God’s Plan When Our Plans Fail
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | Well, God can prevent every trial from entering our lives.
00:00:08.160 | He can, and he doesn't.
00:00:10.860 | Why not?
00:00:12.620 | That's the question that every believer
00:00:14.340 | must eventually answer,
00:00:15.520 | especially if you believe that God is all powerful.
00:00:17.540 | If God is all powerful,
00:00:19.720 | why does he allow trials into our lives?
00:00:23.400 | Why does he let the car break down
00:00:25.820 | in the middle of nowhere?
00:00:29.160 | To that end, we have a fascinating clip
00:00:31.480 | to address this very point,
00:00:32.880 | a clip from a 1996 sermon that marked
00:00:35.400 | the 125th anniversary of Bethlehem Baptist Church.
00:00:39.080 | Pastor John was preaching Jeremiah 32, verses 36 to 42.
00:00:44.040 | And to introduce the text,
00:00:45.520 | he shared a poem and a personal story.
00:00:48.900 | Have a listen.
00:00:49.740 | Our aim is to celebrate the sustaining grace of God
00:00:53.300 | for 125 years.
00:00:54.720 | And my first question is, what is that?
00:00:58.000 | What is sustaining grace?
00:01:03.000 | And I want to put it in a four line poem
00:01:06.440 | that I took about an hour to figure out yesterday.
00:01:10.540 | And I'm going to say it over and over again,
00:01:14.420 | because when I take the time to put things in a rhyme
00:01:18.560 | that is true, it just helps me, helps me.
00:01:24.620 | So you have to tolerate this.
00:01:27.280 | (audience laughing)
00:01:29.320 | What is sustaining grace?
00:01:32.160 | Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
00:01:37.160 | nor flight from all distress, but this.
00:01:43.220 | The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
00:01:49.320 | and then in the darkness is there to sustain.
00:01:56.180 | Now, the reason I stress this is because
00:01:59.920 | if we were to celebrate a grace this morning
00:02:02.900 | that bars us from what is not bliss,
00:02:07.900 | and that gives flight from all distress,
00:02:12.960 | and that does not order our pain,
00:02:15.980 | it would be biblically false and experientially unrealistic.
00:02:20.980 | Our experience and the Bible teaches us
00:02:24.780 | that grace does not prevent pain,
00:02:29.780 | but orders it, arranges it, measures it out,
00:02:35.620 | and then in the darkness of it sustains us.
00:02:40.480 | For example, yesterday, Bob Ricker,
00:02:43.560 | I'm going to borrow your story.
00:02:46.100 | You go to him and get it corrected afterwards
00:02:48.220 | if I've missed anything.
00:02:50.100 | He told us in that other room over there
00:02:53.620 | that God ordains that the people of the Lord
00:02:57.780 | from time to time take stones and make memorials out of them
00:03:02.140 | so that when they look at them and children say,
00:03:04.060 | "What's that?"
00:03:04.940 | Parents and others can say, "That's because God did that."
00:03:08.980 | And then he told the story of a little less
00:03:11.020 | than 10 years ago, their daughter was
00:03:12.940 | in a very serious automobile accident,
00:03:16.160 | so serious that she would have died,
00:03:19.180 | but the car behind, providentially, had a doctor in it.
00:03:24.180 | The doctor providentially had in his pocket an air tube.
00:03:30.660 | He also had the presence of mind and got to her
00:03:34.160 | just as she was turning blue to force this
00:03:36.880 | into her throat and she lived.
00:03:39.900 | And he did her wedding here, a couple of,
00:03:42.700 | it was 892, I think you said.
00:03:45.140 | And as he looked at her doing the wedding as the pastor
00:03:48.740 | and saw these little scars that remain,
00:03:52.100 | he said to her, "Those are a memorial of sustaining grace."
00:03:57.100 | Now, Bob Ricker is not naive.
00:04:03.900 | He knows that if God can manage a doctor in the car behind,
00:04:09.820 | and if God can manage a little air tube in his pocket,
00:04:14.900 | if God can manage to put him on the scene
00:04:17.460 | with the presence of mind and the saving action
00:04:19.740 | to save her life, he could have stopped the accident
00:04:22.420 | in the first place.
00:04:23.620 | Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
00:04:29.340 | nor flight from all distress, but this,
00:04:32.920 | the grace that orders our trouble and pain
00:04:36.060 | and then in the darkness is there to sustain.
00:04:39.780 | Another story, a little lighter this time.
00:04:43.580 | Noel, Abraham, Barnabas and Talitha are in the car
00:04:48.580 | two Saturdays ago, driving from here to Georgia.
00:04:53.380 | The car breaks down three times
00:04:55.820 | and daddy is at home comfortable.
00:04:59.780 | (audience laughing)
00:05:02.420 | The third time it broke down was about an hour outside
00:05:05.840 | of Indianapolis on a lonely stretch Saturday afternoon.
00:05:11.100 | And the radiator crumbles to pieces basically.
00:05:14.660 | Car overheats, they're off on the side of the road,
00:05:16.900 | baby, two kids, wife and no daddy.
