General Session 8: Triumph through Providence - John Piper
00:00:00.000 | A few things in my 50 years in the ministry, more or less, have been more gratifying to
00:00:11.360 | me than to see the all-pervasive, all-governing sovereignty of God, which we're going to talk
00:00:22.720 | about as providence, move from being a stumbling block, that it is to so many people, to being
00:00:33.120 | a soul-stabilizing, insanity-removing power as our people walk through hellish circumstances.
00:00:47.460 | To see that move in a church from being absolutely perplexing and maddening to being life and
00:00:58.680 | hope to watch providence move from there to there has been over my years gloriously gratifying.
00:01:08.960 | For example, a quote from one of our missionaries 40 years ago from China.
00:01:16.080 | "In December of 1987, my father died unexpectedly at age of 63.
00:01:21.200 | I was plunged into a journey of several months, struggling to understand what had happened.
00:01:27.640 | I was at Bethlehem," our church, "but new to the teaching and apparently missing many
00:01:37.100 | of the distinctives."
00:01:38.400 | Fast forward to 1992.
00:01:41.660 | We had been in China for a year and returned home to have our first child.
00:01:46.380 | As you remember, she lived one day and died in our arms.
00:01:53.460 | It was then that the teaching of God's providence came home to roost.
00:02:00.240 | God had not turned us loose to some natural events, but in his divine mercy had seen fit
00:02:08.060 | to give us a child, and through the process of taking her from us, work in us a honing
00:02:16.540 | and sanctifying unlike anything we'd ever known.
00:02:21.980 | Thanks to the foundation laid in my life through our years at Bethlehem, I was now able to
00:02:30.440 | embrace and understand such verses as, "The Lord gives, and the Lord has taken away.
00:02:41.300 | Blessed be the name of the Lord."
00:02:45.540 | There was another missionary couple who went out from us to the Middle East.
00:02:54.460 | They're still there, by the way, but something happened in between.
00:02:59.660 | Not long after, they got pregnant, first time, and they went to Turkey, a nice safe place,
00:03:06.500 | a more advanced place to have their child, and he was born and he died.
00:03:14.540 | They came home to recover.
00:03:16.860 | They didn't stay home, but they came home, and their first Sunday back was a morning
00:03:25.300 | when I was on the front row getting ready to preach.
00:03:28.300 | They were sitting, we had these rows that come in like this.
00:03:31.180 | They're sitting over here.
00:03:32.180 | I can see them, first Sunday back, and it was the very first Sunday that we sang as
00:03:39.260 | a church, "Blessed be your name on the road marked with suffering, though there's pain
00:03:46.980 | in the offering, blessed be your name.
00:03:50.540 | You give and take away.
00:03:52.620 | You give and take away.
00:03:55.060 | My heart will choose to say, 'Lord, blessed be your name.'"
00:03:59.940 | And I looked over, and they were both standing there like this, empty hands of submission.
00:04:08.580 | And I thought, "That's worth a lifetime of ministry."
00:04:16.180 | One more woman with uterine cancer, then I'll tell you in a minute why I'm giving you all
00:04:22.140 | these stories.
00:04:23.140 | I came to Bethlehem 10 years ago.
00:04:25.940 | I had been a believer for only a few years.
00:04:29.180 | Within a few weeks of attending, I began to hear your teaching on God's sovereignty in
00:04:34.980 | salvation, and it was the weirdest thing I had ever heard.
00:04:41.220 | It sounded archaic and un-American.
00:04:48.100 | And later, I realized it truly was archaic and un-American, but genuinely biblical.
00:04:56.340 | Eventually, by the awesome weight of scriptural evidence, I was compelled to adopt the Reformed
00:05:04.900 | perspective on God's sovereignty.
00:05:07.860 | Little did I know that the hunger to understand God's nature and His ways over the past 10
00:05:14.660 | years was graciously given to fortify me for this year's surprise of cancer diagnosis.
00:05:22.220 | Of course, the news that I had a life-threatening illness, the realization that I would not
00:05:28.140 | be able to have children was horribly painful.
00:05:32.980 | But the powerful assistance that comes through truth amazed me.
00:05:40.980 | Theology can be so practical.
00:05:44.220 | It does wonders for anxiety and self-pity and despair.
00:05:50.060 | I am so glad God ordained my conversion to Reformed theology prior to ordaining my cancer.
00:06:00.220 | I know He is immeasurably strong and thoroughly in charge and 100% on my side, even when He
00:06:08.620 | sends painful circumstances, was a Spurgeon that said, "I will kiss the waves that dash
00:06:17.460 | me upon the rock of ages."
00:06:21.020 | Now, the reason for beginning with those three stories is because I want there to be a tone
00:06:29.420 | in this room as I talk about providence.
00:06:36.620 | The reality of God's all-governing, all-pervasive, purposeful sovereignty, which we call providence,
00:06:45.660 | is controversial, and I don't want to think about it mainly that way.
00:06:54.280 | From now until the day that you see Jesus, there will always be people who turn red in
00:07:01.300 | the face and spittin' mad if you come even close to suggesting that God took their baby.
00:07:18.860 | From now to the end of history, there will be scholars and pundits and articles and blogs
00:07:27.260 | and books describing the God of Jonathan Edwards and the God of John Piper as a moral monster.
00:07:39.140 | Your job when those things happen, if you happen to love the God I love, will not be
00:07:47.340 | to return evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but to absorb, like Jesus did, absorb the
00:07:56.780 | slander, the abuse, hand it over to God, like Jesus did, patiently return good for evil,
00:08:05.820 | meet their needs.
00:08:08.100 | And I bear you witness, like I did, I think, on the Q&A this afternoon, I bear you witness,
00:08:14.980 | some of those spittin' angry enemies will do a 180, and they'll love you.
00:08:20.420 | It might take 10 years, but don't give up, don't give up on them.
00:08:28.700 | Don't go online with guns blazing, this is not the kind of doctrine that should be handled
00:08:33.900 | that way.
