THANKSGIVING, CHRISTMAS AND PROVIDENCE
“When the time had fully come, God sent His Son.” (Galatians 4:4)
“The Lord works out everything for His own purposes, even the wicked for the day of disaster.” (Proverbs. 16:4)
Bob Marcaurelle bobmarcaurelle@charter.net
Universal “providence” means that God is in control of every part of the universe He created. He is not like an engineer who created a train, put it on a track, got it going and jumped off to let it go forward all by itself. He governs through natural laws. When we jump off of a building and break our leg we don’t break the natural law of gravity, we illustrate it. God’s control extends to the devil and his angels. They exist because He allows them to exist and He limits what they can do.
Personal providence is when God steps in, with or without using the laws of nature, and helps or hinders individuals and nations. When 200,000 Assyrians surrounded Jerusalem in King Hezekiah prayed and every Assyrian soldier died from a plague. (xx) This violated no natural law. But when Moses turned the Nile River into real blood, He did. This should not bother us. God is not a prisoner of natural laws.
Providence and the Birth of Jesus
God’s hand is all over the birth of His Son. He came at just the right time. He prepared the world like we prepare a nursery for our first baby. If Jesus had been born 100 years earlier; His messengers would have been stopped on the land by marauding bands of thieves and hostile nations protecting their borders. They would have been stopped on the seas by Pirates. If He had been born 100 years later, there would be no Jewish nation. Rome destroyed the Temple and the city and dispersed its people in 70 AD.
God prepared it geographically tens of thousands, or millions, of years ago. Look at a map. Palestine is a tiny strip 50 miles wide and one hundred miles long; smaller than almost all of our States. But God placed it so it would be a narrow land bridge connecting three continents – Europe (NW), Asia (N) and Africa (S).
From the dawn of civilization Caravans from everywhere traveled through it. The strip sits on the Eastern shoreline of the Mediterranean Sea, the super highway of the ancient world. Growing up in the central mountains, Jesus watched caravans and ships from every nation pass by.
He prepared it religiously. The Jews gave the world the idea of one God and a religion characterized by morality and charity. People in the First Century were weary of idolatry and cruelty, and longed for what the Jews had to offer. We see this in the fact that Rome chose its finest men to be Captains (Centurions) in their Army and not one of them is presented in an unfavorable light in the New Testament. They are pictured doing such things as building Jewish Churches (Luke 7), praying to one God and helping the poor (Acts 10).
By the time of Jesus the Jews had been dispersed throughout the world by the Assyrians and Babylonians. As they settled in; as they do today, they maintained their independent culture, practiced their religion, and since the Temple was so far away, built synagogues (meeting places). These became preaching stations for missionaries all the way to the Atlantic.
God prepared the world socially and politically. The Greeks (336-323 BC) gave the entire world a universal language. Missionaries could be understood throughout the world. They created a love of wisdom and learning; so a new religion would be welcomed for discussion (Acts 18).
The Romans (63 BC) built roads that last to this day and kept the peace with an iron fist. Missionaries could travel the world protected by Rome. Strangely there was finally, a universal hope, among the major religions and even the Philosophers, for some kind of universal Savior or revealer of Truth. That is why the Magi were looking for a “King” and came 900 miles to find Him when He came (Mt. 2)
Providence and the Birth of America
“Thanksgiving” celebrates a group of English Protestants (called Puritans) who came to America to escape persecution from the Church of England in the time of King James (1611). They compared themselves to Abraham, who answered God’s call and moved himself, his family and his workers 1000 miles to a land he had never seen. Hebrews 11 called him a “Pilgrim” so they adopted that name.
This was part of wave of freedom in Western Europe orchestrated by God. In the 1450’s the first printing press was invented and the first major item printed was the Bible. Forty years after this, in 1492, Columbus stumbled across a new land trying to find a trade route to the east. That new land was North and South America. Twenty-three years after this, in 1511, an obscure Roman Catholic Monk in Germany, with no thought of starting a revolution, nailed a list of things he wanted to discuss with his church on the town bulletin board. When told about it, the Pope said, “Don’t bother with him. Its probably just another ”drunk monk”.
To gain our freedom 200 years later we had to wage the “Revolutionary War” and God’s providential hand brought us through to victory. This, along with Spanish explorers was the beginning of what we call America. The Spanish came looking for gold and slaves for the Queen, but the Puritans came for God and the freedom to worship them as they chose.
One-hundred-and-fifty years after the Pilgrims landed we had to fight to achieve freedom, and God’s hand of providence was all over our “Revolutionary War”. Here is one example. Our military commander, George Washington, when he was only 23, miraculously escaped death in the French and Indian war in 1754-1763. In one battle every officer on horseback, except him was killed. He later wrote to his brother::
“By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me.”
Providence in the Here and Now
Providence and God's Will Today
1. WE NEED TO SEEK GOD'S POWER
Our nation today is more divided and angry now than at any time in our history. We seem to be facing a hopeless situation. Racial groups, ethnic groups and sexual groups are demanding their “rights” as American citizens and thousands of angry groups are ready to resort to violence to stop them.
The greatest fear our Founding Fathers had about our form of government being able to survive, was that different people's groups had to work together and work to insure that all people will be treated fairly. Without that anger and friction would create revolution and violence. That was a preview of today. We have always had friction. It took women one hundred years to get the right to vote, and they marched all over America to get that right. The situation today however is far more widespread and hostile..
