DIVINE PROVIDENCE
This is Part 3 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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*Advance to outline slide and click to go quickly through the outline
III. God’s Plan Now and Our Problem with It
*Advance to overall schematic of the series with left column filled in
In the garden, God required simply that they tend the garden and not eat the fruit of a certain tree.
There was nothing complicated about it. They knew what he wanted and which tree he meant.
But having been driven from the garden, things were different.
The earth would now produce weeds, and the woman would bear children in pain.
There would be enmity between the woman and the serpent.
A judgment was issued upon the serpent – perhaps a snake but perhaps a creature that like others had legs and feet. Other animals had limbs to elevate their heads above the dust; the serpent tribe does not even have feet. Its head—though sometimes lifted for a time--lies on the ground. Man’s relationship with his creator—and therefore his condition—was greatly altered by the consequences of disobedience, so what does God’s plan now require?
God still had a plan, and it had requirements.
We saw in the first session of this series that God has a plan and it involves us, placing requirements on us. A multitude of scriptures affirm this. One of the features of the bible that I love is that often a single passage of scripture captures in a few words the essence of our faith, or some major aspect of it.
Several passages address the question of what God requires in that way, capturing the essence of what God required after the garden in a nutshell:
Deut 10:12-13 - And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good?
One of the ways God’s claim upon us may be viewed is captured in Eccl 12:13-14:
The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
This expression of what God requires is based on JUSTICE. Judgment is where justice is rendered.
Jesus summed up God’s present requirement in these words:
Matt 7:21 ESV "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
Matt 7:24 ESV "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”
Micah 6:8 (KJV) - He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
We’ll come back to Micah 6:8 later - something is different about this one.
As these passages affirm, what God requires of us today may be summarized as follows:
*As needed below, click through animations KNOW/CHOOSE RIGHT/OBEY/leading to…/The object…
KNOW
James 4:17 ESV- whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
How does one know what God wants of us?
How did the people of old know?
God has never had a problem letting his plans and instructions known, insofar as he wished to reveal them at the time.
Noah – Instructions for a hundred-year project. To the extent details were given, there were no degrees of freedom. To the extent Noah and his sons had to know the specs for building compartments, supports for upper levels, ballast and steerage if any, either there were no instructions or they were given in their proper time and we don’t know, or need to, which is the case.
Abraham – (1) leave your home and go where I show you, (2) offer your son Isaac for a burnt offering. Abraham wasn’t left to wonder what God wanted.
Joseph – learned God’s plan for him from dreams--
(1) brothers’ sheaves bowing down before Joseph’s
(2) “sun, moon, and stars were bowing down to ME!”
When Joseph’s brothers heard about it they were all for it, right?
Wrong.
But everything God wanted Joseph to know, Joseph knew.
He knew a dalliance with Potiphar’s wife would be wrong, and acted on that certain knowledge.
Moses, emissary to Pharaoh and lawgiver, and the prophets who came after him, knew their mission - to reveal to kings and the people what God revealed to them.
Moses’ reluctance to go to Egypt was not because God’s instructions were hard to understand.
Nor were the ten commandments hard to comprehend. When they were handed down, their meaning was clear.
Law of Moses
The first commandment of the ten commandments was broken before Moses came down from the mountain.
Moses’ breaking of the tablets signifies that the commandment was being broken while the law was being given.
What was the law for?
To give definition to sin – Romans 7:7-11 - read
The law revealed what sin was by forbidding it.
When God has something to say, he knows how to say it.
God has spoken by:
Prophets
Hebrews 1:1-2 ESV Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
The word of God
Through the word of God (John 1: 1,14) – Jesus and heir of all things and creator of the world
Paul earnestly desired to know Christ – Phil 3:8b-11
Knowing Christ goes a long way toward showing what God wants us to be.
Knowing him implies being like Christ– James 1:18-23 (“word” is logos, used 4 times in this passage, beginning with the fact that it is by the word (logos) that we are begotten.
