Matthew 2:11-23
The Providence of God
Woodlawn Baptist Church
December 29, 2003
Introduction
Do you believe that God is directly involved in the affairs of man? that He is actively working in the world today? Or better yet, do you believe that God is actively working in your life today? Many believe that He is not. They may believe in God, but so far as His involvement with man is concerned, some people believe that God created the earth and all that is in it, got the ball rolling so to speak, and then stepped back to see what happened. The Bible is clear in its teaching that God is, always has been and will continue to be directly and closely involved in our lives. As Paul was reasoning with the people of Athens in Acts 17, he explained to them that although they didn’t know Him, God was very near to them, and in fact was only as far away as they made Him, for God is ready and willing to be a part of any life that is willing for Him to be so. Then Paul made a statement that I want you to hear. He said,
“For in him we live, and move, and have our being…”
I know you heard me, but I want to say it again: “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” The Scriptures affirm this fact over and over. In Colossians 1 we are told that by Him all things consist. In Hebrews 1:3 we are told that all things are upheld by the power of Christ. If you look at that word upheld, it is the Greek word phero, which means to carry something from one place to the next. In other words, Jesus isn’t just holding everything up, He is continually carrying all things along, actively involved in bringing events to pass so that our lives fulfill His purposes. In Genesis, the Bible tells us that God formed man from the dust of the ground and then breathed into him the breath of life. Job 34:14-15 tell us that if God were to remove His Spirit and His breath from the earth that all life would cease to exist! I don’t know about you, but that tells me God is involved in my life!
Once you and I realize that God is at work in our lives, and that nothing you can do will change that fact, then the question Why? arises. Why is God at work in my life? Generally speaking, the answer to that question is the same for everyone, for God has expressed His purpose for man in His Word. He is at work in the world for one purpose – and that is to glorify and exalt Himself. Everything that happens happens for that reason. I want you to look at Ephesians 1:9-12. Paul said,
“Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: that in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.”
You see, God’s eternal purpose is to glorify Himself – and because God is sovereign He is going to do what He wants to do. So far as it concerns you and me, God’s purpose is that we “be to the praise of his glory.” God’s purpose for us is that we exalt and glorify Him! Everything that happens, everything He does, everything that occurs in the world happens with that chief end in mind: God working in the world, bringing events to pass, so that everything moves in that one direction – the glorifying of God the Father through God the Son!
Now, I have said that generally speaking, that is God’s purpose for all of mankind. You and I have that one same purpose – but specifically speaking, God’s purposes for each of us can be very different. In other words, even though God is at work in your life and in my life to bring honor and glory to Himself, how He goes about that work in our lives may be very different. Every one of us has been distinctly formed with talents, abilities, personalities, desires, interests and emotions that God uses to accomplish His purposes. You see, think of mankind, or any unit in it: churches, families, nations, or any other group as a box of puzzle pieces. Each piece in the box is shaped with its own individuality and colors, but God takes each piece and fits them all together to form the bigger picture. You and I sitting in the box can’t always see or understand what God is after as He works in our lives, but He has given us something that will help us if we allow it to. When you are working on a puzzle, how many of you throw away the box with the picture on it? When I work a puzzle, I keep the box propped up in front of me so I can see what I am working toward – and I think the Bible does that. It gives us the big picture – the thing that God is after, and while it doesn’t give us the specifics about everything He is doing in our lives, this one thing is still clear – He is actively at work every moment using our actions, our behavior, our decisions, every part of who we are, as individual as we are – to bring glory to Himself! It has been said that God cooperates with created things in every action, directing their distinctive properties to cause them to act as they do.
We’ve been following the story of the incarnation in Matthew’s gospel the last three Sundays. We began in the genealogy, where we saw the sovereignty of God at work. I told you that God is sovereign, which means that God does whatever makes Him happy, and He is perfectly right in doing so – after all, He is God! We then moved on to see the wonder of God. I asked you to stop and think about what God did when He took 100% of Himself and took on the limitations of man, placing His only begotten Son in the hands of a couple of Jewish teenagers, helpless and defenseless, so He might save man from his sin. What God did on that day long ago is more wonderful than words can describe! Last Sunday I showed you that God wants to receive your worship for His King – worship that is expressed by your willingness to seek Him, to give to Him your life, and by your willingness to make His agenda your agenda, walking differently than you did before you met Him. Today, as we finish reading the account I want you to watch God’s hand at work in the lives of those mentioned. Let’s read Matthew 2:11-23.