00:08:35.700 | The great design of the doctrine of providence is to be the ballast in the boats of your
00:08:43.180 | people to keep them from capsizing in the waves of suffering.
00:08:47.740 | That's what it's for, and your job is to put it there, and if they keep pitchin' it out,
00:08:54.540 | just keep puttin' it back in, and do the best you can to win them to biblical truth.
00:09:01.780 | So that's the spirit in which I want you to hear this message, and that's the spirit I
00:09:07.660 | think you should have as you try to build your people's understanding and acceptance
00:09:13.220 | and love for the doctrine of God's absolute, all-pervasive, all-governing, purposeful sovereignty
00:09:21.600 | called providence.
00:09:24.900 | So we're going to do it in three steps.
00:09:27.220 | First, we're going to talk about the definition a little more fully.
00:09:31.660 | I've given my definition with the phrase "purposeful sovereignty," but I want to say some more
00:09:36.620 | about the meaning of providence.
00:09:39.420 | Number two, we'll talk about the truth that's going to triumph through providence, namely
00:09:49.860 | certain glorious promises that God has held out to us about His future for us.
00:09:56.260 | So collect some promises together that sum up the glorious future that we're looking
00:10:03.080 | forward to, and then notice that there are massive obstacles between those promises and
00:10:11.980 | their fulfillment that only providence could remove.
00:10:16.580 | And the third thing is, how does He remove them?
00:10:19.260 | So a definition, promises of God's future, and how providence removes the obstacles of
00:10:27.700 | those promises.
00:10:29.260 | So, clarify the definition, identify God's promises, and how providence secures those
00:10:36.380 | promises.
00:10:37.380 | So, number one, some thoughts about definition, the meaning of providence.
00:10:41.620 | The Word is not in the Bible, in the English Bible, at least not in the ones I have.
00:10:47.820 | And therefore, when we talk about a definition of a Word that we use a lot and it's not in
00:10:52.980 | the Bible, we need to be very careful that we assemble our definition from biblical realities
00:11:00.500 | that are really there, and then don't over-claim anything for the Word since it's not there,
00:11:06.060 | but make clear what biblical realities it's trying to sum up.
00:11:11.340 | So I use the phrase "purposeful sovereignty" because sovereignty and providence aren't
00:11:19.340 | the same.
00:11:20.340 | Sovereignty, at least the way I'm using the term, the way I think the Bible uses the term,
00:11:25.380 | is that in and of itself, the word sovereignty carries no connotation of design or purposefulness.
00:11:37.420 | God always has design and purposefulness, but it's not in the word sovereignty.
00:11:41.300 | Sovereignty means He has the power and the right to do anything He pleases, right?
00:11:46.900 | And then you have to ask, does He please things by plan, or is He whimsical in His sovereignty?
00:11:59.940 | So the word sovereignty is a glorious word, I love it, but providence is more.
00:12:08.900 | It's sovereignty plus providence is.
00:12:13.460 | It implies purposefulness.
00:12:15.940 | Buried in the English word "providence" is the word "provide," which is made up of two
00:12:24.380 | Latin words, right?
00:12:26.660 | "Pro," "toward," "forward," "unto," "videre," "see," which just so happens, amazingly, to
00:12:38.780 | capture the English idiom "see to."
00:12:46.340 | So God saw to it that a ram was in the thicket to take Isaac's place.
00:12:56.980 | God saw to it that Joseph would be sold into slavery and save his people.
00:13:02.740 | God saw to it that his son would be murdered and salvation would come to millions.
00:13:09.100 | See to, providere.
00:13:14.060 | And all of those imply purposefulness.
00:13:17.940 | God sees to everything purposefully.
00:13:24.340 | One more clarification on the definition regarding its extent.
00:13:28.720 | I use the phrases "all-governing, all-pervasive," trying to get at how extensive is this purposeful
00:13:41.660 | sovereignty?
00:13:42.660 | Now, we'll see this, the claim that it's all-governing and all-pervasive, we're going to see it
00:13:49.180 | in the Bible as we move forward.
00:13:52.820 | But what I mean is that in the entire universe, God governs the smallest thing, like Jesus
00:13:59.900 | says, the fall of a bird.
00:14:03.900 | In the darkest forest you can imagine, somewhere where nobody's watching, a bird gets old and
00:14:09.340 | dies and falls to the ground, God governed that.
00:14:16.700 | Or the movement of stars, Isaiah 40, 26, or the murder of his son, Acts 4, 27.
00:14:26.040 | The providence of God governs all the moral and immoral acts of every soul.
00:14:36.040 | Neither Satan at his hellish worst or human beings at their redeemed best ever act in
00:14:44.140 | any way contrary to the ultimate, all-embracing, all-wise plan and providence of God.
00:14:56.540 | That's what I mean by providence.
00:14:58.340 | Now, second, promises that God has given us in his Word about his ultimate triumph at
00:15:06.940 | the end, what it would be like, and why we can be thrilled and hope to get there and
00:15:13.100 | build our ministries on a confident hope that we're going to get there.
00:15:16.380 | I'm going to mention three promises that I think sum up where everything is going, and
00:15:22.260 | then we'll step back and say, "Whoa, there's a lot standing in the way of those promises,
00:15:29.700 | which only providence can handle."
00:15:33.780 | So promise number one, the gospel of Jesus Christ will successfully penetrate all the
00:15:41.820 | peoples of the world and gather into Christ all the ransomed elect.
00:15:48.540 | That's going to happen.
00:15:49.540 | Matthew 24, 14, "This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world
00:15:56.340 | as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come."
00:16:01.820 | It's promised.
00:16:02.820 | It's going to happen.
00:16:03.820 | The gospel will reach all the peoples of the world, and it cannot be stopped.
00:16:11.300 | So if you want to be involved in something that cannot fail, be sure to be involved in
00:16:15.760 | world missions.
00:16:18.580 | It reaches all the peoples, and when it gets there, it succeeds.
