Does God Direct All the Details of My Life?
00:00:00.000 | Was A.W. Tozer wrong on sovereignty?
00:00:08.440 | Today's question arrives from a listener named Josh.
00:00:11.200 | Pastor John, hello.
00:00:12.680 | I'm a Christian of only a few years and I'm learning more about Calvinism and election
00:00:17.000 | in my studies.
00:00:18.800 | My question is, to what degree are our actions in daily walk with God predestined?
00:00:24.520 | If I recall correctly, A.W. Tozer believed Providence was like a cruise ship.
00:00:30.000 | The ship's final destination is settled and certain.
00:00:32.960 | That's Providence.
00:00:34.360 | But on the open water, what we each do on the ship is open to our own free volition.
00:00:40.160 | So Pastor John, how much of our daily life is sovereignly directed by God?
00:00:46.240 | Well, I love A.W. Tozer, but that's a bad analogy.
00:00:51.920 | Yes, it really is.
00:00:55.560 | Sorry, A.W. The last question, how much of our daily life is sovereignly directed by
00:01:04.120 | God?
00:01:05.800 | My answer is all of it, down to the tying of your shoelaces and the brushing of your
00:01:12.480 | teeth, which I'll try to show from the Bible in just a minute.
00:01:18.760 | There are several problems with this proposal that says life is like a cruise ship whose
00:01:26.900 | destination is sovereignly decreed while the life on the ship is not sovereignly decreed.
00:01:36.000 | And here's the first problem.
00:01:38.380 | It implies that the choices we make in life on the ship don't have any decisive effect
00:01:48.740 | on the outcome of our lives, the destination of the ship.
00:01:53.860 | That's not true.
00:01:55.180 | Hebrews 12.14 says, "Strive on the ship for the holiness without which no one will see
00:02:05.540 | the Lord," that is, arrive at the destination.
00:02:09.100 | No holiness on the ship, no destination in heaven.
00:02:13.500 | So disconnecting sovereignty over the destination from sovereignty on the ship is unbiblical.
00:02:23.100 | Here's another way to say it, or same point, different angle, why this is an unbiblical
00:02:28.640 | proposal.
00:02:29.860 | The Bible is pervaded by teachings that God's sovereign control is complete, not partial.
00:02:42.580 | It governs every aspect of nature, every aspect of history, national, personal, life.
00:02:52.420 | Nothing, absolutely nothing is outside God's sovereign governance.
00:03:00.100 | Now the way he controls all things, whether it's more or less direct or more or less indirect,
00:03:10.260 | more or less by active intrusion or more or less by tactical permissions, however God
00:03:19.020 | controls, the control is complete and pervasive.
00:03:25.740 | Nothing in the universe is random or without divine design and purpose.
00:03:34.980 | Now I don't say this because of any philosophical assumption about the nature of God.
00:03:42.700 | I think philosophical assumptions here are the nemesis of true biblical thinking.
00:03:49.020 | We should come to the Bible and try to listen to it for what it says without bringing our
00:03:54.700 | philosophical assumptions to it.
00:03:56.740 | So I'm not saying this because of an assumption about, "Well, that's just the way God has
00:04:01.500 | to be.
00:04:02.500 | That's what God means," or, "That's what human will does or doesn't require," or, "That's
00:04:07.660 | what causality is," or what—I'm just not even thinking that way.
00:04:12.500 | I'm trying to just come to terms with text.
00:04:15.460 | So let me give you the texts that are governing me here, or at least give them to Josh so
00:04:22.340 | that he can ponder them.
00:04:24.260 | Proverbs 16.1, "The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue"—that
00:04:31.820 | is, what really happens—"is from the Lord."
00:04:35.060 | Proverbs 16.9, "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord"—what really happens—"the
00:04:44.340 | Lord establishes his steps."
00:04:46.860 | Or Proverbs 19.21, "Many are the plans of the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of
00:04:53.820 | the Lord that will stand."
