Providence part 2

By William Cunningham
For Sunday March 18, 2007
This is a continuation of Providence Part 1

Preface

This sermon is designed to be a discussion on the evidence that we obtained from part one and on the way things really happen in our lives.

Introduction

There is a scene in the movie titled, Bruce Almighty, where Bruce says, “God is a mean little kid with a magnifying glass and I’m the ant.  He could fix my life in five minutes if he wanted to, but he’d rather burn off my antlers instead.”  There was also a scene where “God” (actor Morgan Freeman) told Bruce Nolan that when he left the building that he would be endowed with God’s powers.  When Bruce left the building he began to perform miraculous acts.  He walked on water when he stepped on a buddle of water.  He started his car by saying “start” while grabbing the steering wheel.  He brought up a spoon from his mouth in order to eat his soup.  Bruce then begins to do a number of supernatural acts such as causing a monkey to come out of a gang member’s butt, spewing flies out of his mouth to chase the other gang members, causing flowers to appear to give to his fiancé, and even moving the moon closer to earth for some light.

The movie goes on with Bruce doing all kinds of miraculous acts to demonstrate that he has the power of God.  I admit that it was a very good movie in that it was funny and really wasn’t meant to be taken seriously.  However, many of us think of God in those terms.  We think of God as a magician who can click his fingers so to speak and make our lives better.  We wonder why God doesn’t just intervene and miraculously correct things.

There was another great scene in the movie that I just have to mention.  Bruce was getting all of the prayers of people around him on a type of prayer computer system.  He started off with 1.5 million prayers and he began to speed type to answer them.  After a while he figured that he would have made a dent in the prayers, but found that they had more than doubled.  He then did something that many people wish God would do.  He then set the program that was receiving the prayers to answer “yes” to all prayers.  People were winning the lottery, losing weight on a doughnut diet.  It ultimately caused chaos.

It was a funny movie, but I think that many of us wish that God would do that.  We wish that God would just give us whatever we pray for and that God would miraculously change the situation so that we are not hurt physically or emotionally.  We would like God to wave his magic wand to undo or better yet, keep us from experiencing any pain or misfortune.  Since things don’t happen that way we doubt or question the providence of God.

How does God govern the universe?  How does God govern human history?  And lastly, how does God govern our lives personally?  There are many schools of thought to those questions, but I think that the number one problem that we have in reconciling the way things are and the way we think of God is that we simply do not know God and we surely do not know his ways and therefore are totally or significantly ignorant of how he interacts with us and our lives.

Let’s talk more about the providence of God in regards to real life events.  Let’s try to understand the providence of God as it relates to the events that take place in our lives.

Depending on Miracles

In “Providence Part 1” we discussed the way that the Bible presents the providence of God.  We saw how the Bible correlated the lions being fed by God with the fact that the lions go out and hunt their food to eat.  We saw the same correlation with human provisions, and the provision of other animals.  Therefore, we should consider the jobs that we work on and the fact that we can purchase food and shelter from the pay that we receive to be God providing for us.

Nowhere in the Bible do we see God’s provision for us presented as miraculous events.  Let me give you an example and a contrast of the way things are and the way we try to make them be.  Faith teachers will tell you that we can confess things into existence.  They tell us that the power of our words will cause things to happen in our lives.  Therefore, we can speak a new home into existence or speak the finances that we need into existence.  These false teachings do two things that are contrary to the truth.

First these teachings imply that we have some type of creative power over the events in our lives that do not occur by cause and effect.  We know that things happen because they are caused, but when we are told that we can speak something into existence then we are actually promoting an uncaused event or an event that is completely determined by us.  The truth of the matter is that we cannot speak things into existence as if our words have some type of divine creative powers.  We do not have that.  We can perhaps speak things in confidence to help us be motivated, but we cannot speak things into existence.  That is a new age philosophy that does not work.

The second thing that those false teachings do is to take God out of our lives and to further negate his providence.  In the confession theology we find that we don’t need God since God has empowered us somehow to do things ourselves.  We don’t have to trust God or rely on God because we can do it all ourselves.  We can speak whatever we want into existence.  Why would we need God when we can speak whatever we need into existence whenever we need them?  God’s providence does not work that way and we know it from practical everyday experiences.

