‘Behold, the Lamb
of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
65th teaching
2.24.2013
“God’s Providence:
Checkmate”
Mystery
Question: Have
you ever narrowly escaped death/been in a life-threatening situation?
Project
Scriptura: the Mission of God
Review:
Which attribute of God did we continue studying
last week? What was the greatest proof that Christ gave to show that He is who
He claimed He is? How important is the Resurrection to the Christian faith? Who
doubted that Jesus rose from the dead in John 20? How did Jesus solve his
doubts? Why did John write his gospel? What two problems from last week were
related to God’s invisibility? In a nutshell, what is the argument of the
Hiddenness of God? What are some ways we can we answer it? So is there evidence
for God’s existence and is that evidence strong? What is the Silence of God?
How can we withstand it? How can you get more faith? Lastly, we looked at how
the invisibility of God provides a kind of difficulty: it is difficult to
desire the invisible God over that of
a human relationship. Human relationships are tangible, visible things;
relationship with God is not. However, we were created not primarily for human
relationship, but for divine relationship. And as Augustine said: “Our hearts
are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”
End
of Review
The more I study and subsequently come across some bit of
learning about the ancient Greeks and their culture, the ever more surprised I
am by how much the Greeks got right and how much they got wrong. It seems to me
that in so many ways, the Greeks were so very close to the truth and yet missed
the truth entirely. Their philosophy, their mythology, their arts and sciences,
came so close to what is actually real, and yet they came just short of the
truth.
Now building on what I’ve just told you, I discovered today
that we get our English word Irony, as in ironic, from the Greek language. Now
what is Irony? Irony has to do with the contrast between expectations and what
is really happening in a situation. When we expect one thing in life and then
see the opposite happening, we call it ironic. For example: a fire truck which
itself is on fire is ironic. We expect fire trucks to put out fires, not be on
fire.
Now the Greeks really went to town with this concept of the
ironic. They used it extensively in various different disciplines and art
forms. One prime example comes in the form of Greek comedy plays. They had a
comedy character named Eiron, who was an underdog character that repeatedly
triumphed over the boastful character Alazon. Socrates and Plato built upon the
idea of Irony based on this Greek comedy, the seeming loser, the underdog, in
fact winning as opposed to our expectations.
And though there are many forms of irony: tragic irony,
classic irony, romantic irony, dramatic and poetic irony, situational irony…
the ancient Greeks had this idea of something they called Cosmic irony, or
Irony of fate. The expression Cosmic irony had to do with the idea that the
gods or fates were toying with mortals with deliberate ironic intent. This idea
arose when the Greeks perceived the sharp contrasts that occurred in real life,
between human intentions, actions and ideals and the actual results that took
place in their lives. The Greeks saw that though a man could purpose to do
something with a certain intention that sometimes very widely different results
could occur.
This is what I mean when I say that the Greeks came so
close to the truth and yet they still missed it. The Greeks perceived that
ironic things seem to sometimes actually happen, but they blamed it on their
gods. They didn’t believe in coincidence, but rather in the fates whimsically determining
the lives of men.
Yet when we read in Scripture, Proverbs 16:9, “A man’s heart
plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps…” we find that the truth is
not far off. The Greeks got it wrong only in that they blamed irony on the
fates, when in fact when human plans end up with different results, it isn’t
mere irony or coincidence, but rather the active hand of the invisible God. The
irony that the Greeks guessed at, included in their plays, and their
philosophers and priests puzzled about, is actually a real thing, albeit
belonging not to their Grecian deities, but to the God of the Bible.
Thus for the Greeks and for the Christian, there are no coincidences,
and the ironic situations that we can find ourselves in are not the whims of
the fates, as the Greeks believed, but the active Providence of the one true
God.
Tonight’s study is entitled: “God’s Providence: Checkmate”.
Now nowhere is this active providence of God clearer in
Scripture than ironically in a book which makes no mention of God at all; how
ironic that the Providence of God is most clearly seen in a book wherein you
never see God mentioned. The Providence of God is most clearly seen in a book
wherein God remains unseen. That book is the book of Esther.