00:16:22.980 | In Revelation 5, 9, all the redeemed are going to be gathered, the ransomed are going to
00:16:28.060 | be pulled in.
00:16:29.060 | "Worthy are you to take the scroll, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed
00:16:36.920 | people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made them a kingdom and
00:16:43.380 | priest to our God.
00:16:44.780 | They shall reign on earth."
00:16:46.500 | All the ransomed from all the peoples, tongues, tribes, and nations are going to be there.
00:16:52.140 | They're going to come.
00:16:53.140 | They're going to hear the gospel.
00:16:54.360 | Faith comes by hearing, and they're going to come.
00:17:00.220 | It's going to succeed.
00:17:02.500 | John 10, 16, "I have other sheep that are not of this fold.
00:17:06.980 | I must bring them also.
00:17:10.140 | They will listen to my voice, so there will be one flock, one shepherd.
00:17:16.140 | I must.
00:17:17.880 | I will.
00:17:19.100 | I will."
00:17:20.100 | It's going to happen.
00:17:21.460 | That's the promise.
00:17:22.700 | So promise number one, the gospel will reach all the peoples of the world, and it will
00:17:29.540 | do its mighty work when it gets there, and all the ransomed will be gathered in.
00:17:35.780 | Number two, all of these ransomed elect from all the peoples of the world, the bride of
00:17:43.600 | Christ will be sanctified, glorified, and made perfectly beautiful for the eternal enjoyment
00:17:54.020 | of her divine husband.
00:17:58.260 | Romans 8, 30, "Those whom he predestined, he also called.
00:18:03.460 | Those whom he called, he also justified.
00:18:05.900 | And those whom he justified, he also glorified."
00:18:09.700 | So the glorification of the predestined, called, and justified is as good as done.
00:18:16.940 | I think John's going to preach on that tomorrow.
00:18:20.800 | It's as good as done.
00:18:22.180 | They are glorified.
00:18:23.900 | It's going to happen.
00:18:25.320 | It will not fail.
00:18:26.700 | Ephesians 5, 25, "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might
00:18:33.820 | sanctify her, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot
00:18:43.540 | or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish."
00:18:53.700 | Christ did not die to set in motion a failed marriage.
00:19:03.260 | She will be blameless and beautiful.
00:19:08.060 | That's why the universe exists.
00:19:13.420 | She will be beautiful.
00:19:15.140 | First Thessalonians 5, 23, "May the God of peace sanctify you completely, and may your
00:19:21.140 | whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:19:27.180 | He who calls you is faithful.
00:19:30.200 | He will do it."
00:19:33.780 | That's the promise.
00:19:35.140 | So all these reached and ransomed, elect from all the nations of the world, are going to
00:19:41.780 | be redeemed and justified and sanctified and glorified and made spectacularly beautiful
00:19:52.220 | for the enjoyment of her husband, Jesus Christ.
00:19:57.820 | Number three, third promise.
00:20:00.660 | This beauty of the bride will consist, most essentially, in the sinless echo of Christ's
00:20:14.540 | excellencies, his preciousness, reverberating back to him in the all-satisfying pleasures
00:20:27.200 | that his people find in him forever.
00:20:30.680 | Now that's a long, complex sentence, and it contains all of my theology.
00:20:37.840 | That's why it has to be long and complex.
00:20:39.220 | I'm going to read it again, and I hope you can get it.
00:20:44.340 | So the beauty of the bride, for which the universe was made, the beauty of the bride
00:20:50.660 | will consist essentially, not only, there are other things to say about this bride,
00:20:57.020 | but essentially, in the sinless echo of Christ's excellencies -- emanation, remanation, Jonathan
00:21:07.660 | Edwards -- echo back the excellencies of Christ in the all-satisfying pleasures that she has
00:21:21.620 | in him forever.
00:21:25.020 | That's what her sinless excellencies or his sinless excellencies do when they are properly
00:21:37.380 | seen and tasted and enjoyed.
00:21:41.460 | They echo back his worth, his preciousness, and the end of all things has been reached.
00:21:50.140 | Isaiah 55, 12, "You shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace.
00:21:58.180 | The mountains and the hills before you will break forth into singing, and all the trees
00:22:04.580 | of the field will clap their hands.
00:22:08.420 | Instead of the thorn will come up the cypress, instead of the brier will come up the myrtle,
00:22:15.420 | and it -- what's that -- and it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that
00:22:27.500 | shall not be cut off."
00:22:29.940 | What's the "it"?
00:22:34.300 | The "it" is the spectacular joy of the creation.
00:22:40.580 | She's going to go out in joy.
00:22:43.060 | The mountains are going to clap their hands.
00:22:45.820 | They're going to sing, and it will be for the name of the Lord, an everlasting sign.
00:22:53.820 | The joy of the bride will be the sign of the worth of the name of the Creator, the Bridegroom.
00:23:03.500 | That's the gist of the argument of Isaiah 55, 12 to 13.
00:23:09.340 | All creation, especially the bride, but also maybe even dogs.
00:23:16.540 | Not cats, I think, but dogs.
00:23:20.420 | Although, I do have a theology of glorification that might allow cats in.
00:23:26.700 | Because they're going to -- I mean, big cats are going to be there for sure, right?
00:23:32.980 | Lion.
00:23:33.980 | They're going to lie down with the lamb.
00:23:40.100 | But I digress.
00:23:43.100 | Isaiah 35, 10, "The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing.
00:23:51.380 | Everlasting joy will be upon their heads, and they shall obtain gladness and joy, and
00:23:58.620 | sorrow and sighing will flee away."
00:24:03.380 | And what's the center of that joy, that gladness?
00:24:08.780 | Revelation 21, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with them.
00:24:13.540 | He will dwell with them.
00:24:14.780 | They will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
00:24:20.580 | He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
00:24:23.500 | Death shall be no more.
00:24:24.500 | Neither shall there be mourning nor crying anymore, nor any pain, for the former things
00:24:30.300 | have passed away."
