Have You Seen the Providence of God?

00:00:00.000 | Well, as another year inches to its conclusion and we look back on the

00:00:07.160 | smoldering rubble we call 2020, I can't imagine a more important topic for our

00:00:11.880 | focus than God's providence over all things. Of all the things we could have

00:00:15.360 | never expected to experience and witness in 2020, Scripture tells us that God

00:00:20.080 | governs over all things according to His will and for the ultimate good of His

00:00:26.120 | bride. Making that case is Pastor John and his next book release simply titled

00:00:31.040 | Providence. A 750 page book releasing in less than two months on January 12th is

00:00:35.480 | Pastor John's biggest solo book project by far and we're mentioning it this week

00:00:40.960 | because you can now pre-order the title from our friends at Westminster Books

00:00:43.840 | for just $19.99 a copy. We're thankful for their partnership and encourage you to

00:00:47.800 | order through them as you consider supporting faithful independent

00:00:50.680 | Christian booksellers. Go to WTSBooks.com to pre-order, that's WTSBooks.com and

00:00:56.720 | there you can get it for $19.99 a copy. Last time on the podcast on Monday I

00:01:01.640 | talked with Pastor John about the book and his hopes and dreams for it. There I

00:01:05.080 | mentioned Pastor John has recorded for us two audiobook excerpts, the

00:01:08.200 | introduction and the conclusion, two sections that offer a really good

00:01:12.040 | preview of the entire book. And with the demands on his time it's it's pretty

00:01:16.080 | doubtful that he'll be able to read any more of it than these two sections. I'm

00:01:19.400 | grateful that he did. So today here is the introduction, it's 32 minutes long. The

00:01:23.160 | conclusion coming up next time on Friday is 55 minutes long. Combined it's an hour

00:01:28.240 | and a half of audiobook recordings that will serve as our podcast content for

00:01:31.520 | the next two weeks as we take a brief break for Thanksgiving. We're gonna

00:01:35.880 | return with new episodes on Monday November 30th to unveil some new

00:01:40.880 | features to the podcast that are coming up in December. Looking forward to

00:01:44.000 | sharing those with you then. Until then, here now is John Piper reading the

00:01:48.440 | introduction to his forthcoming book, Providence, coming out on January 12th.

00:01:53.920 | Introduction.

00:01:56.920 | Four Invitations.

00:02:00.800 | God has revealed the goal and nature and extent of his providence. He has not been

00:02:08.240 | silent. He has shown us these things in the Bible. This is one of the reasons

00:02:15.080 | that the Apostle Paul says all Scripture is profitable. The prophet lies not

00:02:21.080 | mainly in the validation of a theological viewpoint, but in the

00:02:25.880 | revelation of a great God, the exaltation of his invincible grace, and the

00:02:32.400 | liberation of his undeserving people. God has revealed his purposeful sovereignty

00:02:40.000 | over good and evil in order to humble human pride, intensify human worship,

00:02:46.800 | shatter human hopelessness, and put ballast in the battered boat of human

00:02:53.720 | faith, steel in the spine of human courage, gladness in the groans of

00:02:59.960 | affliction, and love in the heart that sees no way forward. What we find in the

00:03:06.880 | Bible is real and raw. The prizing and proclaiming of God's pervasive

00:03:14.240 | providence was forged in the flames of hatred and love, deceit and truth, murder

00:03:21.480 | and mercy, carnage and kindness, cursing and blessing, mystery and revelation, and

00:03:29.280 | finally, crucifixion and resurrection. I hope my treatment of God's providence

00:03:37.520 | will have the aroma of this shocking and hope-filled reality. In this

00:03:44.840 | introduction, I would like to offer you four invitations.

00:03:50.880 | Counterintuitive Wonders

00:03:55.640 | First, I invite you into a biblical world of counterintuitive wonders. I will argue

00:04:03.960 | that these wonders are not illogical or contradictory, but they are different

00:04:10.160 | from our usual ways of seeing the world—so different that our first reaction

00:04:16.120 | is often to say, "That can't be." But the "can't" is in our minds, not in reality. How

00:04:26.400 | unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways. For example, in the

00:04:35.040 | justice of his judgment, God raises up a cruel shepherd for his people and then

00:04:42.880 | sends punishment on that shepherd. "Behold, I am raising up in the land a

00:04:49.840 | shepherd who does not care for those being destroyed, or seek the young, or

00:04:56.840 | heal the maimed, or nourish the healthy, but devours the flesh of the fat ones,

00:05:03.360 | tearing off even their hoofs. Woe to my worthless shepherd, who deserts the flock,

00:05:12.360 | may the sword strike his arm and his right eye, let his arm be wholly withered,

00:05:19.840 | his right eye utterly blinded." Zechariah 11, 16-17. This jars us. For most of us,

00:05:31.200 | this is not how we usually think about the ways of God. First, that God "raises up" a

00:05:40.120 | brutal shepherd for his people seems to implicate God in sinful brutality.