Turn to Esther 4,
as I give you a brief background and summary of the story in Esther.
Esther and the Song of Solomon are the only books in the
Bible that do not directly reference God. However, God’s activity behind the
scenes is apparent all throughout the story of Esther.
Esther was a Jewish orphan who lived during the
Medo-Persian empire, that is the kingdom which came in and overthrew the
Babylonians, the empire which had destroyed Jerusalem and taken the people of
Judah into exile and captivity. She was raised by her uncle Mordecai and she
eventually became the queen of King Ahasuerus, also known as King Xerxes I.
Esther played a pivotal role in delivering her people, the Jews, from
annihilation during her lifetime.
The book of Esther begins with King Ahasuerus showing off
his wealth and splendor for 180 days. At the end of that time, the king held a
feast and called for his then-queen, Queen Vashti, to come in and parade her beauty
before everyone. Queen Vashti, perhaps not wanting to be humiliated in such a
way, refused to come and obey the king’s beckoning. So the king had her removed
from her position and a process begins to seek out another queen instead.
Girls are chosen from all over the great empire of the
king, and a Jewish girl named Hadassah, or Esther in the Persian language, is
also chosen. She finds favor in the sight of her overseers during the time of
beautification before she would be presented to the king, a whole year of
perfumes and oils and learning etiquette. And when the time comes, Esther is
the one chosen by the king to be his new queen.
All seems well and good until the drama deepens: the king
promotes a right-hand man named Haman son of Hammedatha, a descendant of the
Agagites who were enemies of Israel, and this guy Haman runs across Esther’s
uncle Mordecai in the city gate. But while everyone bowed down before Haman,
Mordecai would not. Haman was enraged at Mordecai and schemed a scheme to
punish Mordecai. Haman convinces the king to make a decree that on a certain
day, the Jews, whom Haman defines as a people who are different from the
others, who did not obey the laws of the king, would be punished. The decree
would allow anyone who hated the Jews to rise up and destroy them and take all
of their possessions.
The king passes the decree into law and the word goes out
all across the empire that on this certain day, the Jews were allowed to be
destroyed and their possessions plundered. When Mordecai hears of this, he
mourns in sackcloth and ashes, and notifies Esther of the king’s decree.
That’s where we pick up reading in Esther 4:1-17.
After this, Haman’s hatred for Mordecai is further deepened
when the king discovers that Mordecai helped to stop an assassination plot that
would have murdered the king himself. The king finds out that nothing has been
done to honor Mordecai, the man who saved the life of the king. So the king
calls in Haman and asks what should be done for the man whom the king delights
to honor, referring to Mordecai. But Haman, being proud, thinks that the king
is talking of himself. So he goes to town on what the king should do to honor
this man. Haman says they should clothe him in the king’s own robe and set him
on the king’s own horse and parade him through the streets and proclaim “thus
shall it be done to the man whom the king delights to honor!” And just as Haman
expects this to be done to himself, the king says “okay, go and do so to the
man I delight to honor: Mordecai!” So Haman, ironically, has to honor and lead
through the city the same man who enraged him. In fact, Haman is so enraged
further that he builds gallows outside of his own house, some 75 feet high, on
which he would hang Mordecai when the day came.
To summarize the rest of the story, Esther invites the king
and Haman to a banquet and then points out that she herself is a Jew and that
Haman has plotted to destroy her and her people. The king rises up in wrath
and, get this: he has Haman hung on the same gallows that Haman had built to
hang Mordecai.
And Esther persuades the king to make another decree that the
Jews could rise up and destroy their enemies instead of the other way around.
Thus the Jews were delivered from destruction because Esther was in the exact
right place at the exact right time. Coincidence? No. Providence.
