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The Providence of God: A Ruled World in the Hands of the Redeemer · Reformed Thinking

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Reformed thinking. That's the lens for today.
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Welcome back everyone to the Deep Dive.
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We are doing something a little different today.
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We usually look at the surface of history, you know, the dates,
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the battles, the big elections, the things you can pin on a
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timeline. The what and the when?
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Exactly. But today we're going to try and
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open up the engine room. We've got a couple of, well,
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pretty heavy theological text in front of us, the architect of
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history and the Providence of God.
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Heavy hitters for sure. And we're going to try and
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tackle a question that I think, well, I think it haunts everyone
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at 3:00 in the morning, whether they admit it or not.
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Is any of this planned? Is it all just a roll of the
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dice? It's the bottom line question,
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isn't it? It frames everything about
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reality. Are we living in a casino or are
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we living in a Kingdom? That's the image, a casino or a
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Kingdom, because that's what we need to hold onto.
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If you just look at the world, the modern narrative is, well,
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it's relentless. It tells us that life is
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basically just a series of lucky breaks or, you know, tragic
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accidents. You meet your spouse because you
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happen to turn left instead of right at a coffee shop.
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A. Chance encounter.
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Or you get a terrible diagnosis because of some random genetic
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copying error that just happened.
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It's what our sources today are calling the Maverick Molecule
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theory. Which is, if you really stop and
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think about the logic, a genuinely terrifying way to see
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the world it is. But the whole idea is that
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Cosmos is just this chaotic dance, and it's all governed by
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nothing more than blind probability.
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Yeah, no script, just a lot of improv.
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But the material we're looking at today, it argues the complete
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opposite. It says chance isn't just
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factually wrong, it's a theological idol A.
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False God. So layout the mission for us.
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What are we trying to dismantle with this deep dive?
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Well, the mission is to take a sledgehammer to that casino
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mentality to replace that that really anxiety inducing idea of
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random luck with the robust historical doctrine of divine
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Providence. And we're not just going to
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offer platitudes, we really want to get into the mechanics of it,
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the grammar of sovereignty, if you will, that you find in
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sources like the Westminster Confession and of course the
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Scriptures themselves. I want to see on that phrase for
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a second casino mentality. Yeah.
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It just feels so fragile. If everything is chance, then
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I'm basically alone. You are utterly alone in a cold
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and different universe. And that's why these sources
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were digging into They identify chance not as some kind of
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existing power, but as a myth. A myth?
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Yeah. It's really just a word we use
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to, you know, to cloak our own ignorance.
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When a scientist or a historian says something happened by
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chance, they aren't describing a force that acted.
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They're just saying we don't know.
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They're admitting they don't know the cause, but the texts
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they make this very bold and to modern years almost offensive
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assertion. Here, go on.
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It's this. If a single molecule, one single
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molecule, moves one inch outside of God's sovereign decree, then
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God is not sovereign. That is a heavy statement, and
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yeah, offensive is probably the right word for a lot of people.
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You're saying if one single atom goes rogue, the entire system
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collapses. We'll think about it logically.
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If there's one maverick molecule, just one, it could be
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the one that causes a blood clot in a president's brain.
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Or a car brake to fail. Or a weather pattern to shift
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and become a hurricane. If God isn't sovereign over the
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smallest, most insignificant bit of data, he can't guarantee the
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macro outcome. He's just reacting.
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He's doing damage control. Just cleaning up messes.
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So the alternative to all this chaos is Providence.
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But we have to be really clear here.
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Providence is not just God looking down the timeline and
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seeing what's going to happen. That's.
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Just knowing the future. That's just prescience.
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Yeah, Providence is act of governance.
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It's administration. So he's not just in the
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projection booth watching the movie of history unfold.
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No, no. He wrote the script, he built
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the set, he cast the actors, and he is directing the scene in
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real time. OK, let's unpack that.
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Because you know, God is in control is something people put
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on coffee mugs. It's an Instagram caption.
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It is. But when a real tragedy strikes,
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that slogan usually falls apart pretty fast.
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So we need to get into the mechanics.
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The sources point us to a very specific place in the Bible to
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understand the grammar of this sovereignty.