00:05:19.820 | What do you do on Saturday afternoon?
00:05:22.980 | A farmer stops, 67 year old farmer,
00:05:27.180 | and says, "Can I help?"
00:05:30.700 | And Noel says, "Well, we just need a motel."
00:05:35.000 | And a Monday morning with a garage somewhere, where are we?
00:05:39.740 | And he says, "Well, would you be willing
00:05:43.300 | "to come stay with us, my wife and me?"
00:05:46.040 | Pause.
00:05:47.980 | Well, I'm not sure we would wanna impose.
00:05:56.380 | And he says, "You know, the Lord says
00:06:00.660 | "that when you serve people in need,
00:06:02.700 | "it's like serving the Lord."
00:06:06.260 | And she says, "Well, can we go to church
00:06:09.860 | "with you tomorrow morning?"
00:06:11.260 | And he says, "Can you take a Baptist church?"
00:06:16.840 | (audience laughing)
00:06:19.840 | Not only is he a farmer, he is a retired aviation mechanic.
00:06:29.180 | (audience laughing)
00:06:32.460 | And he sets them up.
00:06:37.460 | Monday morning, he drives to Indianapolis at 6 a.m.,
00:06:42.360 | buys the radiator, puts it in,
00:06:46.180 | will not charge her for the labor.
00:06:49.300 | And they're on their way mid-morning on Saturday.
00:06:53.460 | And the icing on the cake is that he has a pond on his farm
00:06:57.660 | and Abraham catches a 19 inch catfish.
00:07:01.060 | (audience laughing)
00:07:04.060 | Now, if God can manage a farmer on the scene
00:07:10.460 | who happens to be a Christian and a Baptist to boot,
00:07:16.880 | and an aviation mechanic and an open home
00:07:22.180 | and a heart for the hurting and a fish pond,
00:07:25.220 | he could have saved the radiator.
00:07:29.180 | And he didn't because sustaining grace
00:07:33.340 | is not grace to bar what is not bliss
00:07:36.700 | nor flight from all distress, but this,
00:07:40.300 | the grace that orders our troubles and pain
00:07:44.500 | and then in the darkness is there to sustain.
00:07:49.400 | Amen.
00:07:51.260 | Can you take a Baptist church?
00:07:54.020 | That's so good.
00:07:55.220 | This clip was taken from the very start
00:07:57.620 | of John Piper's June 16, 1996 sermon
00:08:00.940 | titled "Sustained by Sovereign Grace Forever."
00:08:04.280 | You can find it online at desiringgod.org.
00:08:07.200 | The clip was emailed to me by Brian,
00:08:09.060 | a pastor in Minden, Nevada.
00:08:10.540 | He writes, "I started listening to Pastor John's sermons
00:08:13.060 | "in seminary in 1990 and 1991.
00:08:15.540 | "The Nelsons, a faithful couple at Bethlehem,
00:08:17.940 | "made the sermon tapes from cassettes bought in bulk
00:08:20.380 | "from Sam's Club.
00:08:21.640 | "When I moved to Nevada to plant the church,
00:08:24.420 | "I kept getting the sermon cassettes in the mail.
00:08:26.480 | "This particular sermon from 1996 made such an impact on me.
00:08:30.080 | "Pastor John's story about God's providence
00:08:32.160 | "gave me an example for me to give to my own kids
00:08:34.820 | "when we encountered trials.
00:08:36.620 | "The first occasion was a short period after the sermon,
00:08:40.160 | "I hit a deer outside of Augusta, Georgia
00:08:43.220 | "and totaled a car.
00:08:45.100 | "I asked my kids after it was all over,
00:08:47.580 | "couldn't God have just kept the deer out of the road?
00:08:51.540 | "Yes, he could have, but not grace to bar
00:08:54.860 | "what is not bliss nor flight from all distress,
00:08:57.740 | "but this, the grace that orders our trouble and pain
00:09:01.500 | "and then in the darkness is there to sustain."
00:09:04.980 | Wow, Brad, thanks for pointing all of us
00:09:08.140 | to this great clip.
00:09:09.800 | If you have a clip that would bless others,
00:09:11.380 | email me, give me your name, hometown, the sermon title,
00:09:13.880 | timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio,
00:09:15.860 | and tell me how it impacted you.
00:09:18.140 | Put the word clip in the subject line of an email,
00:09:19.900 | send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:09:23.140 | That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:09:26.360 | Well, how progressive can a progressive Christian get?
00:09:31.180 | And at what point does a progressive Christian
00:09:33.980 | progress to the point of no longer
00:09:35.700 | being a Christian at all?
00:09:37.560 | That's a deep question that needs to be answered
00:09:39.640 | in a day like ours when biblical revelation
00:09:41.920 | is taken too lightly.
00:09:44.220 | To that question, we go next time with Pastor John
00:09:46.940 | back in the studio with me on Friday.
00:09:49.060 | We'll see you then.
00:09:50.020 | (upbeat music)
00:09:52.600 | (upbeat music)
00:09:55.180 | [BLANK_AUDIO]