00:24:31.380 | God is the center of their joy, the focus, the source of their joy.
00:24:38.620 | You make me know the path to life.
00:24:42.380 | In your presence, there is fullness of joy.
00:24:44.740 | At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
00:24:48.420 | And that's the end of the story.
00:24:54.900 | One of the tests you can make of yourself and your understanding of worship, true, authentic,
00:25:01.940 | inner worship, not just motions, hands, mouth, whatever, just really what's going on here,
00:25:09.540 | the test is if you try to use it for anything else.
00:25:16.360 | If you say, "We're going to worship to raise money for our building program, worship to
00:25:21.220 | bring people into the church, we're going to worship in order to fix our marriages,"
00:25:26.980 | you don't understand.
00:25:29.060 | You don't do worship in order to anything.
00:25:32.180 | It's the end.
00:25:33.900 | There's no in order to, once you've gotten to the end of the universe's purpose.
00:25:41.020 | Now just a little parenthesis, if you do that authentically week in and week out, marriages
00:25:48.700 | are going to be changed.
00:25:51.380 | You can't not have better marriages in a church that's meeting God authentically as an end
00:25:58.420 | in himself every Sunday, you can't.
00:26:01.340 | And everything else has changed.
00:26:04.820 | But if you shoot at that, try to use this authentic enjoyment of God himself as a means
00:26:16.660 | to something else, you just don't get it.
00:26:25.940 | The ultimate purpose of God's all wise providence then is this enjoyment of God by the bride
00:26:37.480 | at the end of history.
00:26:38.940 | Bring my sons from afar, my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called
00:26:44.540 | by my name, whom I created for my glory, that's Isaiah 43, 6, and 7, I created for my glory.
00:26:56.660 | And the way that glory, that worth, that beauty, that greatness, that preciousness of God is
00:27:04.380 | put on display is that it awakens in us pleasures in him and they echo back to him his worth
00:27:17.340 | and greatness and beauty, his glory.
00:27:22.660 | It's a promise, that's going to happen.
00:27:24.980 | So those are my three promises.
00:27:27.140 | They're going to happen.
00:27:29.700 | The nations will be reached, the elect will be gathered in and made beautiful for Christ
00:27:38.940 | and that beauty will consist in our echoing back his excellencies in the enjoyment that
00:27:45.380 | we have in him.
00:27:47.900 | That's the end of all things.
00:27:52.100 | None of that's going to happen unless there is an omnipotent exercise of providence because
00:28:04.180 | there are massive threats and obstacles to those three promises, massive, 10 million
00:28:13.460 | times greater than you have any hope of overcoming.
00:28:19.460 | There's only one hope for those three promises to come true and that's the providence of
00:28:24.820 | God.
00:28:26.000 | So that's where we turn now.
00:28:31.860 | What are some of these threats, obstacles, and how does God's providence overcome those
00:28:42.340 | threats and guarantee the triumph?
00:28:46.000 | I wrote that sentence and then I stopped and I thought, "No, no, not what I'm going to
00:28:52.140 | talk about.
00:28:53.140 | I'm going to take it up a level.
00:28:55.820 | I'm not going to say what or how does the providence of God overcome those threats and
00:29:05.860 | obstacles.
00:29:06.860 | I'm going to ask and show from the Bible, how does the providence of God not only overcome
00:29:14.740 | them but make them serve His purposes?"
00:29:21.540 | You know, if you think of, here's God, here's the fulfillment of all things and promises
00:29:29.060 | and in the middle there are obstacles and God has to do things to get over them.
00:29:33.500 | You've created an autonomy here that doesn't, it's not real.
00:29:38.420 | These obstacles are not autonomous.
00:29:40.380 | I mean, Satan at the center of this threat and this obstacle is not autonomous.
00:29:51.300 | We're not dualists.
00:29:52.300 | Right?
00:29:53.300 | It's like, here's God, here's Satan duking it out.
00:29:59.820 | They're not duking it out.
00:30:02.260 | This fellow's done.
00:30:06.020 | He's a creature.
00:30:10.860 | So what God is going to do, since He plans all things as well as performs all things,
00:30:20.100 | is not only get over the obstacles but take them captive and make them serve His designs
00:30:27.340 | and His purposes.
00:30:28.340 | That's what I want to see.
00:30:29.340 | Is that true?
00:30:30.340 | Because if that's true, oh my.
00:30:34.220 | How does it change your view of the world in which you live, the sufferings you walk
00:30:38.820 | through, the miseries of this globe?
00:30:45.060 | That's where we're going.
00:30:46.060 | I'm going to steal a little bit of John's thunder here with Romans 8.35, but you pick
00:30:52.460 | it up.
00:30:53.460 | I won't stay long.
00:30:55.740 | Romans 8.35, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
00:31:01.660 | For tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?"
00:31:08.100 | Now if you stopped right there, rhetorical question, a good prosperity preacher would
00:31:13.300 | say, "No!
00:31:14.300 | No!
00:31:15.300 | They're not going to separate us from the love of Christ because it's not going to happen
00:31:20.420 | to us."
00:31:27.660 | Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
00:31:29.540 | For tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine?
00:31:34.140 | Famine!
00:31:35.140 | No way!
00:31:36.140 | No way are Christians going to starve to death.
00:31:40.660 | Or nakedness?
00:31:41.660 | No way!
00:31:42.660 | There will always be clothes.
00:31:45.500 | No naked Christians.
00:31:47.260 | No Christians who can't afford clothing.
00:31:51.180 | This is a wicked, wicked...
00:31:54.260 | I've got a guy in our church right now from Cameroon, I mean, he's in our seminary, and
00:32:00.700 | he's writing his thesis on the prosperity gospel, and it's absolutely, I mean, we have
00:32:05.340 | exported this, you know, the devastating effects it's having all over West Africa as he sees
00:32:11.580 | it in his little sphere.
00:32:14.580 | So my ire gets up a lot when I see that people stop in the middle of verse 35.