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That's Ephesians 1.11. Why start there?
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This is the anchor. This verse is the whole
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foundation. If you want to get beyond the
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slogan and really understand how God relates to history, you have
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to grapple with the syntax of Ephesians.
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One point O1 OK Paul writes about God as the one who works
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all things according to the counsel of his will.
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Works all things according to the counsel of his will.
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OK, let's break that sentence down.
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The sources highlight three distinct parts there, the agent,
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the extent, and the standard. Right, Let's start with the
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agent. The text says who works.
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Seems simple enough in English, but I get the feeling there's
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some some heavy lifting happening The original Greek.
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There absolutely is. The Greek word Paul uses is
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energamtos and you can probably hear the English word energy
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right in there. It comes from the verb energy
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and this word, it doesn't describe a passive state like
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just existing. It describes effectual active
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operational power, power in motion.
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So it's not a painting hanging on a wall, it's an engine that's
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running. That's a great analogy, and
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grammatically it's what's called a present active participle.
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That present part is key. It means the action is
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continuous. Ongoing.
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Constantly. This isn't the deist watchmaker
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God who just wound up the universe at The Big Bang and
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then, you know, went on vacation to let physics take over.
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Right the set it and forget it, God.
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That's not the God of this verse.
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He is right now, at this very nanosecond, energizing all of
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creation. You know, that actually shifts
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my whole perspective on reality. It means the reason the atoms in
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this microphone are holding together right now isn't just
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because of the strong nuclear force.
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Well, the strong nuclear force is the description of what's
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happening. The habit.
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It's the habit. Exactly.
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God is the one providing the power that makes the habit
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consistent. He is the primary cause behind
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every secondary 'cause you can name if he stopped this working
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this energia for even a moment. Everything would stop.
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It wouldn't just stop, it would vanish.
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It would cease to be. Wow.
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OK, so that's the agent. He's not passive, he's
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hyperactive. What about the extent the verse
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says he works all things now? Is that hyperbole?
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Is Paul just being poetic here? No, not at all.
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The Greek phrase is the puntha, and that is a universal
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quantifier. It's as all-encompassing as you
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can get. It means the totality of the
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universe, the sum of all existence, all bits and all
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parts. It leaves absolutely no room for
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exceptions. No asterisks.
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No fine print. So we're talking about the big
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stuff like the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, major
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geopolitical shifts, but you're also saying it includes my
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coffee spilling this morning? It includes both and that is
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where people start to get uncomfortable.
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I can see why. The sources are very emphatic on
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this point. The scope includes the macro
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events like the birth of nations, and it includes the
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micro details like a single Sparrow falling from a branch or
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the exact number of hairs on your head.
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There is no neutral ground. There is no category called
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stuff God isn't involved in. There's no Mother Nature acting
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on her own. It's all the Father's world.
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That really messes with the way we categorize our lives, doesn't
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it? We tend to compartmentalize
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everything we do. We think, OK, God cares about my
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salvation and maybe you know who I marry, but he doesn't have
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anything to do with this traffic jam.
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The Tapanta implies the traffic jam is part of the decree.
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It does, which naturally leads to the third part, the standard
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How does he decide what happens? Is it arbitrary?
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Is he just making it up as he goes along?
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Is he reacting to our choices? The text says he works according
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to the counsel of his will. Right.
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And here again Paul uses two different Greek words that are
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just fascinating. Bulo and the Loma.
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OK. What do those mean?
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Bulo refers to an intelligent deliberation, a plan, a
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blueprint. It's a considered purpose.
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The Lima, on the other hand, refers to desire or pleasure.
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So there's a blueprint, and there's a desire behind the
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blueprint. Precisely.
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It tells us that God's plan arises from his own sovereign
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pleasure. He doesn't hold a committee
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meeting with the angels. He consults no one.
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The blueprint is drawn up before the foundation of the world is
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ever laid. So it's not a reaction, it's an
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initiation. He is the architect, and he's
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building according to his own glorious design.
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This leads us into a really helpful distinction the source
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material makes. We're talking about this big
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concept, Providence, but the theologians, they break it down
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into two hands, so to speak, preservation and government,
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right? We've touched on preservation a
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bit with that energy idea, but let's go deeper.
