A few things in my 50 years in the ministry, more or less, have been more gratifying to me than to see the all-pervasive, all-governing sovereignty of God, which we're going to talk about as providence, move from being a stumbling block, that it is to so many people, to being a soul-stabilizing, insanity-removing power as our people walk through hellish circumstances.

To see that move in a church from being absolutely perplexing and maddening to being life and hope to watch providence move from there to there has been over my years gloriously gratifying. For example, a quote from one of our missionaries 40 years ago from China. "In December of 1987, my father died unexpectedly at age of 63.

I was plunged into a journey of several months, struggling to understand what had happened. I was at Bethlehem," our church, "but new to the teaching and apparently missing many of the distinctives." Fast forward to 1992. We had been in China for a year and returned home to have our first child.

As you remember, she lived one day and died in our arms. It was then that the teaching of God's providence came home to roost. God had not turned us loose to some natural events, but in his divine mercy had seen fit to give us a child, and through the process of taking her from us, work in us a honing and sanctifying unlike anything we'd ever known.

Thanks to the foundation laid in my life through our years at Bethlehem, I was now able to embrace and understand such verses as, "The Lord gives, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." There was another missionary couple who went out from us to the Middle East.

They're still there, by the way, but something happened in between. Not long after, they got pregnant, first time, and they went to Turkey, a nice safe place, a more advanced place to have their child, and he was born and he died. They came home to recover. They didn't stay home, but they came home, and their first Sunday back was a morning when I was on the front row getting ready to preach.

They were sitting, we had these rows that come in like this. They're sitting over here. I can see them, first Sunday back, and it was the very first Sunday that we sang as a church, "Blessed be your name on the road marked with suffering, though there's pain in the offering, blessed be your name.

You give and take away. You give and take away. My heart will choose to say, 'Lord, blessed be your name.'" And I looked over, and they were both standing there like this, empty hands of submission. And I thought, "That's worth a lifetime of ministry." One more woman with uterine cancer, then I'll tell you in a minute why I'm giving you all these stories.

I came to Bethlehem 10 years ago. I had been a believer for only a few years. Within a few weeks of attending, I began to hear your teaching on God's sovereignty in salvation, and it was the weirdest thing I had ever heard. It sounded archaic and un-American. And later, I realized it truly was archaic and un-American, but genuinely biblical.

Eventually, by the awesome weight of scriptural evidence, I was compelled to adopt the Reformed perspective on God's sovereignty. Little did I know that the hunger to understand God's nature and His ways over the past 10 years was graciously given to fortify me for this year's surprise of cancer diagnosis.

Of course, the news that I had a life-threatening illness, the realization that I would not be able to have children was horribly painful. But the powerful assistance that comes through truth amazed me. Theology can be so practical. It does wonders for anxiety and self-pity and despair. I am so glad God ordained my conversion to Reformed theology prior to ordaining my cancer.

I know He is immeasurably strong and thoroughly in charge and 100% on my side, even when He sends painful circumstances, was a Spurgeon that said, "I will kiss the waves that dash me upon the rock of ages." Now, the reason for beginning with those three stories is because I want there to be a tone in this room as I talk about providence.

The reality of God's all-governing, all-pervasive, purposeful sovereignty, which we call providence, is controversial, and I don't want to think about it mainly that way. From now until the day that you see Jesus, there will always be people who turn red in the face and spittin' mad if you come even close to suggesting that God took their baby.

From now to the end of history, there will be scholars and pundits and articles and blogs and books describing the God of Jonathan Edwards and the God of John Piper as a moral monster. Your job when those things happen, if you happen to love the God I love, will not be to return evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but to absorb, like Jesus did, absorb the slander, the abuse, hand it over to God, like Jesus did, patiently return good for evil, meet their needs.

And I bear you witness, like I did, I think, on the Q&A this afternoon, I bear you witness, some of those spittin' angry enemies will do a 180, and they'll love you. It might take 10 years, but don't give up, don't give up on them. Don't go online with guns blazing, this is not the kind of doctrine that should be handled that way.

The great design of the doctrine of providence is to be the ballast in the boats of your people to keep them from capsizing in the waves of suffering. That's what it's for, and your job is to put it there, and if they keep pitchin' it out, just keep puttin' it back in, and do the best you can to win them to biblical truth.

So that's the spirit in which I want you to hear this message, and that's the spirit I think you should have as you try to build your people's understanding and acceptance and love for the doctrine of God's absolute, all-pervasive, all-governing, purposeful sovereignty called providence. So we're going to do it in three steps.

