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1 Samuel 9:16 About this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin. Anoint him leader over my people Israel
1 Samuel 9:3-4 Now the donkeys belonging to Saul's father Kish were lost, and Kish said to his son Saul, "Take one of the servants with you and go and look for the donkeys." 4 So he passed through the hill country of Ephraim and through the area around Shalisha, but they did not find them. They went on into the district of Shaalim, but the donkeys were not there. Then he passed through the territory of Benjamin, but they did not find them.
Introduction
We are in the midst of a study of 1 Samuel, and we left off last time in chapter eight and nine where Israel rejects God as their king and asks for a human king like all the other nations have. They wanted someone to deliver them from their enemies without having to bother with being committed to God. So God warned them about the terrible things that would happen to them if they followed through on this course, and that in spite of all those hardships that go along with having a king they would still not get what they really wanted, because even with a king they would still have to be committed to God in order to be safe from their enemies, and their answer to God was: “No!” They rejected God’s warning. So God punished them by answering their prayer and giving them what they most desired. He gave them tall, impressive, godless, inept Saul.
But before we move on to chapter ten, there is one more very important theme we need to see in chapter nine. This theme is crucial not only for understanding this book, but most of the Old Testament as well. And it is also crucial for understanding the nature of God and for living the Christian life. It is the doctrine of providence. “Providence is a word that does not appear anywhere in the Bible in reference to God, like the words “Trinity” or “Bible” or “The Sovereignty of God”, and yet it is a major theme in Scripture. In fact, one entire book is dedicated to showcasing it (Esther). The reason the word does not appear in Scripture is the same reason “Trinity” does not appear – because it is a word we have come up with as shorthand to describe not a doctrine, but a set of doctrines.
Definition: Control + Purpose
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia defines providence as “that preservation, care, and government which God exercises over all things … in order that they may accomplish the ends for which they were created.” God’s providence is God accomplishing all His purposes by means of all that takes place in His creation. God controls absolutely everything, and uses all of it to bring about His perfect plan.
God Controls Everything
Now I know that the first part of that – the part about God controlling everything - raises questions for many people. One reason it raises questions is because it is beyond human understanding how God could control everything and there still be such a thing as free will on the part of humans. I believe humans do have free will. If they didn’t, it would be misleading for Scripture to talk about free will offerings, for one thing. Man does have free will. Man does have the capacity to choose Coke or Pepsi. But once you make your choice, it is also true that God was in full control of the outcome of your decision making, just like He is in full control of everything else that ever happens.
Ps.135:6 The LORD does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths
Dan.4:35 He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: "What have you done?"
Eph.1:11 we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will
Isa.46:10-11 I make known the end from the beginning, … I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. 11 … What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do.
This includes both blessing and calamity.
1 Sam.2:6-7 The LORD brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up. 7 The LORD sends poverty and wealth; he humbles and he exalts.
Job 2:10 Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?"
Lam.3:38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?
Isa.45:7 I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.
Amos 3:6 When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?
Ecc.7:14 When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other.
You will never be able to appreciate the providence of God until you understand that God controls all things. Sometimes people do not like living with the paradox of free will and the sovereignty of God, and so they water down one side or the other. Some people want to water down free will, and say there is no free will – we are essentially robots.
The other side wants to water down the sovereignty of God and say that God doesn’t really control everything. People like that will read Romans 8:28, where God promises to work all things together for good for those who are called, and the say, “That does not really mean that God controls everything. It just means God allows people to exercise their free will, and then He comes along behind them and makes the best of what they have done.” So evil people do evil things outside of the control of God, and then God comes along afterward and kind of patches things up.
That is not what the Bible says. You cannot have God be sovereign over everything except human decision-making. So much of what happens is determined by human decision-making, that if God is in control of everything but that, He is not really in control at all. If He is not in charge of what people end up deciding to do, what good are His promises to protect me or care for me or guide me? Besides, the Bible is very explicit and clear about God’s control over the outcome of human decision-making.
Pr.21:1 The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.
Pr.16:1 To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the reply of the tongue.
Pr.16:9 In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.
Pr.20:24 A man's steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way?
God is in control of whether you have favor or disfavor in someone else’s eyes – so He is in control even of people’s affections. Acts four is talking about the people who murdered the Son of God on a cross.
Acts 4:28 They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.