We have lots of data of the providence of God in the Bible.  We see how God moved in the lives of the Israelites, various people, and the lives of those in the New Testament church.  The Bible does not show us that miracles are what we should depend on.  We see that it wasn’t through magic, but through various events and even the decisions of people that God moved to carry out his will.

Consider this.  Jesus died so that we would be saved.  Why couldn’t God have just done it another way without sacrificing Jesus Christ?  Why couldn’t it be that if we just believed that Jesus was the son of God and do our best to following his teachings then we would be saved?  It isn’t that way.  Even salvation wasn’t established through magic.  In any case, we are saved because of real events that occurred and that involved the decisions and actions of others.  Jesus could have taken his life back and not sacrificed it, but he instead obeyed God and went to die for us.

The point that I am trying to make here is that we should not depend on miracles in order to experience the providence of God.  We should not expect God to wave a magic wand to provide for us or to keep us from danger or even to bless us.  The Bible is clear that there are bad things, unfortunate things, good things, and blessed things that happen to all of us on this planet (See for example Matthew 6:45).

The Good

Sometimes good things happen to us and we credit it as a blessing from God.  However, how can we know that God caused the blessing to occur?  Let me give you an example.  I recall many years ago how a minister contrasted a blessing from God giving him something.  He had bought a new car or something (I forget what the object was) and someone commented that God gave you a new car.  He said that God didn’t give it to him, but rather that God blessed him with it.  That made a lot of sense to me then because when we think of God giving us something we think that it would be a gift.  For example, if I give you a car then that means that you don’t have to pay for that car, i.e., it’s free.  So if God were to give us something then it would be outside of our ability to pay for it and it would mean that it would be cost free to us.

The problem with that thought is that it is contrary to what the Bible says about God providing for us.  We say that God blessed us with something to mean that God provided an opportunity for us to afford it or otherwise acquire it.  It doesn’t mean that it was free or a gift as we understand it, but that God moved in our situations and events so that we were able to get it.

Let me give you another example closer to home so to speak.  My wife and I credit God for giving us two homes.  We considered our first home to be from God because of how he guided us in the situation (See Proverbs 3:5-6).  We credited God for giving us our current home because of the way it happened and the path that we were on (again God’s guidance).  I believe it was God’s providence that allowed us to acquire both homes.  However, I could argue that God didn’t give it to us, but rather that he blessed us to be able to get it.  In other words, God gave us our jobs, guided us in our finances so that we were able to afford the homes and therefore able to jump on the opportunity when it came.  The Bible equates that whole process with God’s provision.

My point here is that what the minister called being blessed was indeed God’s blessing, but it was also God’s provision.  God gave my wife and me the houses.  He gave my wife and me the vehicles that we drive in even though we pay for those things from the money we receive from our jobs.  I cannot say at all that I have acquired anything of my own (See for Deuteronomy 8:17-18).  God has given me all that I have.  God owns all that is (Psalm 24:1).

So the good things that we experience can be accounted to God.  The things that we are able to purchase are from above because we can do nothing on our own.  We do not have the power to see one millisecond ahead of us and we surely do not know what tomorrow holds.  We are powerless to control all of the events that surround us and must depend on God.  Therefore, even though we have a job, we must realize that it is because of God that we have it and keep it.  God provides for us through second causes as we learned in part one of this study.  God provides for us even through the finances obtained from our jobs and businesses.  We sometimes receive gifts from people, but even those people had to purchase those objects.  No magic.  God is practical as one pastor said in my youth.

We can therefore rightly thank God for the food that we eat even though we paid for it from the money we received from the jobs that we have.  We can thank God for giving us a new car, a new home, a new dress or suit.  He is the provider of all things and his provisions are not magical in their manifestation.  The good things are accredited to God and rightfully so.

The Bad

Not everything that happens to us is good.  The Bible tells us that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose (See Romans 8:28).  From that we have the idea that everything works out for our good so that if anything bad happens then it must somehow be for our good.  I for one do not agree with that and I will tell you why.

Take a situation where an innocent person is killed by a stray bullet that the gunman intended for someone else.  Consider the girl that lost her leg because of an “honest” mistake by the bus driver.  Could God have intended any good for the dead person?  Was there some good out of the fact that the girl lost her leg?  What good is there when thousands of people become homeless and some die because of a natural disaster?  What good is there for the lives of thousands ruined because of the effects of war?