The Holy Spirit
Knowing Christ comes from the Holy Spirit’s work of delivering the scriptures, one of the Holy Spirit’s ministries.
The Holy Spirit’s role after Jesus’ ascension was the revealer of truth, gave nothing that isn’t of Christ.
John 16:13-15 – (read depending on the time)
We would all likely agree that we know what God requires - at least in broad brush strokes.
We may have areas where we see some of his instructions in a different light among ourselves, but on the main pillars of our faith and what is required, we are in general agreement.
*Click CHOOSE (RIGHT animates automatically a second later) – it’s so painfully obvious what this means, it’s even difficult to misunderstand the principle of choice.
*Click OBEY – 2 Cor 5:10 ESV For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
Maybe - We sometimes see this shown as a 4-step or 5-step, perhaps 6-step process: FRCB, etc.
Leading to the result –
SALVATION & Everlasting life –
Parable of the sheep and goats -
Matt 25:46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
*Click for ?The object of God’s entire plan for man
I can’t find that our standard is less than this model. It is the path Jesus trod.
But I see a problem
*Click to start CHOOSE/RIGHT AND OBEY pulsing
The problem is not with God’s plan but with man’s execution of it.
Ask: Have we really followed this method of securing our salvation?
If this is the plan, and we – like Adam and Eve – have failed in executing it, can we then say that we have secured our salvation under this plan?
Broadly speaking, our problem is not with knowing what God wants us to do.
True, any one of us may see some of God’s instructions in a different light than another person, and I hope we can all agree that there is room for genuine misunderstanding of certain instructions. We may have honest disagreements about certain commandments.
But on the whole, knowing what God wants isn’t the problem I see.
But Oh! do we have difficulties always making the choice we know is right.
Our human appetites and pride cry out, “Lord it’s tough being human.”
Like Adam and Eve, we have failed to meet God’s requirements of man under his plan.
No matter how we parse things to our advantage, the harsh truth is that we don’t follow this course faithfully, as Jesus did.
Rom 3:23 tells us that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
We have heard that passage used—some of us--for generations as a proof text that everyone has sinned, but little has been said about what “falling short of the glory of God” means.
Of course it means to sin. We fall short by sinning.
I ask: What is “God’s glory” that sinning falls short of?
His complete and total holiness. His utter incompatibility with sin.
Jesus didn’t fall short of the glory of God.
Jesus’ holiness and his place at God’s right hand are merited.
I ask: Do we have any glory at all other than that which is derived from--or a dim reflection of--his holiness?
1 Pet 2:5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
But are we holy at all if we haven’t followed God’s plan?
Are we even part of the plan? (Oh yes, we’re part of it but as we have seen, we have the capability to thwart his plan with regard to ourselves.)
Once we sin, we can never render ourselves sinless by sinning no more, or sinning less!
Years ago I was served a corned beef sandwich on a long airline flight. By the time the plane landed I was feeling queasy, and by the time I retrieved my car at the airport I felt very sick. By the time I drove across the metropolitan area of Denver and got home I was so sick I could barely walk to the door.
The corned beef was tainted. I had food poisoning.
I was sicker than I had ever been in my life.
Could that tainted corned beef have been frozen to arrest further tainting and make it safe to eat?
No.
Can tainted corned beef “repent” of being tainted?
NO! It’s spoiled. It’s fit to be thrown out – the only good thing that can be done with it.
In 1978 Karl Wallenda, father of the “flying Wallendas” was attempting to walk a tight wire stretched between two towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, when he lost his balance in the wind and fell to his death.
One missed step and a 73-year life ended in one horrible instant.
Repenting of making the attempt on a windy day wouldn’t stop his fall.
Once he lost contact with the tight wire he was doomed.
CHOOSE RIGHT and OBEY vanish once and for all as even being possible.