People are free to decide however they please. They are not coerced against their will to think or decide anything. And yet, when they do what they want to do it ends up being exactly what God determined beforehand should happen. Do not conclude from this that God is in any sense the author of evil. He is not the author of evil directly or indirectly. (James 1:11-13) When there is an evil action, the evil part of it comes from human beings, and all of the good in that same event comes from God. God only does good. In speaking of the horrible sins of Joseph’s brothers Joseph said…
Gen.50:20 You intended evil against me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
Purpose
Pay careful attention to that word “intended.” The reason the word “providence” was chosen to describe this doctrine is because the Latin roots of the word have to do with intention and purpose. God controls all things – but that, by itself, is not the doctrine of Providence. Providence is much more than that. In His providence God not only controls all things, but He has intention behind all things.
Probably the most basic characteristic of a rational being is that a rational beings act with reference to an end, or purpose. Everything a rational being decides to do has some purpose. And God is a rational being. So if God has a purpose in mind for everything that He does, and He controls all things that ever happen, that means He has a purpose in mind for every single event that ever happens. Everything God does He does intentionally. He does it on purpose, in order to accomplish some end. So it is not enough to just believe that God controls everything.
God not only controls everything, but is causing everything that happens to happen for the purpose of accomplishing some goal. And God does not have any small goals – all His purposes are eternal purposes. He is not shortsighted about anything. I do not know how that lands on you when you hear it, but what it should do is fill up every single thing that happens in your life with eternal significance. The doctrine of the providence of God should pump your life full of eternity. Nothing is unimportant, because the doctrine of providence connects everything to God eternal purposes.
W.B. Pope: “Providence is the most comprehensive term in the language of theology. It is the background of all the several departments of religious truth, a background mysterious in its commingled brightness and darkness. It penetrates and fills the whole compass of the relations of man with his Maker. It connects the unseen God with the visible creation, and the visible creation with the work of redemption, and redemption with personal salvation, and personal salvation with the end of all things. It carries our thoughts back to the supreme purpose which was in the beginning with God, and forward to the foreseen end and consummation of all things, while it includes between these the whole infinite variety of the dealings of God with man”
Providential Propulsion: “I will send him”
The Sending of Saul
The reason I took the time for all that is because understanding providence is essential for understanding Old Testament narrative – especially 1 Samuel nine. God is always carrying out His providential work, but there are some times when it is especially important for us to take notice of it. This chapter is one of those times, and we know that because of verse 16.
Let me just refresh your memory as to what is going on. Saul is out looking for his father’s lost donkeys, and is getting nowhere. So finally he decides to give up and just head back home. But the servant has the bright idea to ask Samuel about the donkeys, since he happens to be in the town that they were passing.
Saul has never heard of Samuel, and he does not like the idea anyway because he does not have any money to pay Samuel for his services. But the servant digs down in his pocket and finds some silver, and talks Saul into going. So they start heading toward town, and they run into some girls on their way to draw water. It makes me chuckle every time I listen to this chapter on my Bible on CD. They ask these girls one simple question and the girls volunteer a whole lot of information.
11 … they asked them, "Is the seer here?"
And the answer these girls give goes all the way down to verse 14. It was a yes or no question, and the girls tell them the answer to that, and where he is, and why he is there, and what he is doing, and how to find him, and the people will not eat until he comes to bless the sacrifice, and then the people will eat, and so they should really go right now and hurry, and maybe they will catch him. Every time I listen to that I think, “It is probably a good thing that they did not bump into some guys walking out of the city. Their answer to the question “Is the seer here?” would have been, “yeah” and that would have been the end of it. But the girls tell them not only where Saul is, but they explain that they need to hurry.
So after this whole description of seemingly random events that brings Saul to Samuel, we find out in verses 15 and 16 that God wants us to think of those events in terms of His providence.