00:32:24.620 | Because if you keep going, everything that I just said is proved false.
00:32:29.300 | Who shall separate us from the love of God?
00:32:31.540 | Shall tribulation, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword, comma, and
00:32:38.500 | a quote from Psalm 44, "As it is written, we are being killed all day long."
00:32:48.900 | It happens!
00:32:51.720 | Nakedness happens!
00:32:55.280 | Starvation happens!
00:32:56.800 | Swords go through Christian necks all day long.
00:33:04.740 | That's happening somewhere in the world right now.
00:33:07.340 | Not happening in this room right now, but somewhere it's happening, as we heard earlier,
00:33:12.660 | who filled in, whoever quoted all those incredible statistics about last century and this century
00:33:21.300 | martyrdoms.
00:33:25.620 | So there they are, the obstacles right there.
00:33:30.460 | And Paul says, after he says, "We are being killed all day long," there's this adversative
00:33:38.700 | which is often translated, "No!"
00:33:41.500 | I like that translation, "No!"
00:33:44.300 | Like, but, but no, "In all these things we are."
00:33:51.900 | Now what does that mean?
00:33:53.180 | I wonder what MacArthur's going to say.
00:33:57.340 | What is more than a conqueror?
00:33:59.260 | I'll give you my take on more than a conqueror, and then you can correct me.
00:34:07.420 | If you got an enemy, an obstacle between you and victory, you and fulfilled promise, and
00:34:20.180 | you conquer him, he falls dead at your feet, you're dead, over you, I'm going to my fulfillment.
00:34:29.980 | Okay, that's conqueror.
00:34:32.820 | What's more than a conqueror?
00:34:34.260 | My answer is, he gets up and serves you, helps you get there.
00:34:45.360 | So he's not sabotaging your purpose.
00:34:49.340 | He's helping you fulfill your purpose.
00:34:52.880 | You defeat him and make him, or make you, more than a conqueror.
00:34:59.820 | So the flag that is flying over Joseph's brother's sin, remember this?
00:35:10.420 | It sold him into slavery, and it's just shot through with sin, that act of enslaving and
00:35:19.920 | almost killing Joseph.
00:35:22.980 | The flag, as you know, flying over that according to Moses' intention, I believe, in Genesis
00:35:29.900 | is, "You meant it for evil, and God meant it for good," chapter 50, verse 20.
00:35:36.580 | And it does not mean, you can take that, that happened this afternoon as well, that emergency
00:35:44.380 | thing going off.
00:35:48.180 | This word "meant" is not, "You meant it for evil, God used it for good."
00:35:58.000 | It does not say that, and it does not mean that.
00:36:03.620 | You meant it for evil, the selling of Joseph into slavery.
00:36:09.220 | God meant it.
00:36:10.220 | In fact, the psalm says, "He sent him," right?
00:36:12.900 | Psalm 105 says, "He sent him."
00:36:16.380 | God meant it for good.
00:36:19.840 | So Satan and sinful people have a purpose and a design and a plan for this, and God
00:36:25.820 | has a purpose and a design and a plan, and this one loses.
00:36:30.940 | This one wins.
00:36:33.580 | God meant it.
00:36:35.260 | He didn't play catch-up ball and say, "Oh dear, didn't see that coming.
00:36:41.260 | How can I use that to save my people?
00:36:43.180 | Oh, we'll do this famine thing," and so on.
00:36:45.500 | It's all planned.
00:36:47.060 | He meant it.
00:36:48.940 | He sent him to save this people.
00:36:51.120 | It was a plan.
00:36:55.500 | So not used, but meant.
00:37:02.600 | So it is with every obstacle, I believe, to God's promises.
00:37:08.620 | It will be with every evil from the fall of Lucifer to the lake of fire.
00:37:15.220 | We should see the flag flying, "Satan meant it for evil, God meant it for good."
00:37:22.020 | Satan meant it for evil, you meant it for evil, sinners mean it for evil, God means
00:37:27.080 | it for good.
00:37:28.580 | So let's walk through a few of these obstacles to those three promises.
00:37:38.220 | Number one, the most serious, the greatest obstacle between you right now and the fulfillment
00:37:45.960 | of that promise for you and your church, your family, is the wrath of God against sin.
00:37:55.640 | That's the greatest obstacle in the universe to the fulfillment of God's promises.
00:38:02.280 | God's wrath is the greatest obstacle to the fulfillment of God's promises.
00:38:09.760 | Nothing compares to the horrible, blazing barrier of God's wrath between us and our
00:38:17.000 | everlasting happiness in him.
00:38:21.160 | The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men
00:38:26.640 | who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, Romans 1:18.
00:38:31.520 | This is why we pour out our lives in the cause of world missions.
00:38:36.720 | The greatest obstacle to the everlasting happiness of every culture and every people group on
00:38:44.640 | the planet is the wrath of God, and we know how to escape.
00:38:54.920 | Nobody but Christians know how to escape this greatest obstacle to our future happiness,
00:39:02.320 | everybody's future happiness.
00:39:05.080 | Only one thing can remove this obstacle, the love of God, propitiating the wrath of God
00:39:14.520 | through the death of the Son of God to vindicate the glory of God.
00:39:19.520 | That's how it's removed, the love of God propitiating the wrath of God through the death of the
00:39:28.200 | Son of God to vindicate, Romans 3:25, the glory of God, the righteousness of God.
00:39:38.040 | God put Christ forward as a propitiation by his blood.
00:39:45.560 | But right here, at the most horrible point in human history, the murder of the Son of
00:39:54.120 | God, right here at the center, the most sinful, the most horrible, most wicked point in history,
00:40:03.400 | the providence of God is in total control, total control.
00:40:09.960 | And I've already referred to Acts 4, I'm going to read it now because for me, this is one
00:40:15.860 | of the texts about God's providence that helps most people handle God's sovereignty over
00:40:26.840 | sin.
