it is unto damnation or to glory, anywhere in between, that every last bird, sparrow, hare, atom, everything that was created for his glory would realize its ultimate purpose and fulfill that decree at exactly the moment it is so that God is most glorified. Do you think like that? You should. I do all the time. No, I don't. Only when I'm preaching. I worry like all the rest of you. I'm scared. I have my concerns. But notice how he says this in question 28. What advantage is it to us to know that God has created and by his providence still upholds all things, that we may be patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and that all things which may hereafter befall us, we place our firm trust in our faithful God and Father, that nothing shall separate us from his love. Since all creatures are so in his hand, that without His will, they cannot so much as move. I have to be honest with you, while I think that's absolutely true, and I, at one level, theologically, I don't doubt a word of that, but humanly, as I live my life, I go, I doubt that all over the place. Not because it's not true, but because my own lack of faith, my own sinfulness, I always want to bring control back to me. We even talk about people who are control freaks. They always are trying to control everything. They have a very small view of God. The problem isn't that they are control freaks. Their problem is they have really bad theology. They might be able to pass a theology exam with all the right answers, but in their moment-by-moment life, their theology is pathetic. because they don't have a God that can take care of them. They can give you the answers, but they can't live those answers. I got to control this. Patient in adversity. I'm not patient in adversity. You push on me, I want to answer back. I usually do badly, but better to have waited a while. Besides, God answers better than I could anyway. So just thankful in prosperity. If we have what we need or more than what we need, praise be to God. It wasn't because we are lucky. One man puts money in, all right, here's the example. Do they still do horse races in Phoenix? Dog races, I mean. There used to be a dog track out by the airport, and when I was in college, we'd go out to this dog track, and the greyhounds, they'd run. And there were some, Johnny's green sheet, some guy named Johnny would sell this green sheet, and it would be all his data, and you could go in there, and you could, you know, these horses, these dogs, rather, would, you know, so fast, and they won these races, and this, that, and the other, and you would watch, and all this stuff. And people would get really serious about this, not only in that making big bets, but I mean really doing a deep dive in the data so that when they laid their bet, they thought they were doing pretty well on, you know, choosing a greyhound that might win. And so one time we're down there just before Christmas break, and we're watching all these, and it's a lot of fun. This lady, who we didn't know, she just happened to be next to us, wins. I'm sure I'm not going to say this right because it's been so long, but you can bet on the dog to win, to show, or to place. I think that's first, second, and third. Or you can bet what I think is called the quinella, where you bet on all three. And this woman won the quinella, and she won big and got a lot of money. The only problem is she still got the money because, but she, unwittingly bet on the wrong race. She thought she was betting on this race. She actually played a bet on this race and won. Now, if you're ever going to use the word lucky, there's luck, right? Wait a minute. I thought lucky is providence. And she won a fair amount of money. She's the kind of gal you should marry, you know. Give her unlimited resources to go play the lottery or something, right? I mean, just. And so thankful and prosperity. One person does absolutely nothing correctly and they walk away with wealth. Another person plans it all out and walks away with nothing. I told you about my cousin. I don't know anybody who worked harder than my cousin Bill. And he had been in the restaurant business and different variations for most of his adult life. And I believe it was Texas Instruments approached him in Tampa and said, we're building a new multi-floor thing, and we'd like you to open up a restaurant on the main floor, and that you'll have the built-in customers from all of our floors will come down and have lunch. So my cousin leveraged himself to his earlobes. His wife was pleading to him, do not do this. Oh, this is a sure thing. I got these built-in customers, moves in, has a business. And six months later, Texas Instruments moved all those employees to Texas, and he lost everything. Wasn't from not working hard enough. Maybe he wasn't smart enough to have some type of contingency clause or something. But one person wins the quinella, betting on the wrong race. Another person works really hard and loses everything. Thankful in prosperity and that in all things which may hereafter befall us, we place our firm trust in our faithful God and Father. That nothing shall separate us from his love, nothing. Do you believe that? Again up here, oh yeah. Nothing will separate us from the love of God. Romans 8, yeah, right on. And then you're told, blah, blah, blah, and then you wonder where God is. Again, you've been living as one stealing from the doctrines of God, but living like