We need the providential hand of God to intervene. Our leaders’ responses to this explosive situation so far have been ineffective. Cities are defunding their Police departments in the name of giving all groups their “rights: and violent crimes are taking place in record numbers. Congress is so angrily divided that important legislations to help this have not come.
We need hope and the only place we can find that is in the providential hand of God. In the midst of the Protestant Reformation (which was a revolution), the Church of England was winning important battles all over Western Europe and Martin Luther suffered deep depression over it. His wife asked him, “Did God control the world before you were born?” He said, “Yes!” She said, “Will He be in control after you die?” Again, he said “Yes!” Then, as only a wife can do, she said, “If God controlled the universe before you were born; and will control it after you die; what makes you think He isn’t controlling it now?”
Years ago in a hospital room I rejoiced with a new mom and dad over the birth of their first child. A friend of theirs thoughtlessly said, “My husband and I have decided not to have children. We don’t feel it is right to bring a child into this kind of world.” I could not let that go. I said, “I’m glad Moses’ mother and father didn’t feel like that. Their son saved their nation.”
If ever there was a time when a couple should NOT have a baby it was then. Egyptian taskmasters were beating Jewish slaves to death and to hinder their growth, Pharaoh had ordered that all Jewish boy babies be thrown into the Nile River. But Hebrews 11 says:
“By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.” (Heb. 11:23)
E.V. Hill told of a cartoon he saw. There was an egg; then there was a crack on the top and then a little chicken’s head popped out. It looked to the front; to the right; to the back and to the left. Then it slowly slipped back down in the egg. Dr. Hill said, “Wait a minute Mister Chicken! You forgot to look up!” Let all start looking up!
When the outlook is bad we should always remember to take the “up-look.”
I must be honest and tell you that we have no idea what God wants to do with America. Billy Graham said thirty years ago, “If God spares America He should apologize to Sodom and Gomorra.” Paul Harvey told of five German soldiers sitting together in one of their long, deep trenches in World War I. They were playing with a stray dog and when it ran out into the line of fire, one of the soldiers went out to call it back. While he was gone a bomb hit where the four soldiers left behind were sitting, killing all of them. The soldier was spared; who was away looking for a dog was “Adolph Hitler”. If you or me were God that day, that man would never have been spared.
2. WE MUST SUBMIT TO GOD'S PLAN
As we do in all of our prayers, we must follow our Lord’s example and pray, “Not what I want, Father, but what You want.” (Matthew 26:37) Anyone who has walked with God for a long time knows we just cannot figure Him out or predict what He is going to do. When He surprises or even shocks us, we must have the FAITH that what He is doing is producing something “good” even though, at the time, it does not seem like something good. And we must maintain our FAITHFULNESS to Him.
Whether America survives or not, we do not know; but what we do know is that we, as Christians, will have some job He wants us to do. The best example of this is the prophet Habakkuk, around 600 BC. He and Jeremiah faced a situation much like ours.
In 587 BC the nation of Babylon invaded Judah and Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. The best people were taken to Babylon and a small group of weak people were left in the land to fend for themselves. In fact God's nation was done away with.
1) THE QUESTIONING PROPHET
Both prophets saw it coming. The people practiced horrible ways of sinning even in the Temple. (Jeremiah 7) Jeremiah wept over their sins; called them to repent and promised that if they didn’t, God would use the fierce nation of Babylon as as a boiling pot of water to pour on them as punishment against them. (Jeremiah 1) It broke his heart when they refused and he saw his predictions carried out. He is known as the “weeping prophet”.
Habakkuk was the “Questioning Prophet”. It bothered him that God would use a far worse nation than Judah to punish them. (Chapter 1), As we should do, he took his problem WITH God TO God and worked through it. He closed his book saying that if Judah did fall he would keep his faith and keep on being faithful. His words are some of the finest in the Bible and in all literature. He ended his book saying:
Though the fig tree does not blossom,
And there are no grapes on the vines,
Though the olive crop fails,
and the fields produce no food.
Though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord
I will find joy in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength! (3:17-18)
2) THE WEEPING PROPHET
When Jeremiah preached the coming terror in many ways. He wore a yoke to picture their bondage. He was not allowed to marry and have children as evidence of the dark future, Because of this the people in his home town plotted to kill him. He was sentenced to death and was saved by a voice in the crowd, He was put in stocks. His messages were burned. And he was trown into a deep cistern to die. Jewish traditions say the he went to Egypt to comfort the Jews who fled there and they sawed him in half.
THE REST OF THE STORY
Jeremiah’s tears and his and Habakkuk’s faithfulness were rewarded. The Babylonian captivity was the best thing that ever happened to God’s nation. In Babylon they realized their temple and their nation were destroyed because of their idolatry and sins; and they never worshiped idols again. Their Scribes (Rabbis) preached right living in their Synagogues all over the world until it turned into self righteousness by the time of Jesus. The whole world heard the ten commandments, the ethic our country is founded on. They gathered up the writings that produced the Old Testament Bible. Thee Jews got the courage to stand against all tyranny and, as we see today, they are ready and willing to fight and to die to keep their freedom. And most of all, Judah survived and gave Jesus to the world.
Whether America falls or not we are to call the people of God in the churches to make their salvation sure. To serve God day in and day out. to turn from every known sin and pray for God's power. If America does fall, our mission does not change. we are to have FAITH and remain FAITHFUL. Amen!