First, we're going to talk about the definition a little more fully. I've given my definition with the phrase "purposeful sovereignty," but I want to say some more about the meaning of providence. Number two, we'll talk about the truth that's going to triumph through providence, namely certain glorious promises that God has held out to us about His future for us.

So collect some promises together that sum up the glorious future that we're looking forward to, and then notice that there are massive obstacles between those promises and their fulfillment that only providence could remove. And the third thing is, how does He remove them? So a definition, promises of God's future, and how providence removes the obstacles of those promises.

So, clarify the definition, identify God's promises, and how providence secures those promises. So, number one, some thoughts about definition, the meaning of providence. The Word is not in the Bible, in the English Bible, at least not in the ones I have. And therefore, when we talk about a definition of a Word that we use a lot and it's not in the Bible, we need to be very careful that we assemble our definition from biblical realities that are really there, and then don't over-claim anything for the Word since it's not there, but make clear what biblical realities it's trying to sum up.

So I use the phrase "purposeful sovereignty" because sovereignty and providence aren't the same. Sovereignty, at least the way I'm using the term, the way I think the Bible uses the term, is that in and of itself, the word sovereignty carries no connotation of design or purposefulness. God always has design and purposefulness, but it's not in the word sovereignty.

Sovereignty means He has the power and the right to do anything He pleases, right? And then you have to ask, does He please things by plan, or is He whimsical in His sovereignty? So the word sovereignty is a glorious word, I love it, but providence is more. It's sovereignty plus providence is.

It implies purposefulness. Buried in the English word "providence" is the word "provide," which is made up of two Latin words, right? "Pro," "toward," "forward," "unto," "videre," "see," which just so happens, amazingly, to capture the English idiom "see to." So God saw to it that a ram was in the thicket to take Isaac's place.

God saw to it that Joseph would be sold into slavery and save his people. God saw to it that his son would be murdered and salvation would come to millions. See to, providere. And all of those imply purposefulness. God sees to everything purposefully. One more clarification on the definition regarding its extent.

I use the phrases "all-governing, all-pervasive," trying to get at how extensive is this purposeful sovereignty? Now, we'll see this, the claim that it's all-governing and all-pervasive, we're going to see it in the Bible as we move forward. But what I mean is that in the entire universe, God governs the smallest thing, like Jesus says, the fall of a bird.

In the darkest forest you can imagine, somewhere where nobody's watching, a bird gets old and dies and falls to the ground, God governed that. Or the movement of stars, Isaiah 40, 26, or the murder of his son, Acts 4, 27. The providence of God governs all the moral and immoral acts of every soul.

Neither Satan at his hellish worst or human beings at their redeemed best ever act in any way contrary to the ultimate, all-embracing, all-wise plan and providence of God. That's what I mean by providence. Now, second, promises that God has given us in his Word about his ultimate triumph at the end, what it would be like, and why we can be thrilled and hope to get there and build our ministries on a confident hope that we're going to get there.

I'm going to mention three promises that I think sum up where everything is going, and then we'll step back and say, "Whoa, there's a lot standing in the way of those promises, which only providence can handle." So promise number one, the gospel of Jesus Christ will successfully penetrate all the peoples of the world and gather into Christ all the ransomed elect.

That's going to happen. Matthew 24, 14, "This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come." It's promised. It's going to happen. The gospel will reach all the peoples of the world, and it cannot be stopped.

So if you want to be involved in something that cannot fail, be sure to be involved in world missions. It reaches all the peoples, and when it gets there, it succeeds. In Revelation 5, 9, all the redeemed are going to be gathered, the ransomed are going to be pulled in.

"Worthy are you to take the scroll, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made them a kingdom and priest to our God. They shall reign on earth." All the ransomed from all the peoples, tongues, tribes, and nations are going to be there.

They're going to come. They're going to hear the gospel. Faith comes by hearing, and they're going to come. It's going to succeed. John 10, 16, "I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, so there will be one flock, one shepherd.

I must. I will. I will." It's going to happen. That's the promise. So promise number one, the gospel will reach all the peoples of the world, and it will do its mighty work when it gets there, and all the ransomed will be gathered in. Number two, all of these ransomed elect from all the peoples of the world, the bride of Christ will be sanctified, glorified, and made perfectly beautiful for the eternal enjoyment of her divine husband.