00:05:47.440 | Second, that God judges the shepherd for his worthlessness seems like

00:05:54.200 | capriciously condemning what he himself ordained. There are many such scenes in

00:06:01.880 | the Bible, and I will argue that in them all, God is neither sinful nor capricious.

00:06:10.160 | If we are prone to be critical rather than be changed, we should put our hands

00:06:18.240 | on our mouths and listen. We are sinful and finite. God is infinite and holy.

00:06:28.760 | "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord.

00:06:34.280 | "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your

00:06:39.920 | ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55, 8-9. I am inviting you into a

00:06:50.720 | world of counterintuitive wonders. I hope that you will let the Word of God

00:06:57.800 | create new categories of thinking rather than trying to force the Scriptures into

00:07:03.840 | the limits of what you already know. When Paul calls us to be "transformed by the

00:07:11.320 | renewal of our mind," part of what he has in mind is the overcoming of our natural

00:07:19.040 | resistance to the strangeness of the ways of God. Immediately before calling

00:07:24.840 | for transformed minds, he writes, "Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the

00:07:31.920 | knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his

00:07:37.800 | ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor, or

00:07:43.000 | who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through

00:07:49.520 | him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." Romans 11, 33-36.

00:07:59.840 | In the end, my invitation into the biblical world of counterintuitive

00:08:06.800 | wonders is an invitation to worship. God is vastly greater and stranger and more

00:08:14.200 | glorious and more dreadful and more loving than we realize. Immersing

00:08:21.360 | ourselves in the ocean of his providence is meant to help us know him, fear him,

00:08:27.960 | trust him, and love him as we ought.

00:08:33.360 | Penetrating through words into reality.

00:08:40.720 | Second, I invite you to penetrate through words into reality. Providence is a word

00:08:49.800 | not found in the Bible. In that sense, it is like the words "trinity," "discipleship,"

00:08:59.360 | "evangelism," "exposition," "counseling," "ethics," "politics," and "charismatics."

00:09:10.760 | People who love the Bible and believe that it is God's Word want to know what

00:09:18.080 | the Bible teaches, not just what it says. They want to know the reality being

00:09:26.800 | presented, not just the words that were written. The Bible itself makes clear

00:09:34.040 | that it is not enough just to say the words of the Bible. The Bible mandates

00:09:40.120 | that all churches have teachers. All churches are supposed to have elders, and

00:09:47.240 | elders are required to be teachers. The task of a teacher is not just to read

00:09:52.440 | the Bible to his hearers, but to explain it. And explaining means using other

00:09:58.680 | words besides the ones in the text. Throughout the history of the church,

00:10:03.520 | heretics have frequently insisted on using only Bible words in defending

00:10:10.760 | their heresy. This was certainly the case for the fourth-century Arians, who

00:10:17.240 | rejected the deity of Jesus and were happy to use Bible words to do so. RPC

00:10:24.800 | Hansen explained the process like this, "Theologians of the Christian Church were

00:10:31.320 | slowly driven to a realization that the deepest questions which face

00:10:37.000 | Christianity cannot be answered in purely biblical language because the

00:10:45.320 | questions are about the meaning of biblical language itself. The longer I

00:10:51.280 | have studied Scripture and tried to preach it and teach it, the more I have

00:10:57.640 | seen the need to encourage preachers and laypeople to penetrate through biblical

00:11:05.040 | words to biblical reality. How easy it is to think we have experienced communion

00:11:12.280 | with God when our minds and hearts have stopped with verbal definitions,

00:11:19.480 | grammatical relations, historical illustrations, and a few applications.

00:11:24.240 | When we do this, even Bible words themselves can become alternatives to

00:11:30.760 | what Paul calls "spiritual understanding." I am going to use the word "providence" to

00:11:39.960 | refer to a biblical reality. The reality is not found in any single Bible word. It

00:11:49.720 | emerges from the way God has revealed himself through many texts and many

00:11:55.800 | stories in the Bible. They are like threads woven together into a beautiful

00:12:02.040 | tapestry greater than any one thread. We are using a word that is not in the

00:12:08.960 | Bible for the sake of this larger truth of the Bible. Of course there are

00:12:16.200 | dangers in doing this, just like there are dangers in using only Bible language

00:12:22.520 | which can be twisted to carry false meanings while giving the impression of

00:12:27.240 | biblical faithfulness. I will mention one danger among others. Since the word

00:12:33.760 | "providence" is not used in specific biblical texts, we have no biblical

00:12:41.280 | governor on its meaning. We can't say, "The Bible defines providence this way." We

00:12:50.280 | could say that only if the Bible actually used the word "providence."