The Providence of God is seen in the placement of Esther as
queen (as Mordecai suggested that she had become queen for such a time), it is
also seen in the favor she received in her days of beautification, in the irony
of Haman having to honor the man he hated and being hung from the gallows he
built for Mordecai’s neck, in the total reversal that occurred in the Jews
being permitted to destroy their enemies rather than their enemies destroy
them, in a mourning turning to gladness, and ultimately in the final result:
not only were the Jews saved, but it says in Esther 8:17, “And in every
province and city, wherever the king’s command and decree came, the Jews had
joy and gladness, a feast and a holiday. Then many of the people of the land
became Jews, because fear of the Jews fell upon them.”
What was God’s goal in orchestrating and positioning the
players in this great story? It was so that many people of the land could
become Jews, could enter in to the same covenant relationship with God and
become His own people. God wanted to save and His active Providence provided salvation
to many people. The goal was to save many. God’s actions behind the scenes
accomplished that. God had set up the board and had pre-planned, pre-organized
His victory: Checkmate.
So the book of Esther has as one of its central themes the
Providence of God, this behind-the-scenes activity of God leading to the goal
of salvation. Let’s take a look at our points tonight:
1.
What is Providence?
“Divine Providence” is sometimes used as a title for God
Himself. But what does this very old-fashioned word mean?
Our word providence
comes from two Latin words: pro,
meaning before, and videre, from which we get our word video, which means to see. So literally, according to its roots, the word providence means to see before or to foresee.
One of the prominent symbols for God’s Providence, which
has unfortunately been tainted by its adoption by the cult of Free Masonry, is
the all-seeing Eye. This symbol of an Eye in a triangle is meant to represent
the Eye of Providence, God’s eye, and the triangle represents His triune
nature. Unfortunately you can’t go around flashing this symbol willy-nilly,
since it has taken on so many other meanings. But specifically, it should
remind the Bible-believing Christian of God’s foreseeing Providence.
So when we speak of God’s Providence, we’re speaking about
God seeing all things before and pre-arranging them to achieve His desired
result, as well as God taking the actions required to achieve those results.
Thus Providence involves God’s activity in the world.
Norman Geisler very helpfully writes: “Providence is related to other
activities of God but should be distinguished from them. God’s sovereignty…
denotes the fact of His control of
all things, but His providence is the means
by which He controls all things.”
Providence can seem to be indistinguishable at first from
God’s attribute of sovereignty, His control and authority over the universe,
but as we’ve just heard, sovereignty is the fact of God’s control while
providence is the means of God’s control. In other words, providence is how God governs the universe. Providence
takes the wisdom, the goodness, the justice and the love of God and applies
them to His direct control over creation. So we needn’t confuse providence with
God’s other attributes, especially sovereignty. Providence is the active
sovereignty of God, God’s active control accomplishing His wisdom, love,
justice and so on to His desired goal. God’s providence is based on His other
attributes, but providence is the means
through which God acts and accomplishes His goals, by which He executes His wise,
good and just decisions.
By Providence, God foresees and pre-arranges everything
according to His wisdom and love to accomplish His goals in the best way
possible.
We don’t have time to go into the discussion of fatalism
and determinism, but we talked about free will and all that when we studied God’s
sovereignty. Notice only that it is God’s providence which accounts for our
free will and our choices. Providence in no way eliminates free will, but
accounts for it and takes it into consideration. By Providence, God plans out
history, even including our own free choices. Certainly there’s an in depth
study right there, but we’ll leave it there for now.
Notice also, that Providence has a kind of dual nature. There
are two different kinds of providence: what we can call general providence and
special providence. Augustine and Aquinas can be credited with coming up with
this terminology. General providence, like God’s general revelation, has to do
with nature. General providence is God’s preservation and continual upholding
of the universe. Special providence, like God’s special revelation, has to do
with men and women, with individuals in humanity. Special providence has to do
with God’s special actions and interventions taken to protect or preserve the
individual. We certainly saw special providence in the story of Esther. More on
these two distinctions later on in separate points.
But Providence in a nutshell: God’s superintendence and
supervision over the universe and over individuals. God’s providence includes
His continual preservation of the universe and His intervening
provision for individuals. God’s providence is simply His active
sovereignty and care.
2.