*Click to start the vanishing sequence
SALVATION, hinging on obedience, is no more
Everlasting home in glory is gone, thwarting God’s plan for our life.
…and we are left with only KNOWing.
We Christians crave knowledge and pursue it because we believe knowledge is involved in securing our eternal home.
But knowing alone is a sorry state to be in. Let me explain.
*Click for KNOW in blue tunnel
1 Cor 15 is a beautiful chapter about the resurrection and the heavenly state.
1 Co 15:35 ESV But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?"
Paul goes on to describe the resurrected body.
But what about those who will have no body? In Paul’s next letter to the Corinthian church he speaks of longing to be clothed with his heavenly body, and describes the dreadful alternative:
2 Cor 5:1-4 – read
Verses 2-3 reveals the chilling condition of those for whom there is no heavenly body:
2 Corinthians 5:2-3 ESV For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked.
Naked! No heavenly body! No body at all!
Perhaps this may be seen as another picture of hell, along with various other descriptions:
• Rev 20:13-14, 21:8 Everlasting fire (the lake that burns with fire and brimstone); the second death)
• Matt 25:46 “eternal punishment”
• 2 Thess 1:9 “ “everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might”
• Matthew 13:50 “the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”
• This one being an eternally bodiless--but conscious--state
• When those of us resurrected to everlasting life in glory are raised up clothed in heavenly bodies, it will be a dreadful thing for those for whom there is no heavenly body and are found naked.
• Bodies of flesh are useless in the realms of glory. Those who have no heavenly body are left with…
• KNOWing, and…nothing else…just knowing…
• One of the descriptions of hell, used repeatedly by Jesus, was “outer darkness.”
*Click to return to overall plan of the series
This plan doesn’t have an un-disobey mechanism.
Sin once, and you’re a sinner.
You can’t unring a rung bell.
You can’t unbreak an egg.
Left to our own devices, were all Humpty Dumpties.
I mentioned that I got food poisoning from a tainted corned beef sandwich.
The former head nurse at our local hospital (one of our members here) says it “can be fatal.”
In my case, I think it was, but I was too sick to realize it.
Once spoiled, the corned beef was ruined and it would stay ruined.
You can’t fix spoiled meat.
After all these years, I don’t want any corned beef ever again!
Knowing what God requires and choosing disobedience goes to a very bad place.
For Adam and Eve, it meant their bodies were destined to grow old and die.
For us, it means failure to be clothed with a heavenly body on resurrection day.
*Click for slide with overall plan of the series
So do I have this right? Is this really God’s plan for man--to require obedience knowing no one will ever render it?
Are we on exactly the same footing as Adam and Eve - one strike and you’re out?
The plan in the garden did not contain a salvation feature.
Neither did the law given though Moses provide salvation for those who violated it. The law of Moses could not save a sinner.
The feature of salvation in God’s planning appeared later, and not through the law of Moses:
Romans 8:3 ESV For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the
It’s hard to deny there is a problem, and that it’s serious.
Paul saw the problem and confessed his personal struggle with it.
Rom 7:7-25 - Read in entirety
There’s a problem--and the “problem with the problem” is that once we fall, this plan as described can’t save us!
We’re off the plan. Sin was the off-ramp.
Adam and Eve couldn’t regain in the garden by ceasing to eat the fruit of that tree.
It’s a good plan—God’s plan—and it must be our standard.
But obedience to it won’t save a single sinner without Christ’s saving power, because not a single sinner has adhered to this plan.
*Click for slide with earth’s population clock.
Here’s how many people are in the world today (7,623,631,082 as of May 21, 2018) who have failed to meet this good standard?
We are all in the same boat.
It is poor comfort on a sinking ship to know that everyone else is perishing too.
What’s the answer to this dilemma?
*Click for slide that has the plan
In 1 second it will activate WE NEED HELP
This plan isn’t the problem.
The problem is that this isn’t the entire plan.