00:40:28.640 | "Truly in this city, Jerusalem, there were gathered together against your holy servant
00:40:35.440 | Jesus whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples
00:40:44.760 | of Israel to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place."
00:40:54.780 | So Herod, Pilate, mobs, crying, "Crucify him, crucify him," soldiers driving the nails.
00:41:04.520 | You thought, you four, Herod, Pilate, mobs, soldiers, you thought you were threatening
00:41:13.800 | and destroying the saving purposes of God?
00:41:18.720 | Another resounding, "No!"
00:41:24.320 | You were fulfilling them.
00:41:26.420 | You thought you were destroying his purposes?
00:41:30.560 | You were fulfilling them.
00:41:32.600 | In God's providence, you were doing whatever God's hand and God's plan, that's a quote
00:41:37.440 | from the Bible, had predestined to take place.
00:41:43.440 | You meant it for evil, God meant it for good.
00:41:50.760 | And the reason that text is so amazingly effective for many, many people in helping them submit
00:41:59.520 | to the sovereignty and the providence of God is because what's being controlled here by
00:42:06.580 | God and his plan and his hand is the worst thing in the world, right?
00:42:12.900 | There isn't anything worse than to murder the Son of God, and if the worst thing in
00:42:17.240 | the world, way, way worse than the death of your child, is controlled and planned by God
00:42:25.880 | for the good purposes of his saving work, everything is, or at least everything can
00:42:34.320 | be without calling God's morality into question.
00:42:41.080 | So now the ransom of the bride is paid, the sins are covered, the condemnation is passed,
00:42:50.720 | the impending wrath is removed, but for the bride to enjoy all of what she is promised,
00:43:04.240 | she must hear and believe, right?
00:43:07.520 | Romans 10, 14 to 17, how should they believe?
00:43:12.120 | If they don't hear, how should they hear without a preacher?
00:43:16.480 | How should they preach unless they're sent?
00:43:19.360 | Beautiful feat, take the gospel, faith comes by hearing, no other way.
00:43:26.360 | New birth comes through the living and abiding word of God, no other way.
00:43:31.040 | They must hear and believe the gospel, and Satan in concert with human depravity will
00:43:40.080 | do everything in his power to prevent that, to prevent them hearing and to prevent them
00:43:48.540 | believing.
00:43:49.880 | For example, let's just take kings, governors, who make laws and break laws that hinder the
00:43:59.280 | spread of the gospel.
00:44:01.920 | They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, and you will be brought before kings
00:44:08.680 | and governors for my name's sake, and what does that mean for the spread of the gospel?
00:44:19.240 | Here's what Psalm 2 says it means, "The kings of the earth and the rulers take counsel together
00:44:25.040 | against the Lord and against his anointed.
00:44:27.460 | He who sits in the heavens laughs.
00:44:31.720 | The Lord holds them in derision."
00:44:35.040 | Why is that?
00:44:38.200 | Because the most high rules the kingdoms of men gives it to whomever he will, Daniel 4:32.
00:44:43.480 | He removes kings and sets up kings, Daniel 2:21, and when he sets them up, wicked though
00:44:49.760 | they be, Republican or Democrat form of wickedness, they do what he pleases.
00:44:58.320 | Proverbs 21, "The king's heart and so is the president's heart is a stream of water in
00:45:03.680 | the hand of the Lord.
00:45:05.140 | He turns it wherever he wills.
00:45:11.120 | Whether he's born again or not, he is governed by God's providence.
00:45:17.160 | Do you think, O king of Assyria, because you destroy my people that you are not a hatchet
00:45:23.200 | in my hand?
00:45:26.760 | Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him
00:45:32.600 | who wields it, as if a rod should wield him who lifts it, or as if a staff should lift
00:45:40.520 | him who is not wood?"
00:45:44.200 | No.
00:45:46.360 | When Satan and sin conspire to raise up kings and governors against the mission of God,
00:45:53.600 | they cannot succeed.
00:45:56.120 | They cannot.
00:45:57.120 | They are hatchets, rods, axes in the hand of God.
00:46:06.240 | They simply find themselves to be advancing in ways you can't even begin to comprehend
00:46:13.960 | the ultimate purposes of God in this world.
00:46:16.960 | You meant it for evil, Mr. King.
00:46:20.520 | God meant it for good.
00:46:21.520 | What about disease?
00:46:22.520 | That's a great hindrance, isn't it?
00:46:25.160 | We have a missionary family in our church right now, a little baby clinging on for life
00:46:29.240 | down in South Africa.
00:46:32.080 | In fact, that particular mission field has just had incredible blow after blow.
00:46:40.760 | Three of our key missionaries going to that one place have been devastated.
00:46:46.480 | Cancer with a double mastectomy and liver disease, and now this poor little baby.
00:46:57.560 | I've known this for 40 years, just watching our missionaries be cut to pieces.
00:47:08.600 | What about disease?
00:47:11.160 | Missionary kids dying, intensive care, freak accidents of two missionaries flying off a
00:47:16.880 | cliff and dying, or a whole family of five, some of you know who I'm talking about, on
00:47:25.040 | their way to the mission field, and they're all dead.
00:47:29.080 | All five of them dead, faithful, humble missionaries on their way.
00:47:40.720 | What about imprisonment?
00:47:41.900 | What about murder?
00:47:46.600 | Disease.
00:47:49.200 | We have a sovereign Lord in heaven to whom all authority is given.
00:47:55.840 | He rebuked fevers, and they left.
00:48:01.440 | He cleansed lepers with a touch.
00:48:05.040 | He opened the eyes of the blind.
00:48:09.560 | He made the deaf hear and the mute speak.
00:48:13.880 | He made the lame walk.
00:48:16.160 | He raised the dead.
00:48:20.040 | He spoke to the powers of hell, and they obeyed him.
00:48:26.680 | And he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, isn't he?
00:48:34.680 | Which means any sickness in your church, he could just change like that.
00:48:44.640 | And he doesn't change all of them like that.
00:48:54.400 | Satan strikes with sickness, Luke 13, 16.