Providence in Preservation
This is kind of a side-note but some see God’s Providence
not only in His upholding the universe and not only in His intervention into
human affairs, but also in the way in which He has preserved His Word.
The Church of England’s Westminster Confession of Faith
states that the Scriptures were “immediately inspired by God, and by His
singular care and providence kept pure in all ages…”
This becomes apparent when any comparison is made between the
oldest of biblical manuscripts and the best of modern translations. You can
compare the Dead Sea Scrolls with the modern translations and find that though
thousands of years have passed, no major corruption has taken place. The errors
that exist in the copies have only to do with things like punctuation, and
there is no corruption in the copies which modifies any of the original
meanings or teachings of Scripture.
How are we to account for this miracle? And it is a
miracle. There is no other book in existence that boasts such diversity and
such accuracy, such immensity and yet such purity. The accusation by
unbelievers that the Bible has been tampered with is simply false. All evidence
points to the providential care of God to preserve His Word through faithful
copies.
So while the copies themselves are not inspired,
God-breathed, in the same way that the originals were, we yet have the original
text as faithfully copied and providentially preserved through the ages.
God’s Providence, then, ties in to one of the greatest
proofs for the accuracy of the Bible: its remarkable preservation in faithful
copies. Now as for which translations
are indeed faithful is, again, another study for another day.
3.
Biblical Basis for God’s
Providence
This is your time to shine. I understand it may have been
difficult to find verses on the subject of God’s providence, since that is not
a word which the Bible directly uses, although the concept is certainly there.
Did anyone find anything on God’s Providence?
Job 12:10, Matt 6:31-33
*Next, let’s consider in a bit more depth the dual
types of God’s providence: the general over the universe and the special over
the individual. There are two influential Christian historical figures who
played a large part in the development of this doctrine of God’s providence.
The first, of course, was Augustine of Hippo. He is one of
the most influential Christian thinkers and writers of all time, and he said
this: “Trust the past to God’s mercy, the present to God’s love, and the future
to God’s providence.” I find the humanity of these words interesting. It can
sometimes be difficult to view men of the distant past as really being human
beings. We can sometimes think of them as being without emotion, being
particularly heroic and really just plain great. But Augustine was just a man,
and he felt as a man feels. Specifically, the church fathers, guys like
Augustine, can seem coldly religious and theological and intellectual, but
Augustine was just a man.
He experienced the death of his father, the death of a very
close friend (of whom he said “I thought that my soul and his were but one soul
in two bodies”, a very close friend) and
then the death of his mother all in a short span of a few years. When you
realize that, that he grieved as a man grieves, you recognize that Augustine’s
words are especially heart-felt and therefore profound. He said “trust the
future to God’s providence”, easy to say normally, but much more difficult to
say after having experienced three deaths in his personal life. Yet Augustine
trusted the future to God’s providence, even in light of these profound losses.
So does he have something to say on the matter? I think so.
The doctrine of Providence would be later developed more
extensively by Thomas Aquinas, Italian priest-philosopher, during the Middle
Ages. Aquinas explained God’s providence as His care exercised over the
universe and His foresight for its future. When Aquinas came to write his
commentary on the book of Job, he strongly felt that Job’s story had providence
as its theme. Aquinas saw that even through the worst of pain and agony and
loss, God’s sovereign activity, His providence, had a special goal in mind. For
the suffering saint, Job, God had a goal set before Him, pre-arranged to bring
Job to the end of his own story.
And so on down the ages, the doctrine of providence comes.
And as the great Christian thinkers thought, there are dual types of
providence: general and special.
Let’s consider the general.
4. General
Providence
We can label general providence
as preservation. Read Psalm 104.
In this psalm we see God’s general providence. God is
pictured as having created the universe, as making the natural laws of the
universe, keeping the natural processes of the earth functioning, keeping the
movements of the celestial bodies going, and as providing sustenance and
nourishment to the living creatures of our planet.
Hebrews 1 says
God, specifically Jesus the Son, upholds all things by the word of His power. Colossians 1:17 says “In Him all things consist.”