Sometimes bad things happen and that is just it.  They are just bad things.  Do they have purpose?  Well perhaps there are some things that we consider bad that do result in good.  I recall losing my job and now I can think of many good things that came out of it.  I now have a job that I love, my business is growing because of it and Pursuing the Truth Ministries was well established during the time I was out of pay (I wasn’t out of work because I constantly worked.  I just wasn’t getting a regular paycheck).

I suppose that the real question is how divine providence relates to the bad things that happen in our lives.  The short answer is that God guides us to go through the bad times.  I even believe that if we would learn to listen to the Holy Spirit and be led by him then we would avoid some of the bad things that happen to us.  However, what about those things that do not appear to be our fault or that there was nothing that we could have done to avoid it?

Let me give you an example.  I was laid off from my job several years ago and at the time I thought it was a very bad thing.  We had moved into the new home that I told you about previously.  We were just getting started in a new life so to speak and all of a sudden the rug was pulled from under us.  I was determined not to blame or accused God because I was confident that all would work out and I didn’t want to look back in regret for the things that I had said or done.  I remember looking back over the previous years trying to determine how I could have avoided that situation.  I though if I had only not left my previous job.  If I had stayed with the government then I would still have a job.  However, I also saw that there was no reason for me not to have taken the new job, which I was later laid off.  I was unhappy where I was because situations changed and an opportunity arose that was perfect for me and I took it.  There was no reason for me not to take the job that I was laid off from except for fear.

What about accidents, development of diseases, and the like?  Where is God’s providence in those things?  Does God give us diseases to teach us something or for some higher good?  Well the interesting thing is that we find the same situations for people in the Bible.  I remember reading how Elisha died because of a sickness (2 Kings 13:14).  That struck me like a brick because you would think that the great Prophet Elisha would live in great health because he was such a prominent man of God.  Surely God would see to it that he would do well all his life. However, such was not the case.  Did that mean that God didn’t love him or didn’t care for him?  Evidently not.  He was still considered a man of God.

As I mentioned earlier Jesus died for our sins.  Surely God could have come up with another way besides sacrificing Jesus.  What about some of the Apostles?  Some were martyred along with many other Christians simply because of their faith.  Why didn’t God come to their rescue and miraculously save them?  I remember watching a movie many years ago called, “Roots” by Alex Haley.  I remember a scene where a woman slapped a white man (if I remember correctly) and how she was subsequently ambushed by many white people.  I remember her saying something like, “please Jesus.  Please Jesus” or something to that affect because she knew she was about to be beaten or perhaps killed.  I remember thinking how that most likely happened many times in real life.  How innocent people were beaten and how they pleaded to God to save them, but were beaten anyway and even killed.

Where is God’s providence in that?  There was no good out of those events.  There was definitely no good for those who died.  Perhaps there was some good relative to eternity that we just can’t comprehend.  I think of an account how a small college student was raped and killed and left in a lot in the city someplace to die.  Surely she called on God to save her.  Surely she begged God for a miracle, but yet she was still killed.  There are countless incidences where people cry out to God for help only to experience tragedy.

These present difficulty for us to reconcile the providence of God and the attributes of God that we have been told.  How could a loving and all powerful God not save the girl who is about to be killed?  How could a caring God allow a man to lose his job and subsequently lose his house?  How could a loving divine Father not come to the aid of a dying child to save his or her life?  These are the questions that trouble us the most.  However, I have found first of all that these types of things happen to humans on planet earth.  Secondly, the Bible does not tell us that it is any other way.  Even the prophets, apostles, and even God’s own son suffered on earth.  Good people suffer in the same way that we experience good times.  This does not mean that God made us suffer.  It does not mean that God doesn’t care and it surely does not mean that God is not in control.

We don’t know the mode of God’s providence and we don’t fully understand the relationship between God’s love and care for us in the midst of pain and suffering on earth.  The problem is us being able to reconcile it and not whether God loves us or not.  The Bible declares that God loves us and the Bible declares that good and bad things happen to people.  The Bible reveals lives of people to be the same as we experience life today.  There are tragedies that we see as undeserving.  There are tragedies that are blamed on God.  There are just tragedies that happen to all people in addition to the good things that happen to people.

It is said that God grieves with us when we go through troubles.  He provides us the strength to go through the situation and overcome it.  The truth is that sometimes we don’t overcome.  Sometimes a person gets laid off and loses their house eventually.  However, even in that God is still with that person.  We would rather measure God’s presence in terms of utopia than evidence or revelation.  We would rather say that God is with us because all is going well and if things go awry then either I sinned against God and he is punishing me or that he has left me for one reason or another.

