DIVINE PROVIDENCE
This is Part 2 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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II. God’s Plan From the Beginning
*Click for Slide - Outline of the series
Explain the 8 parts of the series and where we are in it today (click to step through the animations)
Read Genesis 1:26-28, 2:15-22, 3:1-10,11-19
• When God created the man and placed him in a prepared lovely garden, it was all good, except for one thing. “It was not good that man should not be alone.”
So God made the woman.
• Requirements were few and easy to understand.
1) Be fruitful and multiply
2) Rule over the animals
3) Tend the garden (no weeds)
4) Don’t eat fruit from one tree
It was easy to understanding God’s requirements
• The man and the woman were not subjected to advanced studies in theology or hermeneutic variants on doctrine, didn’t have to take courses in ecclesiastical history, or refer to decisions coming down from ecumenical councils (there were none).
Just God’s word.
*Advance to slide with headings only
*Click for each animation as needed
The plan was that the man and woman love and trust him, and show it:
KNOW his requirements (they knew all they needed to)
CHOOSE RIGHT (RIGHT activates a second after CHOOSE)
OBEY his instructions
ENJOY his blessings as they lived, UNDYING in the beautiful garden.
As far as we can see in Genesis 2-3, God’s plan was for the man and woman to live in obedient bliss eternally along with the human family they were to have.
Gen 1:28 “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”
Several observations are appropriate in the light of what happened in the garden, and what God has revealed since the fall:
• We cannot know - nor can we ever discover - how long the man and the woman lived in the state of bliss before Eve succumbed to the serpent’s lies. Reading the narrative tends to suggest that it was very soon - perhaps a few days. But it cannot be known whether Satan bided his time for days, months, years, or even decades - or much longer - before he began his overture that would wreck God’s creation by fouling his crowning act of creating man.
• Nor do we have any record of anything that happened in the garden except the briefly described relevant events while they lived there. A great deal may have transpired that is unrevealed and unrelated to God’s providence for their progeny.
• I mention their time in the garden before sin entered only because their time in the garden of paradise is the type - or parallel - of the future and eternal state of the righteous. We have very little concrete descriptions of what will be going on in heaven, apart from the praise, worship, and singing that are around the throne in the revelation given to John on Patmos Island, the commission of Isaiah to prophecy in the opening verses of Isaiah 6, and perhaps a few other glimpses.
Paul was not even permitted to describe what he saw in the “third heaven.”
• While the fall was foreknown, sin and dying weren’t God’s plan, but man’s deviation from the plan.
I will be a hard sell on the idea that it was God’s plan for Adam and Eve to sin. Even though he knew sin would happen, he didn’t lay a trap intending to cause them to sin. He intended for them to obey him. He made every necessary provision for Adam and Eve to succeed, including the choice to turn away from temptation.
God’s foreknowledge does not imply that he pre-ordains disobedience.
This is important. If anyone sees it differently, let’s discuss it.
You may be thinking “What about Pharaoh? God hardened his heart.”
Or the gentiles Paul wrote about in the first chapter of his letter to the Christians at Rome - those to whom God sent strong delusion that they might believe a lie?
God didn’t make Pharaoh sin, although he knew Pharaoh would when he was commanded “Let my people go.”
James 1:13-14 ESV Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
• However, God did have a plan for what followed the certainty of the fall.
• “God is in control” does not imply that man’s sin is caused by God.
Free will has an inseparable Siamese twin known as human responsibility.
He told them not to eat the fruit.
The choice was theirs. They ate it against, not in accordance with his plainly expressed will.
• We see nothing to suggest that there was an end date on the original arrangement in God’s plan--only sin would change the landscape.
• From the very beginning, man has had the innate ability—knowing God’s will—to choose and act contrarily to it. This ability too was part of God’s original plan - that man should VOLUNTARILY choose to obey his commandments while being capable of disobedience.
Divine providence doesn’t erase free will.
• There was an off ramp from his plan for Adam and Eve.
• The off ramp could be chosen or not.
• It was not God’s choice, but if Adam and Eve took the off ramp, God had a plan for that.
• They didn’t die because God made them die.
• Knowing the risk, they chose to believe the lie, and act on it.
• There was from the very beginning a contingency plan to redeem the fallen race.
• The contingency plan would engage only when God’s original plan as expressed was thwarted, as God knew it would be.
This, then, is God’s simple plan from the beginning. Clearly, it was all in view when “God created the heavens and the earth,” and how the fondest desire of God’s heart - that his created beings love and obey him of their own free will - was thwarted, launching the terribly costly way to man’s redemption and reconciliation.
After the ouster of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, God’s fondest desire for the humans he created did not change. He still wanted - and wants to this day - a loving relationship, and he paid dearly to realize it. He wants us to submit to his sovereignty and do his bidding voluntarily just as he wished when he placed them in the garden of paradise.
But…
There is a problem.
Next week we will examine the problem - not with the plan itself, but with the realization of it according to the providential plan. We will see how the plan in the post-garden era led to the same result as in the garden, and we will begin to see the way that God--who saw the problem from the very beginning--provided the remedy for it.