00:49:00.120 | This woman bent over by Satan, but he's on a leash.
00:49:06.280 | He cannot act contrary to God's decisive plan.
00:49:11.000 | God can step in at any moment, and what he permits Satan to do, he wills to permit.
00:49:21.680 | He plans to permit.
00:49:25.800 | He doesn't permit on the spur of the moment, like, "What will I do next?
00:49:32.680 | Oh, I'll permit this."
00:49:37.700 | He doesn't permit on the spur of the moment.
00:49:40.060 | He plans his permissions, and planned permissions is providence.
00:49:47.680 | So get over any playing off of permissive will and sovereign will.
00:49:53.640 | Just get over it.
00:49:55.240 | It doesn't work.
00:49:58.640 | Permissive will is planned.
00:50:00.360 | If it's planned, it's according to his good pleasure.
00:50:06.840 | It's folded into the plan and the design.
00:50:13.000 | So yes, Satan went from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores,
00:50:23.360 | Job 2, 7, and three verses later, after the text says, "Satan struck Job with loathsome
00:50:33.520 | sores," Job says, "Shall we receive good from God and not receive evil?"
00:50:43.660 | To which many commentators say, "Job totally blew it in that comment.
00:50:51.640 | He didn't."
00:50:53.080 | And we know he didn't because the inspired writer adds, "In all this, Job did not sin
00:51:00.280 | with his lips."
00:51:03.440 | And if that were not clear enough, the whole book has this flying over it as a banner in
00:51:10.400 | chapter 42, verse 11, one of the most remarkably unquoted passages in the book of Job by preachers
00:51:17.840 | and scholars.
00:51:19.840 | 42, 11, "Job's family showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the
00:51:29.320 | Lord had brought upon him."
00:51:32.400 | It's a summary of the whole book.
00:51:35.160 | They comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.
00:51:41.560 | They took his kids, all his possessions, all his health, turned his wife against him, brought
00:51:50.960 | friends whose friendship lasted about seven days, and then became really annoying.
00:52:01.020 | This was just terrible.
00:52:04.240 | He had these sores that crawled with maggots and he used shards to scrape the pus out.
00:52:10.440 | It was horrible.
00:52:13.400 | And the inspired writer says, "They showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the
00:52:22.560 | evil that the Lord had brought upon him.
00:52:27.040 | And Paul called his painful thorn in the flesh a messenger of Satan."
00:52:38.920 | It must gall Satan, don't you think?
00:52:41.860 | It just must gall Satan to be made an instrument of our humility.
00:52:48.040 | That's what it says.
00:52:51.760 | To make him contrite, to keep him from being puffed up, he was given a thorn in the flesh,
00:52:57.560 | a messenger of Satan.
00:52:59.360 | And Satan's thinking, "I don't want to make him contrite."
00:53:04.720 | And God says, "I don't know what you want.
00:53:06.520 | I'm using you, buddy.
00:53:08.680 | I use you.
00:53:12.200 | You're on a leash and you're going to lose.
00:53:14.880 | Don't you ever think that the misery you cause my people is sovereign.
00:53:20.960 | I'm sovereign, not you."
00:53:23.200 | And oh, how our people need to feel that.
00:53:26.440 | They need to feel they're not at the mercy of Satan.
00:53:29.580 | They're not at the mercy of whim.
00:53:31.480 | They're not at the mercy of empty fate.
00:53:35.640 | They're at the mercy of a merciful Father.
00:53:38.760 | You know, if they could trust Him, how it would transform their lives.
00:53:45.660 | So Satan now throws Christians into prison in Revelation 2.10, and he kills them.
00:53:54.560 | Satan can kill Christians, Revelation 2.10, he kills them.
00:54:02.440 | There are freak accidents from a human standpoint, John 8.44, 12.31.
00:54:10.600 | But from God's standpoint, there are no accidents, period, freak or otherwise.
00:54:17.360 | Listen to James 4.15.
00:54:18.360 | This has got to be one of the most stunning verses in the Bible with regard to providence.
00:54:25.240 | James 4.15.
00:54:28.640 | So instead of saying, "Come now, you who say, 'I will go up to such and such a town and
00:54:33.800 | spend a year there and trade and get gain,'" you don't know about your life, you're like
00:54:37.760 | a vapor.
00:54:38.760 | He said, "You ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live,'" and stop there, "'If God wills,
00:54:49.440 | I'm going to finish the sermon.
00:54:53.320 | And if He doesn't, I won't,'" period.
00:54:57.840 | This is not rocket science.
00:54:59.840 | You don't need a Ph.D. or an M.Div. or a B.A. to understand James 4.15.
00:55:05.920 | "If the Lord wills, John Piper finishes the sermon."
00:55:09.200 | Otherwise, he could just drop dead with a heart attack.
00:55:11.480 | And if that happens, by the way, don't you anybody get in God's face about that?
00:55:18.960 | Don't ever get in God's face about anything, especially not me going home to heaven in
00:55:23.740 | good grief.
00:55:31.500 | That's not the end of the sentence.
00:55:33.460 | It gets more amazing.
00:55:35.460 | "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."
00:55:42.340 | What's that?
00:55:43.340 | That's it?
00:55:44.340 | Do this or that?
00:55:46.380 | That's everything.
00:55:50.980 | Do random this?
00:55:52.500 | Random that?
00:55:53.500 | These are random.
00:55:55.060 | If the Lord wills, this hand keeps doing this right here, whatever that is.
00:56:02.340 | Why does He do that?
00:56:03.340 | I have no idea.
00:56:06.660 | It's that meticulous.
00:56:08.220 | It's that detailed.
00:56:09.580 | This or that.
00:56:17.260 | If the Lord wills, we live.
00:56:18.260 | If the Lord wills, we die.
00:56:20.300 | It is a glorious thing, and many missionaries have said it.
00:56:23.140 | I am immortal till my work is done.
00:56:25.380 | Isn't that a great thing?