15 Now the day before Saul came, the LORD had revealed this to Samuel: 16 "About this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin. Anoint him leader over my people Israel
God said, “On a certain day at a certain time of day I will send this man to you.” How does God send a man like Saul to a meeting like this and make sure he is not early or late? Did He do it with a voice from heaven: “Saul, go to Zuph and be sure to arrive at 11:00 on Thursday”? No. He just let some natural process happen that resulted in the donkeys getting out. And the donkeys, using their own free donkey will, chose to wander wherever they pleased. And Saul’s dad, using his own free will, picked Saul and that servant to go chase them. And Saul, using his own substandard donkey wrangling skills, ended up near Zuph, a place that was nowhere near the donkeys, but where Samuel happened to be. And the girls decided to go get water just because they needed water, because their families had been drinking the amounts they felt like drinking. And they happened to be informed, friendly, talkative girls who tell them to hurry. And the servant happened to know about Samuel, and happened to have a piece of silver on him. You have a whole lot of people and even animals just wandering around doing whatever they want to do – that is how God sends a guy like Saul to Zuph. He did not say, “He will come” He said, “I will send him.”
That is how God sends you where you need to be. He does it by just letting everybody run around doing whatever they choose to do. He does it by letting fences break down because of some rotting wood that rotted because of normal, natural processes, or some careless family member forgetting to shut the gate. God will let your transmission go out, or see to it that you run out of milk, or that you need to stop at the bank, or whatever it takes to get you in just the right place at just the right time.
More amazing than miracles
I have said many times, I am more amazed and astonished by providence than I am by miracles. Because miracles I can understand. It is easy to understand the concept of a big God wanting to get something done, so He just reaches down, interrupts the normal flow of things, and does it directly. That is pretty much the same way we get things done, except on a smaller scale. That I can understand.
But what boggles my mind is providence. How does God just let a wooden fence rot at its natural rate, and let donkeys do whatever they want, and let Saul’s dad respond however he pleases, and let Saul go wherever he thinks the donkeys might be, and let the servant put whatever he wants into his pocket before he leaves, and let the girls get water whenever they need water, and still see to it that Saul ends up in exactly the right place at the right time? I cannot even begin to think about how God does that. Miracles are kind of like an act of a human being, except expanded out to a size that would require more power than human beings have. But nothing we do is like providence. There is no human analogy. I never understand why some Christians seem to be more impressed with miracles than with providence. If I pray and ask God to let me arrive at a meeting on time even though I left the house late, if He just miraculously picks me up and transports me through the air like Philip, that miracle would be impressive. But what is far more impressive to me is if He does it by means of providence. If He sees to it that all the lights are green and I cross the tracks just before the train comes and I find a parking spot right in front. Because for God to use providence to make sure a stoplight is green at a certain moment, He has to have that in mind all the way back however many years prior when the cycle on that light was first set. And the same goes for all the other lights. Plus, He has to make sure those lights will be the right signal at the right time for each of the millions of people who will ever come to that intersection over the years. And beyond that, God has to do that by just letting some traffic engineer determine whatever he thought would be the best cycle. And that engineer’s decision will be shaped by thousands of factors going all the way back to when he was born. The same goes for the train. For me to beat the train God has to have had been at work a long time ago whenever the schedules were being set for the departure of that train, which was determined by people with free will who were deciding based on whatever they thought best.
If you went into a really messy preschool at the end of the day and picked up everything and put it exactly where you wanted it, that might be somewhat impressive if it is a lot of stuff. But how much more impressive if you just let 50 preschoolers do whatever they pleased, and then at the end of the day, without you intervening in anyway, saw to it that each item ended up exactly where you planned for it to end up – that would really be amazing. But what if instead of 50 preschoolers it is the tens of billions of human beings who have lived on this planet since creation?
What an amazing thing God’s providence is! When you start to think of all the variables involved – your parents make one decision a little differently, that results in you being born a year earlier than you were born, and you would have had all different friends in school, met all different people - and all those people’s lives would have been different. I forget my sunglasses and have to run back in the house to get them, and I am a couple minutes later getting to the store. So now a different person makes a green light because I am not where I would have been in traffic, and that person arrives somewhere at a different moment and bumps into a different person and ends up having a different conversation, and the chain of differences goes on forever – just from me forgetting my sunglasses one time. And that is multiplied times all the human beings in the world, and that astronomical number is multiplied by the number of decisions all those people make – not to mention the decisions of all the animals that effect circumstances and the events of nature. The sun happens to flare, and that along with several other events creates a whether pattern, which, just because of the laws of physics happens to join up with another whether pattern, and the result is two inches of snow instead of a dusting, and as a result of that one of your loved ones slides off the road and is killed. Or maybe slides off the road and is unhurt, saving her life from the head on collision she would have had a moment later if she had not slid of the road. To orchestrate all that in order to bring about one certain outcome in the end would be a feat beyond comprehension. But to be able to orchestrate all that, to bring about billions and billions of outcomes – every outcome there is - to be in line with His plan is a work of wisdom and power so far beyond the ability of words to describe that it breaks out of the very capacities of human imagination.