We don’t often think of God when we think of the natural
processes, such as evaporation and rain, the tidal forces, or the orbits of the
planets and their moons, but so far as the Bible is concerned, these are things
which God causes, upholds and keeps.
Does this mean we deny the natural process of evaporation
and condensation? Do we throw out God because science has figured out the
natural causes and process of evaporation and condensation? Well, no. Because
apparently it is God who keeps it all functioning. God is the Agent who keeps the
mechanism functioning. He began the process and He ensures the process
continues. The whole ecosystem of the earth, indeed the universe, is one great
machine which the great Mechanic keeps in operation.
So that’s general providence:
God’s preservation of the machine of the universe.
5.
Special Providence
Special providence can be labeled provision. In Exodus 8, you get a great picture of
special providence, God’s active intervention for the individual: here
specifically Pharaoh and the children of Israel. By Exodus 8, God has begun to pour out His wonders, His plagues upon
the land of Egypt in order to make Pharaoh let the Hebrews out of their captivity.
God, through His servant Moses, had struck the river Nile and turn it to blood,
had caused an invasion of frogs and had sent a swarm of lice from the dust of
the earth.
Exodus 8:19, “Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, ‘This is
the finger of God.’” These Egyptian magicians recognized that the hand of
God was intervening into the world and causing these plagues. Unfortunately for
Pharaoh, he hardened his heart until God broke him with the most terrible of
the plagues, the death of the firstborn.
But there clearly illustrated is God’s special providence.
He entered into human history at the time of the Exodus and intervened on
behalf of Israel, sending down His plagues.
Whereas general providence was the preservation of the
universe, special providence is the provision for God’s people.
Note that God’s special providence we might enter into a
discussion of miracles. Miracles have been conceived of as God’s intervening
actions into the universe. But we need not consider all of special providence as miracles. Though we might consider special
providence at the time of the Exodus as having to do with miracles, special
providence doesn’t always have to be miracles.
Remember that Providence is simply God pre-arranging things
according to His foresight and then acting in order to achieve His pre-set
results. That can include normal and natural things.
God used a lowly donkey to verbally rebuke a greedy prophet.
God used an ordinary rock to bring forth water to feed millions. God used a
humble shepherd boy to reign as king over His people. God used unlearned fishermen
and detestable tax-collectors to turn the world upside-down. None of these
things were miraculous or supernatural. They were ordinary things.
God used a thunderstorm in the life of Martin Luther to
cause him to think about his own death and cry out to the Lord. Thunderstorms
are not miracles by definition, since miracles are supernatural interventions and
thunderstorms are quite natural.
We sometimes use the phrase “divine appointments” to refer
to times when it seems like a believer was placed into someone’s life at just
the right moment to say just the right thing. Where human beings go and what
kind of conversations they have with each other are both perfectly natural
things that happen all the time, but God’s orchestration of who speaks to who
and what they say has to do with His special providence.
In my own life, God used an ocean’s wave, a perfectly
natural thing, and a kidney defect, another perfectly natural thing, to make me
think about my own mortality, which eventually led to my own conversion.
So clearly, special providence doesn’t always need to
involve miracles. God can sometimes use the perfectly ordinary to accomplish
His own perfect will.
C.S. Lewis wrote: “Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws
of nature.” And one way in which that is clearly true is in the fact that God
sometimes uses the perfectly natural to accomplish His goals. So the how of God’s providence need not be
remarkable at all, since He can use the ordinary and the natural. It is the fact of God’s providence that should be
remarkable!
Consider the simple fact that God puts up with you, nay, loves you enough to keep your breathing,
to keep your environment functioning around you, to keep the natural processes
going. Consider that God cares enough
to intervene into human history in various ways, not the least of which was
when He sent His own Son to die for your rebellious soul! The fact that God cares
enough to be providential at all is downright incredible.
6. Expecting the
Unexpected
God’s providence, as we mentioned earlier, is His
activity moving towards His goal. We’ll take up that thought again next week
when we consider the Mission of God, His mission-mindedness, His goal of
salvation for as many as possible in a world of free will.