00:12:56.520 | Whenever you ask what a particular word means, there must be a meaner if the

00:13:05.000 | meaning is to have validity. So if the meaner is not one or more of the

00:13:13.440 | biblical writers, then when I use the word "providence," I must assign a meaning. That is

00:13:22.240 | what I do in chapter 1. I don't assign an arbitrary meaning. I try to stay close

00:13:30.280 | to what others have meant by the word in the history of the church, but I do

00:13:35.560 | choose the meaning. You can see what this implies. It implies that the issue before

00:13:43.080 | us in this book is not the meaning of the word "providence." The issue is this. Is

00:13:51.720 | the reality that I see in the Bible and call "providence" really there? There's no

00:14:01.560 | point in quibbling over whether "providence" is the best word for the

00:14:07.140 | reality. That is relatively unimportant. The all-important question is whether

00:14:14.520 | there is a reality in the Bible that corresponds to my description of the

00:14:21.140 | goal, nature, and extent of God's purposeful sovereignty. You will see in

00:14:27.440 | chapter 1 why I use the short definition "purposeful sovereignty" for "providence,"

00:14:33.520 | but for now, I am simply flagging the danger that it would be a sad mistake to

00:14:41.080 | miss the biblical reality by focusing on the word.

00:14:48.520 | A God-entranced world.

00:14:53.480 | Third, I invite you into a God-entranced world. Jesus said to look at the birds

00:15:03.560 | because God feeds them and to consider the lilies because God clothes them.

00:15:09.840 | Jesus' aim is not aesthetic. His aim was to free his people from anxiety. He really

00:15:18.400 | considered it a valid argument that if our Heavenly Father feeds the birds and

00:15:26.120 | clothes the lilies, how much more surely will he feed and clothe his children?

00:15:34.760 | This is simply astonishing. The argument is valid only if God really is the one

00:15:43.600 | who sees to it that the birds find their worms and the lilies wear their flowers.

00:15:49.160 | If birds and lilies are simply acting by natural laws with no divine hand, then

00:15:56.360 | Jesus is just playing with words. But he is not playing with words. He really

00:16:05.200 | believes that God's hand is at work in the smallest details of natural

00:16:13.760 | processes. This is even clearer in Matthew 10 29 through 31. "Are not two

00:16:22.360 | sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from

00:16:29.960 | your father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore.

00:16:35.520 | You are of more value than many sparrows." God does not just feed the birds and

00:16:44.000 | clothe the lilies. He decides when every bird, countless millions every year, dies

00:16:52.200 | and falls to the ground. His point is the same as in Matthew 6. He is your father.

00:17:00.400 | You are more precious to him than birds. Therefore you don't need to be afraid.

00:17:07.000 | That kind of pervasive providence combined with that kind of fatherly care

00:17:14.200 | means he can and will take care of you. So seek the kingdom first with radical

00:17:23.960 | abandon and don't be anxious.

00:17:29.120 | Charged with Grandeur

00:17:33.560 | This God-entranced view of the world was not peculiar to Jesus. The psalmist sings

00:17:43.160 | to the Lord of his specific care of the creatures he has made. "These all look to

00:17:49.880 | you to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they

00:17:55.360 | gather it up. When you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When

00:18:00.360 | you hide your face, they are dismayed. When you take away their breath, they die

00:18:08.600 | and return to the dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created and

00:18:14.880 | you renew the face of the ground." Psalm 104 27 through 30. God's involvement in

00:18:25.080 | nature is hands-on. The kind of closeness that causes the biblical writers to make

00:18:33.320 | declarations like, "He makes grass grow on the hills. The Lord appointed a great

00:18:40.400 | fish to swallow up Jonah. The Lord appointed a plant. God appointed a worm

00:18:47.760 | that attacked the plant. He brings forth the wind from his storehouses. He it is

00:18:55.440 | who makes the clouds rise, who makes lightnings for the rain. He rebuked the

00:19:01.680 | wind and the raging waves." This is not poetry for godless naturalistic

00:19:09.040 | processes. This is God's hands-on providence. God does not intend for us to

00:19:18.640 | see ourselves or any part of the world as cogs in the wheels of an impersonal

00:19:26.760 | mechanism. The world is not a machine that God made to run on its own. It is a

00:19:34.280 | painting or a sculpture or a drama. The Son of God holds it in being by the word

00:19:42.640 | of his power. Gerard Manley Hopkins expressed it

00:19:46.520 | unforgettably in his sonnet, "God's Grandeur." The world is charged with the

00:19:55.160 | grandeur of God. It will flame out like shining from shook foil. It gathers to a

00:20:02.600 | greatness like the ooze of oil crushed. Why do men then now not wreck this rod?