What an amazing thing it is to be the child of a God who can do that, as easily as you can think a thought! And who is only good; A God who has promised all of His fullness to you, and who controls absolutely everything; everything! Even decisions donkeys make; The decisions your dog makes; The decisions your boss makes, your children make, you make; The things that happen to your piece of junk washing machine; The bizarre inexplicable processes within Windows Vista – everything! Who could have imagined that this assignment from Saul’s father – “Go find the donkeys” or the girls, “Go get some water” was a sending by God on a mission of national and global and universal and cosmic significance?
Loud and quiet providence
Compared to miracles, providence seems dull and unimpressive at first glance. And beyond that, among God’s providential acts, some of those seem more like acts of God than others. When big, life-shaking events happen it is not uncommon to hear someone say, “God is really doing something.” If a ministry is struggling financially and an unexpected anonymous gift for a million dollars comes in, it is immediately assumed that God is getting ready to do some great work. In times of huge, massive trials as well as times of wonderful, grand blessings our eyes tend to open up wide to see what God is doing.
But just as it is wrong to assume that God is more at work in miracles than in providence, it is equally wrong to assume that God’s providence is more at work in big, unusual events than in common, ordinary events. God’s providential work in getting Joseph into Pharaoh’s court was through big, unusual events. It is not every day you get sold into slavery by your brothers or falsely accused and thrown into prison as an innocent man in a foreign country. But the providential work of God to “send” Saul to Samuel, was through events that were as small and ordinary as they come – a farm chore. What is more common and ordinary than looking for something that is lost? But God was no less at work in Saul’s circumstances than in Joseph’s. God’s quiet providence is no less powerful or important than His loud providence. The builder who halts other activities in order to let the cement of the foundation dry accomplishes just as much toward the final goal as the one who is loudly cutting boards and hammering nails. William Blaikie “We cannot but see how silently, secretly, often slowly, yet surely, He accomplishes His purposes. There are certain rivers in nature that flow so gently, that when looking at the water only, the eye of the spectator is unable to discern any movement at all. Often the ways of God resemble such rivers. Looking at what is going on in common life, it is so ordinary, so absolutely quiet, that you can see no trace whatever of any Divine plan. Things seem left to themselves, and God appears to have no connection with them. And yet, all the while, the most insignificant of them is contributing towards the accomplishment of the mighty plans of God. By means of ten thousand times ten thousand agents, conscious and unconscious, things are moving on toward the grand consummation.” Things are never “left to themselves.” So learn to enjoy both His loud and His quiet providence. God is just as much at work in your daily chores and minor “mishaps” as He is in big, life changing moves or job changes.
Learn to Love Providence (Enjoy the benefits)
The main goal of the sermon this morning is to urge you to develop a pattern of noticing and enjoying God’s providence. Let me just suggest five benefits to doing that (I am sure there are many more, but this will get your thinking started).
1. 24/7 access to fellowship with God
First, taking notice of and enjoying God’s providence will give you constant, 24/7 access to fellowship with God. God’s providence is constant. Sometimes people read the Bible and see statements about “God did this” and “God did that” And they assume that it must be referring to extraordinary, supernatural means - a voice from heaven or a pillar of fire. And people like that tend to think God is not at work in their lives because they do not see a lot of miracles and they do not hear voices from heaven. And so they wonder “Why was God so active in Bible times and so inactive now?”
So it is a precious, wonderful thing when the Bible writers every once in a while show us that, when they say that God did something it is usually by means of normal, mundane, ordinary circumstances. And that is just as much God’s work as when He does miracles. It sounds like it might be supernatural because the narrator lets us know what God’s purposes were. But if you had been there and seen it for yourself, it would have seemed like normal, natural circumstances.
One of the greatest examples of that is the book of Esther. There Is not a single reference to God in that whole book. That is not an accident. The writer of Esther did not get to the end and say, “Oh! I forgot to mention God!” God is the main character in the book. But instead of pointing to God’s actions the writer points to God’s purposes. Esther becomes queen with no mention of God’s involvement, but then come these wonderful words:
“And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?" (4:14).