But for now, to close our study on God’s providence, I’d
like to recall the words of Augustine: “Trust… the future to God’s providence”.
Remember the story of Moses’ birth? The Pharaoh had decreed
that all the sons born to the Hebrew people were to be cast into the Nile
river. When Moses was born, his parents did not obey the order, but they hid
him as long as they could, for three months. Exodus 2:3 says “But when she
[Moses’ mother] could no longer hide
him, she took an ark of bulrushes for him, daubed it with asphalt and pitch,
put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river’s bank.” And she
presumably walked away, since when it was discovered she was not discovered
standing next to it.
Now ask yourself: what are we looking at here? What kind of
a woman takes their three-month old baby (a tender, precious baby!) and puts it into a little basket
and leaves it in the reeds by the side of a flowing river? What kind of person
would do that, take something so valuable and, at face value, leave it behind?
Answer: the kind of person who, as Augustine encouraged, trusts the future to God’s providence.
Hebrews 11:23
says “By faith Moses, when he was born,
was hidden three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful
child; and they were not afraid of the king’s command.”
How could Moses’ mother hide him three months and then
terminate that time by placing him into the basket by the riverside? She could
do it by faith, trusting the future of her child to the providence of God. When
Moses’ mother released her grasp upon the baby, she was doing just that.
Imagine if she hadn’t. Imagine if she refused to trust God
in this extreme way. Imagine if she had continued to hide Moses in her own
home. No doubt he would have been discovered eventually, given that growing
babies can get rather noisy. And baby Moses would have been immediately
captured and killed, and (as in the case of Esther) deliverance would have
arisen from somewhere else for the people of God, but not from Moses, and how
much longer would they maybe have to wait for it?
But because Moses’ mother was willing to entrust the future
of her own helpless baby boy to the providence of God, the Lord could raise up
the deliverer in Moses. She didn’t know that that’s what would happen. She didn’t
know the son she had entrusted to the ark by the riverside would grow up to
deliver the people of God. She merely trusted that God would do as His wisdom,
love, goodness and justice so provoked Him to
do. She didn’t know what to expect, but she trusted in the God who Himself
does the unexpected.
Now could you see yourself living like that? What is most
precious and tender to you? There was nothing more precious to his mother than
her own baby. Maybe there’s something you need to give up into the “hand of
fate”, in reality: the providence of God. Maybe it’s a decision that is
tormenting you because you don’t know what to do. Maybe it’s the desire for a
relationship. Maybe it’s financial security. Maybe it’s wanting to feel loved. Maybe
it’s the salvation of a loved one. It could be any number of things.
But whatever the thing is that most occupies your thoughts
and the yearnings of your heart (I don’t presume to know what it is), can you
surrender it to the providence of God, as Moses’ mother surrendered him to the
ark and to the reeds just the same?
Who knows what God desires to accomplish in His providence
through you and I. And who knows what we may miss out on if we’re not receptive
to His providence, if we’re not willing to take the step of trusting God with
our future. Like Esther, we may be placed in just the right community, just the
right bible study, just the right family and just the right circle of friends,
in just the right church and just the right time for an integral part of God’s
plan. And like Esther, we have the choice of saying yes or saying no to God.
But if we say no,
the Lord will yet accomplish His goals. It is not God who will miss out, but it
is you. You will have missed out on whatever blessing God would have had for
you should you have said yes, and entrusted
your future to Him, to do whatever unexpected thing He purposed from eternity to
do. And God will accomplish His will, as in the case of Esther, deliverance
could have come from elsewhere, but God wanted a yes from Esther first in
line: the willingness to say “If I perish, I perish”. God will checkmate His enemy,
but you have the choice to take part in His strategy or not.
Can you live like that? That’s bizarre. That’s crazy. That’s
expecting the unexpected. But that’s the only way to live the Christian life to
its fullest.
“Trust the past to God’s mercy, the present to God’s love,
and the future to God’s providence.”
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