00:04:55.940 | That's what's happening on the ship, right?
00:04:57.780 | That's not just the end of the ship, cruise.
00:05:01.060 | Proverbs 20.24, "A man's steps are from the Lord."
00:05:05.940 | How can he understand his way?
00:05:08.060 | Or Proverbs 21.1, "The king's heart is a stream of water."
00:05:13.540 | This would be one of the crew members on the ship.
00:05:17.260 | The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord.
00:05:21.820 | He turns it wherever he wills.
00:05:24.140 | Now all those texts refer to ordinary, on-the-boat decision-making.
00:05:30.940 | So if what Josh means by our decisions being "open"—that's what he said—"open
00:05:39.340 | to free volition," if what he means is that we have ultimate self-determination on the
00:05:47.660 | ship, well, the answer is we don't.
00:05:50.780 | There is no human ultimate self-determination.
00:05:55.700 | Only God has ultimate self-determination.
00:05:59.660 | We are free in the sense that we can do whatever we choose, but ultimately God governs what
00:06:07.620 | we choose.
00:06:09.100 | We are not God, and we cannot veto God.
00:06:14.300 | That's what Job had to learn in 42 chapters of warfare with God when he concludes in Job
00:06:23.460 | 42, "I know that you can do all things, and no purpose of yours can be thwarted."
00:06:32.420 | So no purpose of God's can be vetoed by a purpose of man.
00:06:40.140 | What we think is random in this world or uncontrolled, the Bible says, is from the Lord.
00:06:46.340 | So it says things like Proverbs 16:33, "The lot is cast in the lap," or we would say,
00:06:53.620 | "The dice are rolled on the board."
00:06:55.980 | But every decision is from the Lord.
00:07:00.060 | So that's choosing a random thing and saying, "No, it's really not random from God's
00:07:06.420 | perspective."
00:07:07.420 | And Jesus, if you're bothered by all those texts coming from the Old Testament, which
00:07:11.460 | you shouldn't be, but if you are, here's Jesus' way of saying the same thing.
00:07:16.340 | Jesus says in Matthew 10, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and not one of them will
00:07:25.460 | fall to the ground apart from your father?"
00:07:27.940 | Now, I think the reason he chose two sparrows and one of them just dropping dead off a branch
00:07:36.840 | in the jungle somewhere is that that just seems to be the least significant thing in
00:07:42.620 | the world.
00:07:43.620 | Like a bird dying in a forest somewhere that only God knows about, that's really random
00:07:50.380 | and insignificant.
00:07:52.100 | And Jesus says, "Well, you may think it's random and it may be insignificant, but it
00:07:57.500 | is controlled by your father."
00:07:59.580 | So even the hairs of your head are all numbered, he adds, and then he makes the wonderful application,
00:08:04.140 | "Fear not.
00:08:05.140 | Fear not.
00:08:06.140 | You are of more value than many sparrows."
00:08:08.180 | Well, there's a "therefore."
00:08:10.220 | Fear not therefore.
00:08:11.220 | In other words, the sovereignty of God over the details of the universe and our lives
00:08:16.180 | is meant to take away fear.
00:08:19.140 | The control of God, our Father, our good, loving Father who works everything together
00:08:24.620 | for His glorious purposes and our good should make us bold as a lion.
00:08:31.700 | I would say James, the book of James in the New Testament, is virtually thinking the same
00:08:39.580 | way that Josh is thinking, namely, we're on this boat and the question is, are the
00:08:47.860 | random, seemingly insignificant little things we choose on the boat governed by God?
00:08:54.540 | So James says, "Come now, you who say today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a
00:09:00.420 | town and spend a year there and try to make a profit."
00:09:03.300 | Like, okay, you think you're going to go somewhere on this ship?
00:09:06.300 | "Yet," he says, "you do not know what tomorrow may bring.
