DIVINE PROVIDENCE
This is Part 1 of an 8-part series, which was originally developed for a 13-week adult class, with some of the parts taking more or less than a 45-minute class period. I am starting to post the series on SermonCentral, and plan to post the remaining parts over the next few days as time permits.
I developed a set of slides on PowerPoint for use with the series and will be happy to share the PowerPoint files. The prompts reminding me to advance slides and activate animations are embedded in the sermon below. If you want to request the slides send me an Email at sam@srmccormick.net specifying what part(s) of the series you are requesting. Be sure to include the word “slides” in the subject line of your message; otherwise I am likely to miss it. I would find it interesting to know the location and a few words about your personal ministry if you will include it in your message. Allow several days for me to respond.
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Outline of the series:
I. Introduction to the series
II. God’s Plan from the Beginning
III. God’s Plan Now and Our Problem with It
IV. Justice vs Mercy and the Plan of Salvation
V. The Only Way to Eradicate Sin
VI. Providence – What God Provides in Earthly Life
VII. Providence and Civil Governments
VIII. Providence, Miracles and Phenomena
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I. Introduction to the Series
Providence is sometimes seen as a subject cloaked in mystery. There are a lot of ideas about what providence is and how it works, or whether divine providence is even at work.
We may find that providence is very different than is widely believed. We will recognize some false ideas about what providence is, but the main focus will not be about things we do not and cannot know…but about things we know concretely about God’s providence.
The taproot of divine providence is: “God has a plan” and it involves us, and in its execution, God exercises certain control over human events.
*Slide 1- DIVINE PROVIDENCE
The word providence occurs only once in the bible:
Acts 24:1-3 NASB After five days the high priest Ananias came down with some elders, with an attorney named Tertullus, and they brought charges to the governor against Paul. After Paul had been summoned, Tertullus began to accuse him, saying to the governor, "Since we have through you attained much peace, and since by your providence reforms are being carried out for this nation, we acknowledge this in every way and everywhere, most excellent Felix, with all thankfulness.
Notice that the only time the word providence occurs in the bible, it is not in a religious sense. It was spoken by Tertullus in his attempt to obtain a judgment against Paul. The word providence as used referred to that of the Roman procurator of Judea in his providing for Israel.
But although the word providence is used only in a secular context, the doctrine of divine providence is found throughout the scriptures. Providence is biblical and relevant to our lives and worthy of our best efforts to understand insofar as divine providence is revealed. Few things are more evident in the bible than God’s providence, once we are clear on what it means.
If you’re reading the ESV or any of several modern translations you will see “foresight” instead of “providence” in v2. “Foresight” is a good translation.
The corresponding Greek word, pro´noia, means “forethought.” Forethought and foresight imply a future end, and a definite purpose and plan for realizing that end.
The English word “providence” comes from Latin providentia, which means “to foresee.”
The word in the original language did not necessarily convey divine foresight, as indicated by its use by Tertullus in a secular context.
*Slide 2 - Plan for the series - click for animations as appropriate
But in English, providence has come in our time to be associated only with God. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word as:
a. divine guidance or care
b. cap: God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny
In popular thought “providence” came Over time to be connected to a version of predestination in which providence represents a foreordained detailed course of human events following a fixed map. Within that vein of thought, humans are little more than puppets, powerless to do other than move upon an already set stage to the actions of strings controlled from above.
I will raise a lot of questions today that we will not have answers for today. But the questions will show us how thoroughly divine providence is woven into our thoughts. Some questions we may never answer, either in this series or beyond it. God hasn’t told us everything he’s doing, as he drove home very forcefully to Job.
The idea of God’s providential involvement in human lives is generally accepted:
• We hear people say, “I will do this or that unless I am providentially hindered.”
That is a biblical principle, as James taught:
“Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit" … Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." James 4:13-15
This passage alone leaves little room to doubt that God intervenes to cause or prevent things from happening in human affairs…
• …causing us to wonder, does it follow that providence directs everything that happens on the human plane?
• Is the entire course of each person’s life charted in minute detail with its paths laid out in advance–or if not unalterably set, then the course he wishes us to take at every turn?
Consider the stories of these familiar characters:
• Jacob and Esau (God said to Rebekah before the twins’ birth: "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.") Providential?
• Joseph’s sojourn in Egypt because of the act of his brothers, driven by jealousy - the brothers meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. Providential?
• Moses’ striking story (rescued on the Nile by the daughter of the Pharaoh who ordered his death, then Moses was tended by his very own mother.) - Providential?
• Esther (Mordecai’s message to her: “Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?") Providential?
• John the Baptist’s greatness and Spirit-filling was revealed to his father before John’s birth.
Luke 1:13-15 But the angel said to him [Zechariah], "Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John…he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb.
Providential?
• Jesus, on the day of his circumcision
Luke 2:21 And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. Was the Savior’s very name providential?
• The prophets. They did not have a plum job, and sometimes they were killed for speaking the truth – Isaiah who likely died horribly being one example. Providential.
• Simon Peter – the manner of his death appears to have been spelled out for him.
John 21:18-19 ESV Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.)
• Were all of these striking stories pieces of a mapped out plan?
Is life like a corn maze, and we have to find the right way through it or fail in fulfilling God’s providential plan?
• In the mid-1800’s a prosperous saddle-maker in central Kentucky moved his family to a tiny community in Texas named Jiba (which has since then vanished - only a rural church and cemetery suggest a town was once there). His name was William Wilson McCormick. At about that time, a Tennessee man named John Averitt moved to Jiba with his family. In Jiba, indications are that times were hard, perhaps the reason the town ceased to exist. Over the next two generations, both families went from being affluent to being quite poor. Struggling to make ends meet, a young man named John William McCormick and a young woman named Lota Averitt fell in love and were united in marriage. My grandparents.