“Esther, you have been placed in this position at this time for a purpose.” But for whose purpose? Certainly not the king’s. It was God’s purpose. The writer of Esther masterfully demonstrates the marvelous work of God without ever explicitly mentioning God in order to teach us how to think about providence when looking at it from the earthly perspective without the benefit of a biblical narrator.
Once you understand that God’s providence is ongoing 24/7, think of the implications for fellowship with Him. You have fellowship with God when you consciously experience and enjoy the expression of one of His attributes. There are some kinds of fellowship with God that are not available all the time (for example the kind we are enjoying right now – when God is present in a special way when all the saints are gathered together). You cannot experience God’s beauty in a spectacular sunset or God’s deliverance from a certain calamity any moment you want to. But God’s providential work is going on all around you at every moment. And so just imagine the fellowship and communion we could have with God if we could learn to enjoy the experience of being in the middle of the unfolding of His perfect plan. There would never be a time when you could not have joy!
2) Fills every part of life with meaning (Watch the movie)
Secondly, being aware of and enjoying God’s providence will fill up your life with meaning. It is kind of comical, if you think about it, how interested we are in movies. There are times when everyone in the theater is on the edge of their seat watching someone walk down a hallway or dial a phone. The reason we are so interested in the details of a movie is because in a movie we know that each thing they show has some relevance to the story. If the camera zooms in on someone’s eyes as he glances at the clock, then we know there is some significance to that. And when we cannot see how something is relevant it makes us even more interested, because we know it must be relevant, and that eventually we will see how.
But if you understand the doctrine of the providence of God you know that everything, down to the smallest movement of a single molecule, has a grand, eternal purpose. For some of them He has revealed what the purpose is. For others we have to do the same thing we do when we watch a movie – realize there is a purpose for it that will eventually be revealed. When you see heavy traffic, or crowds of people scurrying around like ants on an anthill, people going every which way, thousands of things happening all at once, sit back and marvel over the fact that all of it is being carefully orchestrated by a perfect, infinitely good being who loves you, and is doing every one of those actions for a grand purpose, fitting it all together to accomplish His exact intention, which will result in the greatest possible glory for His name, which will give us the greatest possible enjoyment of Him. And then just rejoice and enjoy being the child of such a God! It is better than just watching a movie, because you’re in this movie!
What a blessed thing it is to belong to a God who works all things together for good for us! A God who arranges high-level meetings by the wanderings of some wayward donkeys; Who saves a nation by means of the sins of some jealous brothers, the movements of a caravan, the outcome of a slave auction, the lust of an adulteress, and the dreams of some prisoners - A God who brings about the prophesied details of the birth of the Savior of the world through the decision of some pagan official regarding the administrative, political details of a census. How utterly impossible it would have been for that guy in Jerusalem to know, when he purchased a donkey, that he was a tool in the hand of God to provide the mount for the Triumphal Entry of the Savior of the world! How oblivious was Naomi, when she said, “Call me ‘bitter’ because I went away full and came back empty” to the fact that standing next to her was the great grandmother of king David, and that she would be in the messianic line! What a small, irrelevant, mundane action it must have seemed like when a Jewish mother packed a little lunch with some loaves and fishes for her child that day, or when a Samaritan woman decided to head out to the well outside Sychar to draw water. Who could have guessed that when Lamech met some woman through some chance encounter that they would end up married and would give birth to a little guy who would grow up to be the only remaining godly man in the world, and who would build and ark that would save humanity from total annihilation?
3) Painful providence gives meaning to suffering
Some acts of God’s providence are incredibly painful. And you might think at first – “That thing that happened was so horrible, I do not want to think about it as coming from God.” How are we to think about God’s acts of providence that bring harm and pain? God’s providential work does bring harm to some people, but never to believers.
Ps.121:7 The LORD will keep you from all harm
God promises total safety and protection for the believer. And yet it doesn’t seem like we enjoy total protection. Horrible, dreadful, evil things happen to us. We suffer hardship, sickness, trials, sorrow, and even death. In fact, Scripture promises we will suffer those things and reminds us not to be surprised when they come as though something strange were happening (1 Pe.4:12). So how can Scripture promise suffering and also promise total protection from harm? Obviously, God’s idea of harm does not match our idea of harm. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Luke 21:16-18. Jesus said:
You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death… 18 But not a hair of your head will perish.