“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way. And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: and was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son. Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life. And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee: and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.”
As I reread this story again and again this week, the Lord allowed me to see some things I had not noticed before. Remember, just as God is at work in our lives, He was at work in their lives also, and for a very specific reason. He brought this Christ child into the world for the one reason mentioned in chapter 1, “to save His people from their sins.” Jesus was born so He might die on the cross of Calvary. That’s what His entire life was about. Everything God did or would do would lead up to that one pivotal point in history, so watch God’s hand at work in this chapter.
In verse 13, the Lord sent an angel to Joseph in a dream and instructed him to move his wife and child to Egypt. Now, how would a young man like Joseph be able to follow the Lord’s instructions on the budget of a young carpenter? He wasn’t even 20 years old and certainly wasn’t a wealthy man – how would he make this journey and then support his family while once he arrived? After all, it would take time for him to establish a name for himself in a new land so that he could keep steady work. How would he do it? The answer is in verse 11. What had they just been given?
God had led the magi all the way to Bethlehem with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, gifts of great worth that would be used to support our Savior’s family during the months that lay ahead. The gifts themselves showed us foresight of God. Gold was a gift fit for a king. Frankincense was a gift that showed us Christ as our High Priest, and myrrh was the embalming ointment that reminded us of His looming death.
Wednesday morning I was thinking about these three gifts as I watched my own kids looking at the presents they would open that night and I wondered what Joseph must have thought when this man gave embalming ointment to his son as a gift. I can understand gold. I can understand incense, but why would anyone give embalming ointment as a gift? Because God was at work behind the scenes showing us through the gifts who Jesus was, what He had come to do, and what it would cost Him! God was also at work behind the scenes providing valuable assets that would be used by Joseph and his young family as they moved from Israel to Egypt where they would live for a short while to escape the wrath of Herod.
What about Herod anyway? Isn’t God all powerful? Isn’t God in complete control of the world? Did you ever wonder why God chose to move Joseph to Egypt when He could have just killed Herod? In fact, if God is the one in control of kings and nations, why didn’t He just look ahead in history and never allow Herod to be in power during that time? It was within God’s power to do so, right? Herod was a wicked man. He was responsible for the deaths of many people. He had risen to fame at a young age and secured his position as ruler, but he lived a very insecure life. If he felt threatened by anyone, he had them killed. He was married ten times because he kept killing his wives, so it comes as little surprise to me in verse 16 that Herod had all the children two years old and under killed in the region. He wasn’t going to idly sit around when some kid was out there who had been prophesied about to be King of the Jews.
There seem to be so many things God could have done. Why did Jesus have to come twice? He could have just made Him king the first time and put an end to all the violence. He could have prevented Herod from ruling so that all those innocent children wouldn’t have died. You might even think of some other things, but the fact is that this is how God did it and the reason is in verse 17, “that it might be fulfilled…”
After the death of Herod, the angel instructs Joseph to move back, but again, when there is a wicked ruler in control, he is instructed to go to Nazareth where he could lay low for a while, again in verse 23, “so it might be fulfilled.”
Remember what I said earlier about Hebrews 1:3? God carries all things along? Each time God does a thing, He does it or allows it in order that the next thing might occur, and as these seemingly isolated events occur they all come together to form the picture He is working on. Ephesians 1 said that He accomplishes all things according to the counsel of His will, and what all these verses and all these passages and all these stories come together to say is that God is a God of Providence!
You see, so many believers are living their lives with this subconscious idea that what happens in our lives is fate or luck. The other day I heard a man offering prayer before a Christmas meal. This is what he said, “…and God, we want to thank you that we are lucky enough to enjoy things that so many people can’t enjoy…” Lucky enough? Is that what it is? Am I to believe that I am here today because I was lucky enough to pastor this great church and the guy down the street wasn’t? “It was written in the stars…” “That’s the way the cookie crumbles…” “As fate would have it…” Listen, those are words that ought never pass over the lips of a child of God.