Romans 8, 30, "Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified." So the glorification of the predestined, called, and justified is as good as done. I think John's going to preach on that tomorrow. It's as good as done.

They are glorified. It's going to happen. It will not fail. Ephesians 5, 25, "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." Christ did not die to set in motion a failed marriage.

She will be blameless and beautiful. That's why the universe exists. She will be beautiful. First Thessalonians 5, 23, "May the God of peace sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful.

He will do it." That's the promise. So all these reached and ransomed, elect from all the nations of the world, are going to be redeemed and justified and sanctified and glorified and made spectacularly beautiful for the enjoyment of her husband, Jesus Christ. Number three, third promise. This beauty of the bride will consist, most essentially, in the sinless echo of Christ's excellencies, his preciousness, reverberating back to him in the all-satisfying pleasures that his people find in him forever.

Now that's a long, complex sentence, and it contains all of my theology. That's why it has to be long and complex. I'm going to read it again, and I hope you can get it. So the beauty of the bride, for which the universe was made, the beauty of the bride will consist essentially, not only, there are other things to say about this bride, but essentially, in the sinless echo of Christ's excellencies -- emanation, remanation, Jonathan Edwards -- echo back the excellencies of Christ in the all-satisfying pleasures that she has in him forever.

That's what her sinless excellencies or his sinless excellencies do when they are properly seen and tasted and enjoyed. They echo back his worth, his preciousness, and the end of all things has been reached. Isaiah 55, 12, "You shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace. The mountains and the hills before you will break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn will come up the cypress, instead of the brier will come up the myrtle, and it -- what's that -- and it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off." What's the "it"? The "it" is the spectacular joy of the creation.

She's going to go out in joy. The mountains are going to clap their hands. They're going to sing, and it will be for the name of the Lord, an everlasting sign. The joy of the bride will be the sign of the worth of the name of the Creator, the Bridegroom.

That's the gist of the argument of Isaiah 55, 12 to 13. All creation, especially the bride, but also maybe even dogs. Not cats, I think, but dogs. Although, I do have a theology of glorification that might allow cats in. Because they're going to -- I mean, big cats are going to be there for sure, right?

Lion. They're going to lie down with the lamb. But I digress. Isaiah 35, 10, "The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing. Everlasting joy will be upon their heads, and they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away." And what's the center of that joy, that gladness?

Revelation 21, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with them. He will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying anymore, nor any pain, for the former things have passed away." God is the center of their joy, the focus, the source of their joy.

You make me know the path to life. In your presence, there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. And that's the end of the story. One of the tests you can make of yourself and your understanding of worship, true, authentic, inner worship, not just motions, hands, mouth, whatever, just really what's going on here, the test is if you try to use it for anything else.

If you say, "We're going to worship to raise money for our building program, worship to bring people into the church, we're going to worship in order to fix our marriages," you don't understand. You don't do worship in order to anything. It's the end. There's no in order to, once you've gotten to the end of the universe's purpose.

Now just a little parenthesis, if you do that authentically week in and week out, marriages are going to be changed. You can't not have better marriages in a church that's meeting God authentically as an end in himself every Sunday, you can't. And everything else has changed. But if you shoot at that, try to use this authentic enjoyment of God himself as a means to something else, you just don't get it.

The ultimate purpose of God's all wise providence then is this enjoyment of God by the bride at the end of history. Bring my sons from afar, my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, that's Isaiah 43, 6, and 7, I created for my glory.

And the way that glory, that worth, that beauty, that greatness, that preciousness of God is put on display is that it awakens in us pleasures in him and they echo back to him his worth and greatness and beauty, his glory. It's a promise, that's going to happen. So those are my three promises.

They're going to happen. The nations will be reached, the elect will be gathered in and made beautiful for Christ and that beauty will consist in our echoing back his excellencies in the enjoyment that we have in him. That's the end of all things. None of that's going to happen unless there is an omnipotent exercise of providence because there are massive threats and obstacles to those three promises, massive, 10 million times greater than you have any hope of overcoming.

There's only one hope for those three promises to come true and that's the providence of God. So that's where we turn now. What are some of these threats, obstacles, and how does God's providence overcome those threats and guarantee the triumph? I wrote that sentence and then I stopped and I thought, "No, no, not what I'm going to talk about.

I'm going to take it up a level. I'm not going to say what or how does the providence of God overcome those threats and obstacles. I'm going to ask and show from the Bible, how does the providence of God not only overcome them but make them serve His purposes?" You know, if you think of, here's God, here's the fulfillment of all things and promises and in the middle there are obstacles and God has to do things to get over them.