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What does preservation actually look like in practice?
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Preservation is the act of sustaining existence from moment
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to moment. The key text for this is Hebrews
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1.3, where it says the sun upholds all things by the word
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of His power. Upholds It sounds so strenuous,
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like he's carrying a heavyweight.
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The classic image of Atlas holding up the world.
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That is the common image, Yeah, But the text suggests something
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I think much more dynamic. Think of it less like Atlas
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holding a giant rock. The rock exists whether Atlas is
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holding it or not. He just keeps it from falling.
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OK. Think of it more like a singer
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holding a musical note. Well, that's interesting.
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The A rock has its own independent existence.
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But a song? The song only exists for as long
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as the singer is actively singing it.
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The moment the singer stops, the song is just gone.
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That is a beautiful way to put it.
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The universe is a song God is singing into existence.
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Spot on, and the big insight from our sources is that what we
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call the laws of nature, gravity, thermodynamics,
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electromagnetism, they are really just the ordinary habits
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of God. They're the way he usually sends
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the song. Exactly.
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So gravity isn't a force that exists apart from God that he
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has to work with. Gravity is just God consistently
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acting in a certain way toward matter.
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So if you withdrew his attention, his active power.
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The cosmos would dissolve into nothingness.
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That's preservation. But then you have the second
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hand government. Steering the ship.
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Right. If preservation keeps the ship
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afloat, government steers it to a specific port, a specific
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destination, or telos in the Greek.
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Meaning history is linear, it's actually going somewhere.
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Yes. It's not just a big circle, a
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cycle of seasons repeating forever like you see in some
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Eastern religions or even, you know, The Lion King circle of
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life. It's a story with a beginning, a
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middle, and a definite end. It's moving toward a final
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judgement and a final glorification.
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And the biblical support for this is just it's everywhere,
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isn't it? Psalm 135.6 Whatever little
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pleases, he does. Or Proverbs 16.33 which is just
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the death knell for the idea of chance.
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The lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from
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the Lord. Let's pause on that one.
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The lot cast into the lap. That's like throwing dice.
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It's the most random act a person in the ancient world
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could think of. It's a direct appeal to chance.
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And Scripture says no. The outcome is determined by
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God. OK, I have to play devil's
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advocate here because this is where it gets really interesting
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and to be honest, where it gets really difficult for a lot of.
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Us. I know.
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Here it comes. If God is energizing everything
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from the stars to the dice, are we just robots?
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Are we puppets on a string? The Puppet objection.
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It is the first and most common response, and rightly so.
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It's a fair question. I mean, if God writes the script
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and I'm just an actor on stage saying lines that were written
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before the foundation of the world, do I have any real
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choice? Am I responsible for my actions?
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This is where we absolutely have to introduce a vital theological
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concept. It's called the doctrine of
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concurrence, or sometimes you'll see the Latin concursive It's
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the idea that God and human beings act simultaneously in the
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exact same event, but they do so with distinct causes and,
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crucially, with distinct intents.
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Two actors, one event. Two agents, one action.
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Correct. We are not robots.
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We have faculties of will and reason.
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We make choices. We do what we want to do, but we
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are not sovereign. So how does that work?
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The classic example, and the one the sources lean on so heavily
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because it's just so crystal clear, is the story of Joseph in
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the book of Genesis, right? The coat of many colors.
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His jealous brothers throw them in a pit, sell them into slavery
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in Egypt. Exactly.
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And then years later, after he's risen to power, he confronts
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them and he says that famous line from Genesis 50.20.
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You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
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You meant it. God meant it.
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Look at the grammar there again. In the original Hebrew, the verb
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used for meant is chashov. It means to plan, to calculate
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or to devise, and it applies to both agents in the story.
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Both the brothers and God. Yes, the brothers Chashov evil.
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They planned it. They wanted to destroy the
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Dreamer, their father's favorite.
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They were driven by raw jealousy.
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They had malice. I mean, they weren't being
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forced to hate him. They were enjoying it.
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They wanted to do it. Pure malice and they are 100%
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morally responsible for that wicked intent.
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But in that exact same event, the betrayal, the selling into
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slavery, God was also cha shaving he was planning.