So we are still grappling with the reconciliation of the attributes of God (his goodness, love, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, etc.) with the way that the world really is.  However, we should just accept the fact that God loves us and realize that his love is not measured merely by how good life is on earth or how problem free things are here.  God’s love is measured by the sacrifice of his son Jesus Christ.  We know that God loves us because while we were still sinners, Jesus Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

Can we say that God brought the pain and suffering on us?  I don’t think so.  The Bible is consistent in its depiction of pain and suffering as the result of sin that has corrupted God creation.  We can’t say that God brought that tornado to destroy a city or town.  We can’t say that God sent a hurricane as judgment on anyone.  Those things naturally happen on the earth and sometimes people are hurt by them.  Why doesn’t God miraculously stop them or at least stop people from being killed.  I don’t know, but I would say that we are all affected by the choices that we make.

Free will

When my wife and I were in California several years ago we noticed that there were homes built on the sides of mountains.  I thought that was not only strange, but ridiculous.  Why would someone build or even live in a home on the side of a mountain when California is prone to earthquakes.  It would seem reasonable to believe that the house would certainly fall if an earthquake occurred.  However, the person might love the view and just love the house and is therefore willing to take the risk.  We could say the same thing for those who decide to live at the bottom of a volcano or right at the edge of the ocean on a beach.  They know that natural disasters could destroy their homes and lives, but they are willing to take the risk.

We don’t find it strange that an erupting volcano would destroy the lives of those who live at the foot of the volcano.  We would not find it strange that the ocean water would destroy the property along the beaches and perhaps further.  However, when it happens we have to remember that those people chose to live there and more than likely knew the potential danger.  My point here is that a lot of things that happen to us because of our own choice.

This is not to say that we could indeed do something about it all of the time.  However, I do believe that if we were more in tune with the Lord and were truly guided by him that we would avoid some of the things that happen to us.  Some of the pain and suffering that we experience are due to our own choices.  We are beings with free will.  The extent of that free will is a topic of much debate.  However, I chose to do one thing or another.  I chose to disobey my parents and to disobey God.  We chose to disobey the law.  How many people are in car accidents simply because they were going too fast?  How many people die in car accidents in the snow because they were driving too fast?

Should we blame God in such things?  Should we say that if God truly loved him then he would not have died even though he was going seventy-five miles an hour in the rain or snow?  Should we blame God when we have to declare bankruptcy because we allowed our spending to get out of control?  God’s providence is there, but do we follow it?  There is an old saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”  God can guide us, but many times we refuse to follow.

Does following God mean that we will have a problem free life?  No.  The Bible is clear on that.  However, at least if I’m following God I don’t have to despair, but have confidence that God loves me no matter what.  I recall Charles Stanley saying many years ago that true faith is to love God no matter what happens.  That is not what we hear from the religious community today.  We believe that true faith is to love God when things go our way.

Why do people do the things that they do even though they know it could mean their demise.  Soldiers fall on grenades to save their friends.  People risk their lives to save others.  Why?  Does their good deed guarantee safety?  No.  Their good deed could cost their life.  That is just the way it is and we should learn to accept that and do all we can to obey God.  Perhaps life would be better if we all obeyed God.  I know that it would because we wouldn’t be killing each other.  We wouldn’t be stealing from each other and we would look out for each other.  That is not the world that exists today even in the so-called Christian communities because we are too busy trying to take care of self at the expense of others.  That is the choice that we have made.

Conclusion

God is governing the course of history to bring his creation where he wants it.  God does love us and he cares for us.  However, that love and that care should not be translated into a trouble-free life.  Sometimes bad things happen to us and at other times good things happen to us.  We don’t understand the full scope of God’s providence and how to reconcile it with the real life experiences.  Therefore we should be careful to follow God and to obey him because there is nothing else sure outside of obedience to God.  Solomon said that our whole duty is to revere god and do what he says (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

I don’t know why things happen the way that they do, but I know that God loves me.  I don’t know why I have to experience good and bad experiences, but I have to strive to hold onto God’s providence for my life overall.  I don’t know how to reconcile God’s providence in my life or for the whole world for that matter, but I do know and accept that God loves me and that he does care for me even though sometimes it doesn’t appear to be clearly evident.  Amen.