You've created an autonomy here that doesn't, it's not real. These obstacles are not autonomous. I mean, Satan at the center of this threat and this obstacle is not autonomous. We're not dualists. Right? It's like, here's God, here's Satan duking it out. They're not duking it out. This fellow's done.

He's a creature. So what God is going to do, since He plans all things as well as performs all things, is not only get over the obstacles but take them captive and make them serve His designs and His purposes. That's what I want to see. Is that true? Because if that's true, oh my.

How does it change your view of the world in which you live, the sufferings you walk through, the miseries of this globe? That's where we're going. I'm going to steal a little bit of John's thunder here with Romans 8.35, but you pick it up. I won't stay long. Romans 8.35, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

For tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" Now if you stopped right there, rhetorical question, a good prosperity preacher would say, "No! No! They're not going to separate us from the love of Christ because it's not going to happen to us." Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

For tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine? Famine! No way! No way are Christians going to starve to death. Or nakedness? No way! There will always be clothes. No naked Christians. No Christians who can't afford clothing. This is a wicked, wicked... I've got a guy in our church right now from Cameroon, I mean, he's in our seminary, and he's writing his thesis on the prosperity gospel, and it's absolutely, I mean, we have exported this, you know, the devastating effects it's having all over West Africa as he sees it in his little sphere.

So my ire gets up a lot when I see that people stop in the middle of verse 35. Because if you keep going, everything that I just said is proved false. Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword, comma, and a quote from Psalm 44, "As it is written, we are being killed all day long." It happens!

Nakedness happens! Starvation happens! Swords go through Christian necks all day long. That's happening somewhere in the world right now. Not happening in this room right now, but somewhere it's happening, as we heard earlier, who filled in, whoever quoted all those incredible statistics about last century and this century martyrdoms.

So there they are, the obstacles right there. And Paul says, after he says, "We are being killed all day long," there's this adversative which is often translated, "No!" I like that translation, "No!" Like, but, but no, "In all these things we are." Now what does that mean? I wonder what MacArthur's going to say.

What is more than a conqueror? I'll give you my take on more than a conqueror, and then you can correct me. If you got an enemy, an obstacle between you and victory, you and fulfilled promise, and you conquer him, he falls dead at your feet, you're dead, over you, I'm going to my fulfillment.

Okay, that's conqueror. What's more than a conqueror? My answer is, he gets up and serves you, helps you get there. So he's not sabotaging your purpose. He's helping you fulfill your purpose. You defeat him and make him, or make you, more than a conqueror. So the flag that is flying over Joseph's brother's sin, remember this?

It sold him into slavery, and it's just shot through with sin, that act of enslaving and almost killing Joseph. The flag, as you know, flying over that according to Moses' intention, I believe, in Genesis is, "You meant it for evil, and God meant it for good," chapter 50, verse 20.

And it does not mean, you can take that, that happened this afternoon as well, that emergency thing going off. This word "meant" is not, "You meant it for evil, God used it for good." It does not say that, and it does not mean that. You meant it for evil, the selling of Joseph into slavery.

God meant it. In fact, the psalm says, "He sent him," right? Psalm 105 says, "He sent him." God meant it for good. So Satan and sinful people have a purpose and a design and a plan for this, and God has a purpose and a design and a plan, and this one loses.

This one wins. God meant it. He didn't play catch-up ball and say, "Oh dear, didn't see that coming. How can I use that to save my people? Oh, we'll do this famine thing," and so on. It's all planned. He meant it. He sent him to save this people. It was a plan.

So not used, but meant. So it is with every obstacle, I believe, to God's promises. It will be with every evil from the fall of Lucifer to the lake of fire. We should see the flag flying, "Satan meant it for evil, God meant it for good." Satan meant it for evil, you meant it for evil, sinners mean it for evil, God means it for good.

So let's walk through a few of these obstacles to those three promises. Number one, the most serious, the greatest obstacle between you right now and the fulfillment of that promise for you and your church, your family, is the wrath of God against sin. That's the greatest obstacle in the universe to the fulfillment of God's promises.

God's wrath is the greatest obstacle to the fulfillment of God's promises. Nothing compares to the horrible, blazing barrier of God's wrath between us and our everlasting happiness in him. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, Romans 1:18.

This is why we pour out our lives in the cause of world missions. The greatest obstacle to the everlasting happiness of every culture and every people group on the planet is the wrath of God, and we know how to escape. Nobody but Christians know how to escape this greatest obstacle to our future happiness, everybody's future happiness.