We will suffer loss, persecution and death; but never actual harm – even to a single hair on our head. The benefit that God works through our suffering in this life so outweighs the suffering that it is not even worth comparing them.
Just as an infant feels that the discomfort of a diaper change or going down for a nap is an intolerable evil and cannot imagine how it could be anything but harm, the loving mother knows that in the long run those things are for the best and will make the child happier.
Psalm 4:8 I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.
The reason he could lie down and sleep in such peace is because he knew that no matter what happened – even if some illness came upon him in the night, or an enemy put a spear through him – no matter what, he would suffer no real harm. People in the world may suffer meaningless, useless pain; but that never happens to a Christian. And that is because of the purpose behind God’s providence. When people in the world suffer, it is just meaningless. But we can be assured that all of our pain is utterly necessary and brings about only our good. We never suffer anything that is not worth the benefit that is being wrought.
4) Defeats sin
So learning to be aware of and to enjoy the providence of God enables you to have 24/7 access to fellowship with God, it will fill up your life with meaning, and it will carry you though suffering. Fourth, think of how many different sins would be conquered in your life. What do you think would happen to your sinful anger, for example? When your kids or husband or wife or boss or co-worker does something that normally makes you mad; if you happen to be looking at things from the perspective of the human side only (like an atheist), it is going to make you mad. But if at that moment you happen to be enjoying the experience of being right in the middle of God’s perfect plan, and you are enjoying watching the providential unfolding of all God’s purposes, so that whatever your boss or kids or husband does, instead of focusing mainly on their sinful role, you are focused on God’s wonderful, eternal, perfect purposes, you are going to have a lot more joy than anger.
Knowing there is a good enough purpose kills the anger. If someone or some thing delays you for five minutes for no good purpose, that makes you mad. But if you are delayed five minutes in order to save the lives of 100 people, it would not bother you a bit. If you had to pick something up off the floor for no good reason, you might get mad at whoever left it there. But if you could bring an end to the slave trade world wide just by picking up someone else’s mess off the floor, you would be thrilled to do it. If we could somehow have our eyes opened to the doctrine of providence and learn to enjoy the experience of it every day, sinful anger would be out the window.
So would worry. If you see God controlling everything, and you know that He only does good things, what is there to worry about? Complaining would be out of the picture; anxiety would drop out of your life, cowardice would be a thing of the past, pride would be deflated. (It is hard to get too puffed up about something Someone else is doing). On the other hand, how much would it crank up the volume of your thanksgiving? Think of what it would do for your joy and peace? Imagine the impact on your generosity. How much would your love for God increase each day as you watched Him at work?
5) The river of providence: certainty of progress
One more – enjoying the providence of God will increase your hope and joy in the final redemption of all creation. The more aware you are of God’s providence the more you will think about God’s purposes behind all that He does, and the more you will appreciate the certainty on the ultimate, final purpose of all things. I love the analogy of thinking of God’s providential work as being like a river. The other day I was out walking and praying and it just hit me that the seconds ticking off my watch – the passing of time, is carrying me along toward God’s final purposes and the consummation of all things with unstoppable force. God’s work rushes ahead like a mighty river, and I can no more hold back the flow of time than I could stand before the Zambezi river and put out my hand and stop the billions of tons of current. I would just be swept along without the slightest disruption if its flow. And it just hit me that I was at that moment – and every moment, being swept along by the river of divine providence. I am in the river, and so I am absolutely, positively not going anywhere except where that river is going. And that river is flowing toward the wonderful, marvelous, magnificent, glorious consummation of all things. It is flowing toward the purpose God had in mind when He did every single thing He has ever done since the creation. And whether I resist the current or submit to it, either way I am swept along at the same speed. The final climax of God’s plan is as certain as anything could be, and it is getting closer with each second that ticks off the clock, whether I am awake or asleep.
What an amazing thing to be able to look around and see all the events going on around me, and realize: that is the current. I am being swept along – carried by a force billions of times greater than I. A force controlled by a person; Controlled by - my Father who loves me; - my God, who does only good; - my Savior who redeems what was ruined and hopeless; - my Creator who made me on purpose for a reason; - my King who reigns over all.
Benediction: Heb 12:28-29 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, 29 for our "God is a consuming fire."