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But his intent was totally different.
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Completely benevolent. He was sending a provider to
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Egypt to save the entire Covenant people from a coming
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famine. So it's not like the brothers
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did this bad thing and then God swooped in and scrambled to fix
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it. It wasn't.
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Oh no, they sold Joseph into slavery.
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Quick, what's Plan B? Let's make him Prime Minister.
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No, that would make God reactive, not sovereign.
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He didn't just use their evil after the fact.
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The text implies A concurrent, simultaneous structuring of the
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event. The brothers acted freely
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according to their own jealous nature.
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And are guilty for it. Absolutely, but God acted
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sovereignly according to His redemptive nature through their
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very actions. OK, my brain is starting to hurt
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trying to reconcile this. There's an analogy in the text
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that I found really helpful here, the lame horse analogy.
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Can you walk us through that one?
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Yes, it's a classic reformed illustration, and it's designed
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to get at this very problem. So imagine a skilled rider on a
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horse, but the horse has a bad limp.
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The rider spurs the horse forward.
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The energy, the motion, the go that comes from the rider.
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That's God the primary 'cause He gives the power for any action
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to happen at. All right.
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But the limp, the awkward, defective, flawed way that the
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horse moves, that comes from the horse itself, from its own
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nature. And that's the Sinner.
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That's it. The moral defect, the sinfulness
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of the act belongs to the creature.
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God energizes the action. He gives the breath, the
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strength, the opportunity. But the turning of that power
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toward an evil end comes from the sinners own corrupt heart.
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So let me see if I have this right.
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God ordains the event itself to fulfill a holy purpose.
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Like saving a nation from famine.
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But the Sinner is the one responsible for the wicked
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desire that drove their part in it.
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That's the compatibilist view. It creates the guardrails we
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need. On one side you've got this
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ditch of fatalism which says God forces men to sin against their
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will. We reject that.
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They're just puppets. And on the other side, you have
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the ditch of open theism, which basically says God is just a
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spectator biting his nails and hoping we get it right.
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We reject that too. Just a cheerleader.
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Right concurrence holds the tension.
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God is absolutely sovereign and human beings are fully
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responsible. OK, if that is the theory, then
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the sources point us to the ultimate test case, the apex of
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Providence. Because if this doctrine is
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going to fail anywhere, it would have to be at the death of
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Jesus. Absolutely.
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If Providence is real, it has to work at the cross.
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I mean, you would think surely the murder of the innocent Son
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of God is the one event in all of history that happened outside
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of God's will. That feels like the ultimate
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maverick molecule moment. And yet Acts chapter 4 verses 27
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and 28 just completely destroy that assumption.
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The early church is praying. And keep in mind they're under
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threat of persecution for their faith.
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And this is what they say, that Herod, Pontius Pilate, the
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Gentiles and the people of Israel gathered together in
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Jerusalem. Whole conspiracy.
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The whole conspiracy they gathered together to do whatever
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your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
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Whatever God's hand and plan had predestined not, their plan is.
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Think about what that means. You have Herod representing
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corrupt Jewish civil authority. You have Pilot represent the
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might of Pagan Rome. You have the mob representing
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the nations. And they are all driven by their
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own wicked motives. Envy, cowardice, political
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calculation, blind hatred. And they are guilty acts.
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Chapter 2 calls them lawless men who crucified them.
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They are fully culpable, but they were at the same time doing
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exactly what was scripted. Down to the last detail.
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The hand in that verse represents God's executive power
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to get things done. The plan is that word Bulow
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again, his deliberative wisdom from before time began.
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The implication is staggering. The greatest sin in the history
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of the world, The. D aside.
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The murder of the perfect Son of God was simultaneously the
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greatest act of divine grace and love.
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It wasn't Plan B, it was never Plan B, It wasn't God seen the
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fall of man and saying Oh no, how do I fix?
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This it was plan A from before the foundation of the world.
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The Lamb was slain in the mind and plan of God before history
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even began. And here is the take away for
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you for anyone listening. This is the application.
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If God can govern the malice of Pilot and the rage of the
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Sanhedrin to secure the salvation of the entire world,
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then He can certainly govern the lesser calamities in your life.