Only one thing can remove this obstacle, the love of God, propitiating the wrath of God through the death of the Son of God to vindicate the glory of God. That's how it's removed, the love of God propitiating the wrath of God through the death of the Son of God to vindicate, Romans 3:25, the glory of God, the righteousness of God.

God put Christ forward as a propitiation by his blood. But right here, at the most horrible point in human history, the murder of the Son of God, right here at the center, the most sinful, the most horrible, most wicked point in history, the providence of God is in total control, total control.

And I've already referred to Acts 4, I'm going to read it now because for me, this is one of the texts about God's providence that helps most people handle God's sovereignty over sin. "Truly in this city, Jerusalem, there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place." So Herod, Pilate, mobs, crying, "Crucify him, crucify him," soldiers driving the nails.

You thought, you four, Herod, Pilate, mobs, soldiers, you thought you were threatening and destroying the saving purposes of God? Another resounding, "No!" You were fulfilling them. You thought you were destroying his purposes? You were fulfilling them. In God's providence, you were doing whatever God's hand and God's plan, that's a quote from the Bible, had predestined to take place.

You meant it for evil, God meant it for good. And the reason that text is so amazingly effective for many, many people in helping them submit to the sovereignty and the providence of God is because what's being controlled here by God and his plan and his hand is the worst thing in the world, right?

There isn't anything worse than to murder the Son of God, and if the worst thing in the world, way, way worse than the death of your child, is controlled and planned by God for the good purposes of his saving work, everything is, or at least everything can be without calling God's morality into question.

So now the ransom of the bride is paid, the sins are covered, the condemnation is passed, the impending wrath is removed, but for the bride to enjoy all of what she is promised, she must hear and believe, right? Romans 10, 14 to 17, how should they believe? If they don't hear, how should they hear without a preacher?

How should they preach unless they're sent? Beautiful feat, take the gospel, faith comes by hearing, no other way. New birth comes through the living and abiding word of God, no other way. They must hear and believe the gospel, and Satan in concert with human depravity will do everything in his power to prevent that, to prevent them hearing and to prevent them believing.

For example, let's just take kings, governors, who make laws and break laws that hinder the spread of the gospel. They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name's sake, and what does that mean for the spread of the gospel?

Here's what Psalm 2 says it means, "The kings of the earth and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision." Why is that? Because the most high rules the kingdoms of men gives it to whomever he will, Daniel 4:32.

He removes kings and sets up kings, Daniel 2:21, and when he sets them up, wicked though they be, Republican or Democrat form of wickedness, they do what he pleases. Proverbs 21, "The king's heart and so is the president's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord.

He turns it wherever he wills. Whether he's born again or not, he is governed by God's providence. Do you think, O king of Assyria, because you destroy my people that you are not a hatchet in my hand? Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it, as if a rod should wield him who lifts it, or as if a staff should lift him who is not wood?" No.

When Satan and sin conspire to raise up kings and governors against the mission of God, they cannot succeed. They cannot. They are hatchets, rods, axes in the hand of God. They simply find themselves to be advancing in ways you can't even begin to comprehend the ultimate purposes of God in this world.

You meant it for evil, Mr. King. God meant it for good. What about disease? That's a great hindrance, isn't it? We have a missionary family in our church right now, a little baby clinging on for life down in South Africa. In fact, that particular mission field has just had incredible blow after blow.

Three of our key missionaries going to that one place have been devastated. Cancer with a double mastectomy and liver disease, and now this poor little baby. I've known this for 40 years, just watching our missionaries be cut to pieces. What about disease? Missionary kids dying, intensive care, freak accidents of two missionaries flying off a cliff and dying, or a whole family of five, some of you know who I'm talking about, on their way to the mission field, and they're all dead.

All five of them dead, faithful, humble missionaries on their way. What about imprisonment? What about murder? Disease. We have a sovereign Lord in heaven to whom all authority is given. He rebuked fevers, and they left. He cleansed lepers with a touch. He opened the eyes of the blind. He made the deaf hear and the mute speak.

He made the lame walk. He raised the dead. He spoke to the powers of hell, and they obeyed him. And he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, isn't he? Which means any sickness in your church, he could just change like that. And he doesn't change all of them like that.