Do you know what providence is? The word providence means foresight. Everything that happens in your life happens because God is actively at work in your life. He has a wonderful plan for your life: He wants to receive worship and honor and glory from you. He wants to make you and mold you into the image of His Son Christ. He wants to use you in His service to lead others to Christ, and everything that happens to you or in you or through you happens because the providential hand of God is at work either making it or allowing it to happen!
Think about our passage in Matthew again. When things happen in your life, good or bad, you are prone to ask why. I think there are at least three reasons given in our text.
God acts providentially to provide for you.
You can’t always see how God does this like we see what He did for Joseph. God led these men to give these gifts for various reasons, but one of them was to provide for their material needs. God acts providentially in your life to provide for you. I have told you before that I worked as a carpenter for about a year and a half while I was in seminary, and I believe God gave me that job so I could learn some things I would need to know as a pastor. In fact, we couldn’t have done the remodel at the parsonage with such a low budget had He not allowed me to learn the things I learned. What I may not have told you is how I got that job. I had never met the guys I worked for. I wasn’t looking for the job. I was about to start a job that week that I was absolutely dreading. It was going to keep me away from home in the evenings and I would have to work weekends, but I needed the work. I was sitting at home when the phone rang. The guy on the other end introduced himself to me and asked me if I would come to work for him and his partner. They needed help building a house and would possibly need me to stay on afterward. He offered me $10 an hour, no nights, a few Saturdays, no Sundays, and told me that any time school or preaching demanded my time, they would let me off.
Time won’t permit me to tell you how they found out about me, or why they hired me with no experience, but I can tell you this: God had providentially been at work for months working out the necessary circumstances that would lead up to that day, and He providentially used that experience to provide for me and our church today.
When God allowed the Old Testament Joseph to be sold into slavery by his brothers, he had good reason to ask why that was happening to him. He went from slavery to prison before he was elevated to second in command in Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. When Daniel was taken captive and carried into Babylonian captivity and made a eunuch, he had no idea God was at work in his life doing what would happen.
You look back over your life and you can remember those isolated events, but can you see that God was at work putting the pieces together to form this beautiful tapestry that you would call your life and bring you to the place you are now? If you will but look, you will see the same hand of God that was at work in Christ’s life at work providing for you. It is not always money or work; God may have been at work providing you with skills, or with training, or with a family, or even some other thing, but regardless of what it is that He provides, He has been at work all along providing it.
God acts providentially to protect you.
He acted providentially to protect Jesus. He did the same for others in the Bible. When Jonah was thrown overboard into the Mediterranean Sea, why didn’t he drown? When the three Hebrew men were thrown into the fiery furnace, why didn’t they burn? When the prophet ate the widow woman’s last meal, why didn’t she starve? Some of you tell me stories of your youthful foolishness – driving at breakneck speed, pulling stunts that should have gotten you killed, work related accidents, surgeries and such that could have gone wrong – why are you still here? All those times you tell those stories you end them with something like, “It’s a wonder I’m still here.” No – its because of God’s providence that you’re still here!
Listen, it doesn’t have to be some strange or freak survivalist story. Every day is filled with opportunity for your life to be in danger. There are dangers you can see and dangers you can’t see. You saw the car pull out in front of you, but did you see the demons of darkness fighting against you? The Bible says that we don’t war against flesh and blood, but against a spiritual enemy that your eyes can’t see. You can’t see that enemy, and you can’t see the armor you’re supposed to be putting on each day – but you can know that there is a God in heaven who loves you and is actively involved in your life to protect you from dangers each day – seen and unseen.
God acts providentially in His own timing.
I asked a lot of questions earlier, like why didn’t God do this or that? Sometimes the only plausible explanation is that God is working on His time scale and not ours. There were reasons Herod had to be in power, reasons Jesus needed to lay low, reasons that Jesus couldn’t take the throne as King the first time. We don’t necessarily need to know the reasons – we just need to understand that God is working in His own timing.