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That's the connection. If he can handle the cross, he
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can handle my unemployment, he can handle my health crisis.
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Precisely. There is no suffering in your
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life that is random. None of it falls outside his
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wise and good administration. Now, Speaking of administration,
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the text makes an interesting distinction here when it comes
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to redemptive history. We're seeing Providence operate
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on this massive scale, but how does this play out differently
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between, say, Israel and the church?
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It feels like God has a different operating system for
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different groups. It's fascinating to see the
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specific administration of Providence at work.
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And yes, the source material makes a clear distinction
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between the physical preservation of national Israel
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and the spiritual gathering of the Church.
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OK, let's start with Israel. The text we're looking at points
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to Jeremiah 31. Right.
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Jeremiah links the continued existence of Israel as a nation
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to the fixed order of the cosmos.
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He says Essentially, if the sun and the moon and the stars stop
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shining, then and only then will Israel cease to be a nation
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before me. That is a pretty strong
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guarantee he's anchoring their national survival to the laws of
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physics that he himself of holds.
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He is. And then you just look at
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history, the dispersions, the pogroms, the Holocaust, the dry
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bones of Ezekiel 37. By any normal socio political
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logic the Jewish people should have been assimilated or
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extinguished centuries ago. Like so many other ancient
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people. But they weren't.
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They were reassembled. And the texts argue this is not
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some geopolitical accident. It's an objective, visible
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witness of God's providential faithfulness.
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He is keeping a specific promise.
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OK, so that's Israel. Then concurrently you have the
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gathering of the church. That seemed a bit more fluid in
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the text. It is here you see the Holy
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Spirit actively directing the course of the gospel.
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Acts 16 is the perfect example. Paul wants to go minister in
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Asia, what we now call Turkey. Which makes sense strategically.
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It's the next logical region, big population centers.
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It's a great marketing plan, but the text says the Spirit forbade
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him. And then Paul has a vision of a
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man from Macedonia saying come over and help us.
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So he reroutes the entire mission.
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Why? What was so special about
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Macedonia? It wasn't the place, it was the
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people. There was a specific set of
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elect individuals in the city of Philippi, like Lydia, the seller
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of purple goods, and the Philippian jailer and his
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family, who needed to hear the gospel at that specific moment
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in time. So God rerouted the entire
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missionary journey of the apostle Paul to intercept the
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lives of a few specific people. That's Providence in action,
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which means that historical mechanisms, things like Roman
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roads, the Pax Romana, and today the Internet and global trade
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routes, these aren't just historical called footnotes like
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Cools. They're the infrastructure God
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uses. They are subservient to the
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golden chain of salvation we read about in Romans 8.
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God builds the roads so the gospel can travel on them.
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OK, so let's bring this home. What does all of this mean for
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us? We've talked about Greek words,
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theology, history, but we need to bring this down to the head,
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the heart and the hands. Right.
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How do we live this? Let's start with the head, how
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we think the doctrine of Providence directly confronts
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us, and specifically, it confronts our anxiety.
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The source material has a line that, well, it's stung a little
20:48
when I read it. It calls anxiety practical
20:50
atheism. I think a lot of listeners might
20:52
feel a bit defensive about that. It stings because it's true.
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It exposes the root of the issue.
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If we are consumed by worry, what are we implicitly saying
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about God? We're saying one of two things.
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Either he's incompetent, he can't handle the situation, or
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he's insufficient. He doesn't care enough about me
21:08
to act. We're basically claiming that
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the outcome depends on us, that we have to figure it out.
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And that is the great idol of autonomy.
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We resent Providence because we want to be the captain of our
21:18
own ship. We want to be the primary cause.
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But to truly accept Providence is to say I am not in control.
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And that is a very, very good thing.
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Because if I were in control, I would have crashed the ship a
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long time ago. We all would.
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We don't have the omniscience to steer.
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So that's the head of a radical shift in how we think about
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control now, the heart for the weary person listening to this.
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Maybe you've just been battered by life.
21:42
Maybe you're in the middle of a job season.
21:44
For that person, this doctrine might sound cold.
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It could. It could sound like a cold,
21:49
academic, deterministic artifact, but it's meant to be a
21:53
profound comfort. A bomb.