00:20:11.400 | Generations have trod, have trod, have trod, and all is seared with trade,

00:20:18.760 | bleared, smeared with toil, and where's man's smudge and shares man's smell? The

00:20:26.880 | soil is bare now, nor can foot feel being shod. And for all this, nature is never

00:20:36.040 | spent. There lives the dearest freshness deep down things, and though the last

00:20:43.960 | lights off the black west went, oh, morning, as the brown brink eastward

00:20:51.360 | springs, because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and

00:20:59.280 | with, ah, bright wings.

00:21:03.640 | Seeing the Rising Sun

00:21:08.760 | I will never cease to be thankful that in my college days Clyde Kilby was one

00:21:15.440 | of my literature professors. He gave us a lecture once on the awakening of

00:21:22.160 | amazement at the strange glory of ordinary things. He closed the lecture

00:21:28.080 | with ten resolutions for what he called mental health. Here are two of them.

00:21:37.400 | I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a

00:21:45.080 | flower, cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what

00:21:54.040 | they are, but simply be glad that they are. I shall fully allow them the mystery

00:22:01.160 | of what C.S. Lewis calls their divine, magical, terrifying, and ecstatic

00:22:07.320 | existence. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption

00:22:14.120 | that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that

00:22:20.400 | today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due

00:22:27.240 | course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls

00:22:33.600 | himself Alpha and Omega. Because of Kilby's eye-opening influence, and because

00:22:42.040 | of what I now see in the Bible as an all-embracing, all-pervasive providence, I

00:22:49.120 | live more consciously in a God-entranced world. I see reality differently. For

00:22:59.240 | example, I used to look at sunrises when I was jogging and think that God has

00:23:05.800 | created a beautiful world. Then it became less general and more specific, more

00:23:12.200 | personal. I said, "Every morning God paints a different sunrise. He never gets

00:23:19.320 | tired of doing it again and again." But then it struck me. No, He doesn't do it

00:23:26.720 | again and again. He never stops doing it. The sun is always rising somewhere in

00:23:33.800 | the world. God guides the sun 24 hours every day and paints sunrises at every

00:23:41.560 | moment, century after century, without one second of respite, and never grows

00:23:49.280 | weary or less thrilled with the work of His hands. Even when cloud cover keeps

00:23:56.040 | man from seeing it, God is painting spectacular sunrises above the clouds.

00:24:03.760 | God does not intend for us to look at the world He has made and feel nothing.

00:24:12.080 | When the psalmist says, "The heavens declare the glory of God," he does not

00:24:20.000 | mean this only for the clarification of our theology. He means it for the

00:24:25.880 | exaltation of our souls. We know this because of what follows. In the heavens

00:24:32.360 | He has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his

00:24:38.480 | chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Psalm 19, 4 and 5. What

00:24:48.560 | is the point of saying this? When we look at the handiwork of God in creation, we

00:24:55.680 | are to be drawn into bridegroom-like joy, and into the joy of an Eric Little

00:25:03.760 | running with his head back, elbows pumping, smile bursting in chariots of

00:25:08.600 | fire, basking in the very pleasure of God. I am inviting you into a God-entranced

00:25:17.480 | world. No, we are not naive about the miseries every sunrise meets. You will

00:25:27.880 | perhaps be shocked at the implications of God's pervasive providence in the

00:25:33.600 | suffering and the death of this world. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.

00:25:41.040 | And the exalting Sun dawns on 150,000 new corpses every morning. That's how

00:25:53.400 | many people die every day. In a world with this much God-entranced beauty, and

00:25:59.960 | this much God-governed horror, the biblical command to "rejoice with those

00:26:07.080 | who rejoice, weep with those who weep" means that we will continually be

00:26:14.520 | sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

00:26:20.800 | To know God.