Now, God’s timing in our lives is a funny thing. Sometimes God’s timing is determined by our own willingness and readiness. For instance, God may have been trying to lead you in a certain direction some time ago, but because of your sinfulness or unwillingness that thing had to wait. I know that there have been many times when I thought to myself, “I wish I could have gone to seminary right out of high school like the other guys.” But looking back I know this to be true – God was working in His timing to put me there when I would gain the most from it and be mature enough to stick it out.
Some of you have been praying for some thing for a very long time now – it may be a thing for you or for some other person. Unless God has told you no, keep praying and remember that God works to accomplish His will in His time – not yours.
So what do you do with God’s providence? I mean, it is one of those things that we can know to be true about God, but what difference does it really make whether I understand it or not? I believe that your understanding that God acts providentially in your life should lead to these responses.
Trust
If God has been at work providing for and protecting you all this time, and you can see that He has been at it all through the ages, then how can you not trust Him with today and tomorrow? Why do we fret over things that we can’t control? Jesus said that we ought to look at the birds of the air and the flowers of the field – they don’t fret or worry about their needs, why should we? God knows that you need food and shelter, and He’ll provide it for you every time right on time – so why worry? Now, the absence of worry is not the same as sitting back and doing nothing. I can sit here on Thursday and know that Sunday is coming. I know that God has given me His word and a brain and His Spirit and that come Sunday a message needs to be delivered. I know that God already knows what needs to be preached, so I don’t have to worry about what to preach, but not worrying about it doesn’t mean that I can spend the week goofing off – I need to be working diligently doing my part so God can do His part. As I work, I trust that He will lead and guide and provide.
Let me ask you something – do you believe God knows what He’s doing? Do you believe that He sees all of us puzzle pieces and knows exactly where we go? Sure He does! He knows everything about you – He knows you better than you know yourself – so trust Him as He works in your life doing things that don’t always make sense – He can see farther than you can and He knows what the end result will be when we don’t and can’t. Trust Him!
Gratitude
Not only should you trust God, you ought to respond to Him with a heart of gratitude. Where would you be without His hand of providence bringing you to the place you are today? Some people are not where God would have had you to be – but that’s not because God wasn’t trying to elicit obedience from you. Every breath, every heartbeat, every bowl of cereal, every stitch of clothing, every ray of sunshine comes from the good hand of God.
I want to suggest to you today that we ought to spend far less time wondering why God does what He does and just be thankful that when we don’t understand it all, God already sees the end and knows how to get us there. God in His goodness, in His providential care may do some things that we deem bad: the ice storm, the thunderstorm, the lightning, but He uses those things to accomplish His will. Could God have prevented that bad thing from happening in your life? Sure He could have – but for whose benefit? For yours?…or for His? To accomplish what you want?…or to fulfill His eternal purposes? Look past the here and now, the pain and the hurt and thank God that He knows what He’s doing.
Willingness to obey
Can you trust God? Does He lie to you? Has He ever failed to do something that He has said He would do? If you can trust God, obey Him. It doesn’t matter how odd, how difficult, how unpleasant, how costly the thing is – if you are certain God is leading you in some direction, then follow Him.
God has been leading some of you to follow Him in salvation. His Spirit has been convicting you of your sin and has been showing you that you need a relationship with Jesus Christ. You know that your sin separates you from God, but for some reason you’ve been hanging on to your past, or to your habits, or to some other thing because it doesn’t make sense to let go. I want to encourage you today to let go of all that and follow the Lord. Repent of your sin and confess to God what you are feeling. Confess that shame, that guilt, that sorrow. Confess to the Lord that you know you need a relationship with Him and ask Him to save you. Your life won’t automatically get better. Your circumstances may not change. In fact, for many who give their lives to Christ it only gets more difficult – but you can be assured that your eternity is secured and settled and that the providential hand of God will be at work orchestrating the things of your life to fit you into God’s puzzle just like He wants you to be.
Sometimes it seems like our lives are so messed up – we need to quit trying to straighten them out ourselves and put them in the hands of our all-seeing, our fore-seeing God who loves and cares for us more than we’ll know in this lifetime.