00:56:27.660 | Good night, how happy you could be.
00:56:29.780 | I am immortal till my work is done.
00:56:32.540 | And when it's done, it's done, right?
00:56:36.140 | God has decided now's your time.
00:56:37.980 | Come on home.
00:56:40.860 | If the Lord wills.
00:56:43.240 | So if Satan and the enemies of God rub their hands together in triumph when a Christian
00:56:52.260 | witness languishes and dies, let them hear this word from Revelation 12, 12.
00:57:00.060 | I'm saying this out loud for Satan to hear it right now, for demons to hear it, and for
00:57:05.260 | you who may be called upon to give your life to hear it, Revelation 12, 12.
00:57:10.840 | They have conquered the accuser, the serpent, by the blood of the lamb and by the word of
00:57:17.980 | their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.
00:57:22.260 | That's the way you conquer.
00:57:24.940 | It looks to everybody like a loss, and it's a victory.
00:57:33.500 | One more threat, Satan's blinding power over keeping people from believing the gospel.
00:57:47.540 | There's the depraved human heart, and that's all it takes to keep people hard and impervious
00:57:54.460 | to the gospel, and then according to 2 Corinthians 4, Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers to
00:58:00.860 | keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of
00:58:05.260 | God.
00:58:06.260 | So you got Satan blinding unbelievers and Satan attempting to turn away believers from
00:58:17.180 | the path of obedience to make shipwreck of their faith and not be saved and thus prove
00:58:23.620 | themselves to be fake Christians.
00:58:26.260 | So those two things, unbelievers blinded, believers constantly being pushed off the
00:58:32.460 | narrow road that leads to life.
00:58:35.380 | That's the way Satan's going to keep this promise from being fulfilled, or is he?
00:58:44.420 | So neither Satan nor man is sovereign over the blindness of unbelievers, the fragile
00:58:51.900 | perseverance of Christians in faith.
00:58:55.380 | God is sovereign over that.
00:58:57.820 | God is sovereign over the new birth.
00:59:00.620 | He's sovereign over every blood-bought perseverance in faith.
00:59:07.940 | The banner flying over every conversion is God made us alive in Christ by grace you have
00:59:16.260 | been saved, Ephesians 2, 5, and over every miracle of perseverance, conversion, lasting,
00:59:28.660 | God says, or we say, "Now unto Him who is able to keep you from stumbling."
00:59:35.220 | I remember the first T4G after I finished at Bethlehem, I guess I was 67, and that April,
00:59:47.060 | I guess I was 68 then.
00:59:50.260 | First time to preach it together for the gospel, not being a pastor.
00:59:56.100 | And this is the text I preached on, because I was just...
00:59:59.820 | All I could do was reflect on how He'd kept me, how He'd kept me.
01:00:04.900 | Forty-three years in the ministry, and I made it.
01:00:08.340 | I didn't wreck it.
01:00:12.740 | Now to Him who is able to keep me from stumbling and to present me blameless before the presence
01:00:18.820 | of His glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord,
01:00:25.200 | be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time, now and forevermore.
01:00:30.660 | I mean, that's just about the greatest doxology in the Bible, and what prompted it?
01:00:37.580 | He kept us.
01:00:39.900 | That's why He's saying that.
01:00:41.460 | Now unto Him who is able to keep, keep, let your heart sing.
01:00:46.020 | If you're older and you haven't yet made shipwreck of your faith, sing that.
01:00:51.300 | If you're younger, hope that, believe that, lay hold on that.
01:00:55.500 | God is sovereign over your perseverance, and God was sovereign over your salvation.
01:01:01.460 | So here's my conclusion, I'm almost done.
01:01:05.500 | I conclude that the truth of God, the promises of God are going to triumph, all those promises.
01:01:14.340 | So number one, the gospel of Jesus Christ will successfully penetrate all the peoples
01:01:21.340 | of the world and will gather into Christ all God's elect, ransomed elect.
01:01:29.500 | Number two, all of these ransomed, the bride of Christ will be sanctified and glorified
01:01:38.060 | and made perfectly beautiful for the eternal enjoyment of her husband, Jesus Christ.
01:01:46.660 | And thirdly, this beauty of the bride will be the sinless echo of Christ's excellencies,
01:01:56.700 | His preciousness reverberating back to Him in the all-satisfying experience of pleasure
01:02:04.460 | that she has in Him.
01:02:08.620 | The truths, these realities cannot fail because God's providence is all governing, all-pervasive,
01:02:20.100 | purposeful sovereignty are true.
01:02:23.940 | They're going to happen.
01:02:26.620 | God will see to it that everything is under control to bring about these three glorious
01:02:34.460 | end-time consummation promises or as He says in Isaiah 46.10, "My counsel shall stand and
01:02:44.460 | I will accomplish all my purpose."
01:02:47.620 | Let's pray.
01:02:49.420 | Lord, where would we be in the suffering and the sorrows and the miseries of this world
01:02:56.220 | if we did not know that You were a God of purposeful sovereignty, namely a God of providence?
01:03:05.860 | And so I bless You.
01:03:09.180 | It is well, Lord.
01:03:11.460 | It is well with our soul when we ponder how glorious is the outcome of these promises
01:03:21.740 | because Your providence is undefeatable.
01:03:26.420 | Lord, put ballast in the boats of our people.
01:03:31.980 | Many of them shed tears over the difficulty of this doctrine.
01:03:35.500 | They just at first are flummoxed by it.
01:03:39.260 | They don't have categories to embrace it.
01:03:42.460 | Oh, make us patient, pastors.
01:03:45.460 | Help us to build into them over time a deep love for Your sovereignty.
01:03:50.820 | So put ballast in their boats so there are millions and millions of Christians across
01:03:55.900 | the world who when their boat meets great suffering waves, they will not capsize.
01:04:05.180 | Help us to be that kind of pastor, I pray in Jesus' name.
01:04:09.100 | Amen.
01:04:09.780 | [BLANK_AUDIO]