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Where does the comfort come from?
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It's rooted in our union with Christ.
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If you are a believer, the Bible says you are in Him.
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And because you are in Him, all the heavy machinery of divine
22:06
sovereignty works exclusively for your ultimate good.
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That is the promise of Romans 8.28.
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All things work together for good.
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But we have to redefine good, don't we?
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Because when I hear good, my default setting is comfort, a
22:19
full bank account, perfect health for my family.
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We all do that. We project our modern Western
22:24
definition of the good life onto the Bible.
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But the text defines good for us in the very next verse, which is
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conformity to the image of his Son.
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So the trial isn't a sign that the plan has failed.
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The trial is the tool. The trial is the chisel in the
22:38
hand of the master sculptor, and he is chipping away everything
22:42
in you that doesn't look like Jesus.
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And the deep comfort comes in knowing that the hand holding
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that chisel, the same hand that steers the stars, is a kneel
22:51
pierced hand. It's the hand of the one who
22:53
died for you. So it is not the hand of a
22:55
distant tyrant or a cold computer program.
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It is the hand of a loving father.
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That changes everything. OK, finally the hands action.
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What do we do? There's a real danger here that
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people could hear all this and fall into a kind of a passive
23:11
fatalism. The sit on the couch and wait
23:13
for a pizza to appear. Theology.
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Exactly. Well, if God has ordained
23:17
everything, I don't need to do anything.
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We have to reject both luck theology on one hand, and that
23:21
kind of fatalism on the other. The biblical balance is found in
23:24
the reality of secondary causes. God appoints the ends, yes, but
23:29
he also appoints the means to get to those ends.
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The example given is the farmer. A farmer who prays for a harvest
23:35
but then refuses to plow his field and plant seed is not
23:39
trusting God. He's testing God.
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He's being foolish. You plow the field because you
23:43
trust that God is the one who gives the increase.
23:46
You take the medicine because God is the one who uses
23:48
chemistry to heal. So we pray, we work, we plan, we
23:52
make decisions. Yes, but we do it all with open
23:55
hands, trusting the outcome to Him.
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And on prayer. This is so crucial.
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We don't pray to inform God of things He doesn't know.
24:03
Oh Lord, Breaking news in case you missed it.
24:05
Right, he already knows. He knows better than we do.
24:08
We pray because prayer itself is one of the appointed means He
24:11
uses to execute His will. He has ordained that certain
24:14
things will come to pass through the prayers of His people.
24:17
So if you don't pray, you're opting out of being part of the
24:19
means he wants to. Use you are.
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And what about guidance? People get so tied in knots
24:24
looking for signs and coincidences.
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I saw three blue cars in a row. So that must mean I should take
24:29
the job in Denver. Trying to read the tea leaves of
24:31
Providence. It's superstition.
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We follow the revealed word, we obey the clear commands of
24:37
Scripture, make the wisest choices we can with the
24:39
information we have, and then we trust God with the results.
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It's a shift from speculation to obedience.
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It is so to summarize where we've been today.
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We do not live in a random universe.
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We do not. Chance is a myth.
24:52
It's a terrible, flimsy idol that cannot bear the weight of
24:55
your life or your questions. And the proper response to all
24:58
of this, to the Inorgantos, to the concursives, to the divine
25:01
plan, isn't to argue about it endlessly.
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The proper response is doxology. It's worship.
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It's Romans 11.36 For from him and through him and to Him are
25:11
all things, to Him be glory forever.
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The study of Providence should always, always end in worship.
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I. Want to leave you with one final
25:19
thought. If we really believe this, if
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you really believe that chance is a lie, then just consider
25:24
your day today. Think about the implications.
25:26
Because if there is no luck, then every single interaction
25:28
you have is significant. The traffic delay that makes you
25:31
5 minutes late for a meeting, The coffee you spill on your
25:35
shirt on the way out the door, the stranger you bump into on
25:38
the subway. None of that is just random
25:40
noise. It is all a specific, divinely
25:43
energized appointment. So the question is, how does
25:47
that change the way you walk out the door right now?
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That's the deep dive. Thanks for listening.
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We'll see you next time.