they don't really mean anything. Since all creatures are so in his hand, that without his will they cannot so much as move. Because in him we live, move, and exist. Proverbs 21.1, the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord as the rivers of water, he turns them wherever he will. And so as we consider are part of our worship service in the morning where we confess the Nicene Creed. As I suggested to you last week and in other occasions, we are confessing essentially the gospel of the kingdom of God. And in that kingdom, you have an almighty heavenly father. And as we will see next week, we also have an almighty and most wonderful Savior, Jesus Christ. And for us to fully realize the benefit of knowing God as God and Father and His Son, Christ, our Savior, and the Spirit, it starts with and must always be conditioned by we have an almighty God who is free to decree and accomplish whatever he sees fit to want to accomplish. He creates a heaven and earth as the place where he will put on display that glorious work and his glorious nature and being for all to witness. And then he so governs it in his providence that everything shakes out exactly according to His will. Without ever violating you or your will, the freedom of your will, or the secondary causes, but as our confession says, establishes them. Your will now has real purpose because it's in a real world that makes real sense. It's going somewhere. The alternative is your will doesn't mean anything because you're just primordially an ooze accident that has no value or purpose whatsoever. And if you want to start sneaking meaning and purpose into your will in a totally random chance oozy-goozy eternity, then the only way you're going to do that is steal from Christianity. So why take the cheap imitation? Why not embrace the real thing? And the gospel is at stake. Because if God is not almighty, your salvation could be thwarted. If God is not able to decree from eternity past that which will come, then how do you know that Jesus actually showed up at the right time to do what he needed to do? And if his providence doesn't extend to everything, how is it that you actually got an opportunity to hear the gospel at all? And how will you have any confidence whatsoever that Jesus Christ will return exactly at the appointed hour in order that you might be taken by him to glory, to dwell with him in heaven forever and ever? All those things are lost if we do not believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, who is also providentially over and cares for all of his creation. It's a lump sum. You either have it or you don't. In our fallenness, in our weakness, in our foolishness, we must strive every day to embrace these things. See, it's easy being a non-Christian. It really is. You don't have to believe anything. And if you wanna believe something entirely different tomorrow, no problem. It's easy to be a non-Christian. If you want to steal from Christianity or not steal from Christianity, it doesn't matter. Just make up whatever you want. But as a Christian, because of the battle we have with the accuser of the brethren, as a Christian because of the battle we have with the sin that dwells in us, that wages war against our soul and our mind, because of the sinfulness and how the effect it's had on our mind, the noetic effect of sin, we don't even think correctly, Our flesh fights against us. The hardest job in the world is to be a Christian because every moment of every day, you have to fight against the devil, the flesh, the world, and your own sinfulness. And you can't give up at any particular moment. Say, well, I can take a vacation from having to do battle to hang on to the truth. Being a Christian is hard from that perspective, because we are, as the writer of Hebrews says, we must pay much closer attention to the things that have been said lest we drift. And when you get too comfortable and too easy, you will drift, and you will drift away from believing that God is almighty, that he decrees, that he creates, and he's providential over all things, and then you will end up being, all these wonderful benefits will disappear. Again, I will close with this statement from Ursinus. It says, from these things it appears that the whole truth of religion and the very foundation of piety would be overthrown if the providence of God, as it has been defined and explained, be not maintained, because one, We would not be patient in adversity if we did not know that these things were sent upon us from God our Father. Two, we would not be grateful for the benefits which we receive if we did not know that they were given to us from above. And three, we would not have a good and certain hope in relation to the future things if we were not fully persuaded that the will of God in regard to our salvation and that and that of all of his people is unchangeable. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are God and there is no other. And we thank you that you are almighty, you're all-knowing, you are perfect in all your ways, all good, all wise, all loving, and that we live, move, and exist because of you and in you. And we pray, Father, that you would help us understand just how important these things are because our confidence in the gospel and its benefits are totally dependent upon us enjoying them by having the right view of who you are as creator and sustainer of all things. In Christ we pray, amen.