00:26:24.320 | Fourth, and finally, I am inviting you to know, maybe as you never have known, the

00:26:34.240 | God whose involvement in his children's lives and in the world is so pervasive,

00:26:40.880 | so all-embracing, and so powerful that nothing can befall them but what he

00:26:49.560 | designs for their glorification in him and his glorification in them. The death

00:26:56.880 | of the Son of God ransomed a people for God from every tribe and language and

00:27:02.520 | nation. The transaction between the Father and the Son in the death of

00:27:07.520 | Christ was so powerful that it secured absolutely, for all time and eternity,

00:27:14.800 | everything needed to bring the Bride of Christ safely and beautifully to

00:27:20.040 | everlasting joy. Romans 8.32 may be the most important verse in the Bible

00:27:29.680 | because it establishes the unshakable connection between the greatest event in

00:27:36.920 | the universe and the greatest future imaginable. He who did not spare his own

00:27:44.920 | Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us

00:27:54.040 | all things? Indeed, how will he not? All things, all things. Let no one boast in

00:28:07.320 | men, for all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world

00:28:12.880 | or life or death or the present or the future. All are yours and you are Christ's

00:28:18.360 | and Christ is God's. 1st Corinthians 3 21 through 23. All things ours because

00:28:29.040 | the Father did not spare the Son. When Christ died, everything, absolutely

00:28:38.240 | everything that his people need to make it through this world in holiness and

00:28:44.760 | love was invincibly secured. God the Father predestined it, everything we need

00:28:53.160 | and promised it to us. God the Son purchased it for us. God the Spirit

00:28:59.880 | performs it in us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

00:29:07.760 | I would like to help as many as I can to know the God of all-embracing,

00:29:16.400 | all-pervasive, invincible providence. His Word is spectacularly full of knowledge

00:29:27.360 | about God's ultimate goal. Cover to cover it rings with the riches of his grace

00:29:34.200 | toward his undeserving people. Page after page tells the stunning story of the

00:29:41.240 | nature and extent of his providence. Nothing can stop him from succeeding

00:29:48.360 | exactly when and how he aims to succeed. I am God and there is no other. I am God

00:29:56.560 | and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient

00:30:01.440 | times things not yet done, saying, "My counsel shall stand and I will

00:30:07.600 | accomplish all my purpose." Isaiah 46 9 and 10.

00:30:16.080 | Goal, nature, extent.

00:30:22.040 | The book is divided into three parts. Part one defines providence and then

00:30:29.600 | illuminates a difficulty, namely the self-exaltation involved in God's aim to

00:30:36.880 | display his own glory. Part two focuses on the ultimate goal of providence. Part

00:30:43.760 | three focuses on the nature and extent of providence. I have chosen this order,

00:30:50.880 | goal before nature and extent, because I think we understand more clearly what a

00:30:58.920 | person is doing if we know the end he is pursuing. If I know your goal is to build

00:31:05.840 | a house in Minnesota, I will understand what you are doing when you dig a

00:31:12.720 | massive hole in the ground. Basements are important in this climate. Otherwise,

00:31:20.200 | without knowing your aim, I won't know what the hole in the ground means. The

00:31:27.400 | nature and extent of the hole is explained by the goal. I refer to the

00:31:35.200 | ultimate goal of providence because God is always doing 10,000 things in every

00:31:42.200 | act of providence. That is an understatement. Each of those 10,000

00:31:49.080 | things is intended, which means that God has millions and millions of goals

00:31:57.320 | every hour. He accomplishes all of them. We don't know most of them. That too is

00:32:06.600 | an understatement. So part two of this book is not about trying to know all

00:32:12.800 | these goals. That is impossible. What I want to know is where everything is

00:32:19.000 | going. What is the goal that guides everything? Then we can grasp more fully

00:32:27.320 | the nature and extent of his providence. By the question of extent, I mean how

00:32:36.320 | much and how completely does God control things, including human beings. By the

00:32:44.200 | question of nature, I mean, for example, what means does God use to control

00:32:50.960 | things? Is the word "control" even the right word? It is not my default word to

00:32:58.480 | describe providence, not because the word is false, but because it tends to carry

00:33:04.280 | connotations of mechanical processes and coercive strategies. I will use it, but I

00:33:11.040 | hope to continually show why these connotations do not attach to God's

00:33:17.480 | providence. Providence is all-embracing and all-pervasive, but when God turns the

00:33:28.200 | human will, there is a mystery to it that causes a person to experience God's

00:33:33.680 | turning as his own preference, an authentic, responsible act of the human

00:33:40.800 | will. God is sovereign over man's preferences. Man is accountable for his

00:33:47.720 | preferences. God's hidden hand in turning all things and his revealed commands

00:33:56.640 | requiring all obedience are in perfect harmony in the mind of God, but not in

00:34:04.160 | our visible experience. We are obliged to follow his revealed precepts, not his

00:34:12.480 | secret purposes. We will see that such is the nature of providence.

00:34:22.640 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Have You Seen the Providence of God?

Chapters