00:09:10.860 | What is your life?
00:09:11.860 | You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
00:09:16.940 | Instead you ought to say," and here comes the answer to how detailed God's governance
00:09:23.740 | of the behavior on the ship is, "Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we
00:09:31.420 | will live," that is, we won't die on the cruise, "and we will do this or that,"
00:09:37.340 | that is, we'll go to the top level of the ship or the bottom level of the ship or we'll
00:09:41.700 | stand in the sun today or we'll eat at six or five today, whatever, "we'll do this
00:09:46.340 | or that if the Lord wills.
00:09:48.180 | As it is, you boast in your arrogance."
00:09:50.860 | So it seems to me that James is saying there is meticulous, complete sovereignty over our
00:09:57.420 | living, over our doing this or that, and the purpose of it is not only what Jesus said,
00:10:03.980 | namely courage, but humility.
00:10:06.940 | It's arrogant not to think this way about our cruise behavior.
00:10:11.920 | One last observation. If you think that you can be faith-filled, obedient, holy on this
00:10:21.680 | cruise ship without the sovereign enabling of God, then you don't know your own sinfulness
00:10:30.280 | and you don't know the preciousness of the work of the Holy Spirit on the ship.
00:10:36.520 | There's only one hope of pleasing God on this cruise ship, and that is the sovereign work
00:10:43.600 | of the Holy Spirit.
00:10:44.600 | It's just baffling to me.
00:10:46.560 | In fact, it makes me mad when Christian teachers try to take the sovereignty of God away from
00:10:55.280 | the nitty-gritty battle for holiness, which is everything in our Christian life.
00:11:00.800 | So here's the key text for me.
00:11:03.000 | Hebrews 13, 20, 21, "Now may the God of peace equip you with everything good that you may
00:11:10.960 | do His will," here it comes, "working in us that which is pleasing in His sight through
00:11:20.300 | Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.
00:11:24.880 | Indeed, indeed, amen.
00:11:27.080 | To Him be glory, not just for getting us to the destination by sovereign decrees, but
00:11:34.080 | also for enabling us to do everything good that we have to do on this ship.
00:11:41.840 | The ship is the place where we live, where the glory of God will shine or not shine,
00:11:46.120 | and to take the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit by which we are enabled to do what
00:11:51.680 | pleases God away from this ship is crazy.
00:11:56.240 | First Corinthians 15, 10, "But by the grace of God, I am what I am on this ship, and His
00:12:03.080 | grace toward me was not in vain.
00:12:05.360 | On the contrary, I worked on this cruise ship harder than any of them, though it was not
00:12:12.800 | I, but the grace of God that was with me."
00:12:17.280 | So the destination on the ship and all of our life on the ship are governed by the one
00:12:26.200 | who, Ephesians 1, 11, works all things on the ship and in our destination, all things
00:12:34.280 | according to the counsel of His merciful will.
00:12:39.760 | Amen.
00:12:40.760 | Sovereignty in the nitty-gritty details of our lives.
00:12:43.960 | I love what you said, Pastor John.
00:12:45.280 | The sovereignty of God over the details of the universe and our lives is meant to take
00:12:50.880 | away fear.
00:12:52.280 | Amen.
00:12:53.280 | That's really good.
00:12:54.560 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:12:56.520 | Well, Jesus is my substitute.
00:12:58.840 | That's one of the great and glorious truths of him.
00:13:01.080 | He became sin for me that I might stand before God righteous and forgiven.
00:13:06.200 | It's beautifully true.
00:13:07.960 | But is Jesus also my joy substitute too, my hope for when I fail to delight in God as
00:13:14.220 | I ought?
00:13:15.220 | It's another really sharp question from a listener thinking through Christian hedonism
00:13:19.800 | in their daily life, and we will address it on Monday.
00:13:23.560 | On the other side of the weekend, until then, I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:13:26.240 | We'll see you then.
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