What are the odds that two prosperous families living in different states would move to a tiny community destined for oblivion, become poor, and produce the chain of events that four generations later would lead to me being born? I’ve studied my family tree and could go back centuries, to many countries and cultures, and name hundreds of people who--for me to be born--had to live and marry and produce children exactly as they did. If any of them did not, I would never live. Other people would live, but I would not. Some of them were nobility and royalty, some powerful, one murderer, some were very influential in life, and others whose lives seem to have left rather faint marks on the written annals of time. Was it according to a providential design that I was born in the place I was, to the family I was, and that I am the way I am?
Your own story may similarly hang by many slender threads.
• People say, “Everything happens for a reason.” Do we believe that to be true, or do some things fall this way and that, and blow in the wind like leaves in autumn, having no discernable bearing on future outcomes and seeming to be no direct part of a grand plan?
• We often hear someone say “God is in control” whenever some manifestation of his control is hoped for - or when his hand is clearly evident in some outcome. We believe that! - although we are left to wonder how he decides what to control and how.
• We know that when God SOMETIMES does something, it doesn’t mean he ALWAYS does that. He may see differences in the circumstances that we can’t see (remember - the word providence means foresight).
• Sometimes when people are hit with extreme misfortune they wonder, “Is God punishing me?” or “Is God trying to tell me something?”
• Is a person born with a predetermined number of days to live and then they die no matter what?
Eccl 3:1-2 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die
Job 14:5 [Job’s own words] …his days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass.
• Will you find your destiny in a fortune cookie?
• Fatalism is a popular theme in literature: a literary “doctrine” that events are fixed in advance by fate so that human beings are powerless to change them by any effort
• “The Universe” is thought by some to “intend” for this or that to happens, and so arranges. This is simply a way of ascribing conscious planning and execution to a nebulous entity, while rejecting the concept of an invisible but all-powerful God. To them, “the universe” - not a benevolent God - holds controlling power in human life.
• “Manifest destiny” John L. O'Sullivan coined the phrase in his United States Magazine and Democratic Review (July–August 1845) to prophesy “the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence. . . .” U.S. Congressmen quickly adopted the term in their debates over the three territorial questions confronting the United States in 1845 and 1846—the annexation of Texas, the occupation of the Oregon Territory jointly with England, and the prosecution of war with Mexico over annexation of Texas.
Was the westward expansion in the U.S. borne of God’s providential plan for man’s “manifest destiny?”
With regard to salvation, there are various notions that follow suite with these ideas:
Calvinism – Five points as influenced by Calvin and later titled (TULIP Calvinism)
1) Total Depravity - The idea that mankind is completely sinful and cannot do anything to contribute to his salvation.
2) Unconditional Election - We are totally dependent upon God to initiate salvation for us, which he did in eternity past by choosing to save some, without any condition on the part of those whom he chose.
3) Limited Atonement - Jesus died only for the sins of those whom he had chosen so that they might have eternal life.
4) Irresistible Grace - Those whom God has chosen will be irresistibly drawn by God’s grace.
5) Perseverance of the Saints - Since God’s will cannot be thwarted, all who are delivered by God’s grace in this fashion will (I think) irresistibly give evidence to it by living a life of perseverance in faith and good works.
To boil it down for our purposes today, the Calvinist doctrine contends that God—according to predetermined intentions--does something for person A which he does not do for B, and that this something is the cause of A’s salvation.
This belief was the starting point of the American Restoration Movement, into which I was born and raised, and have remained, while - as the early restorers did - “testing the spirits to see if they were from God” under the guidance of 1 John 4:1.
I risk laboring this point because it shows that the belief in providence is very common if not universal—and often is a distortion of the truth about providence.
I don’t intend for us to spend several weeks talking things we wonder about and don’t know, although we will recognize some widely held ideas.
But to be sure, all those beliefs, though popularly held, must be examined under the illuminating rays of what can concretely be known about God’s providential plan (and be assured, he has a plan and he tells us what it is).
I suggest that to some degree(s) most of us accept some version of this way of looking at providence. Is there anyone here today who has never felt that God, the Holy Spirit, or ministering angels have intervened directly to cause some good thing, or to prevent some disaster in our lives? Or to steer us toward a better outcome than the one we thought was best (I wanted A, didn’t get A, was disappointed, got B, and B turned out to be immeasurably better than A?)
While we all have agreed that divine intervention in human affairs does occur, and all - or practically all - of us have personally experienced it, questions stemming from that belief appear:
Are all strange coincidences that we experience providentially induced or are some the result of random chance?
Assuming that “something” is true about divine providence, how does this preplanned linkage work with free will?
Or do we truly have freedom to choose and act not in accordance with God’s mapped-out plan?
I have raised many questions about divine providence. Over the next few weeks, to cast some illumination on these questions and many more, we will examine:
*Slide 3 - Outline of the series - click for animations as appropriate
Outline of the series:
I. Introduction to the series
II. God’s Plan from the Beginning
III. God’s Plan Now and Our Problem with It
IV. Justice vs Mercy and the Plan of Salvation
V. The Only Way to Eradicate Sin
VI. Providence – What God Provides in Earthly Life
VII. Providence and Civil Governments
VIII. Providence, Miracles, and Phenomena
We cannot know and understand the full extent of God’s actions.
But to the extent he has revealed it to us clearly, a great deal is known. Join me, and let us learn together what God has planned for us and how we may realize the best of it.