Satan strikes with sickness, Luke 13, 16. This woman bent over by Satan, but he's on a leash. He cannot act contrary to God's decisive plan. God can step in at any moment, and what he permits Satan to do, he wills to permit. He plans to permit. He doesn't permit on the spur of the moment, like, "What will I do next?

Oh, I'll permit this." He doesn't permit on the spur of the moment. He plans his permissions, and planned permissions is providence. So get over any playing off of permissive will and sovereign will. Just get over it. It doesn't work. Permissive will is planned. If it's planned, it's according to his good pleasure.

It's folded into the plan and the design. So yes, Satan went from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores, Job 2, 7, and three verses later, after the text says, "Satan struck Job with loathsome sores," Job says, "Shall we receive good from God and not receive evil?" To which many commentators say, "Job totally blew it in that comment.

He didn't." And we know he didn't because the inspired writer adds, "In all this, Job did not sin with his lips." And if that were not clear enough, the whole book has this flying over it as a banner in chapter 42, verse 11, one of the most remarkably unquoted passages in the book of Job by preachers and scholars.

42, 11, "Job's family showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him." It's a summary of the whole book. They comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. They took his kids, all his possessions, all his health, turned his wife against him, brought friends whose friendship lasted about seven days, and then became really annoying.

This was just terrible. He had these sores that crawled with maggots and he used shards to scrape the pus out. It was horrible. And the inspired writer says, "They showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. And Paul called his painful thorn in the flesh a messenger of Satan." It must gall Satan, don't you think?

It just must gall Satan to be made an instrument of our humility. That's what it says. To make him contrite, to keep him from being puffed up, he was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan. And Satan's thinking, "I don't want to make him contrite." And God says, "I don't know what you want.

I'm using you, buddy. I use you. You're on a leash and you're going to lose. Don't you ever think that the misery you cause my people is sovereign. I'm sovereign, not you." And oh, how our people need to feel that. They need to feel they're not at the mercy of Satan.

They're not at the mercy of whim. They're not at the mercy of empty fate. They're at the mercy of a merciful Father. You know, if they could trust Him, how it would transform their lives. So Satan now throws Christians into prison in Revelation 2.10, and he kills them. Satan can kill Christians, Revelation 2.10, he kills them.

There are freak accidents from a human standpoint, John 8.44, 12.31. But from God's standpoint, there are no accidents, period, freak or otherwise. Listen to James 4.15. This has got to be one of the most stunning verses in the Bible with regard to providence. James 4.15. So instead of saying, "Come now, you who say, 'I will go up to such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain,'" you don't know about your life, you're like a vapor.

He said, "You ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live,'" and stop there, "'If God wills, I'm going to finish the sermon. And if He doesn't, I won't,'" period. This is not rocket science. You don't need a Ph.D. or an M.Div. or a B.A. to understand James 4.15.

"If the Lord wills, John Piper finishes the sermon." Otherwise, he could just drop dead with a heart attack. And if that happens, by the way, don't you anybody get in God's face about that? Don't ever get in God's face about anything, especially not me going home to heaven in good grief.

That's not the end of the sentence. It gets more amazing. "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." What's that? That's it? Do this or that? That's everything. Do random this? Random that? These are random. If the Lord wills, this hand keeps doing this right here, whatever that is.

Why does He do that? I have no idea. It's that meticulous. It's that detailed. This or that. If the Lord wills, we live. If the Lord wills, we die. It is a glorious thing, and many missionaries have said it. I am immortal till my work is done. Isn't that a great thing?

Good night, how happy you could be. I am immortal till my work is done. And when it's done, it's done, right? God has decided now's your time. Come on home. If the Lord wills. So if Satan and the enemies of God rub their hands together in triumph when a Christian witness languishes and dies, let them hear this word from Revelation 12, 12.

I'm saying this out loud for Satan to hear it right now, for demons to hear it, and for you who may be called upon to give your life to hear it, Revelation 12, 12. They have conquered the accuser, the serpent, by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.

That's the way you conquer. It looks to everybody like a loss, and it's a victory. One more threat, Satan's blinding power over keeping people from believing the gospel. There's the depraved human heart, and that's all it takes to keep people hard and impervious to the gospel, and then according to 2 Corinthians 4, Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.

So you got Satan blinding unbelievers and Satan attempting to turn away believers from the path of obedience to make shipwreck of their faith and not be saved and thus prove themselves to be fake Christians. So those two things, unbelievers blinded, believers constantly being pushed off the narrow road that leads to life.

That's the way Satan's going to keep this promise from being fulfilled, or is he? So neither Satan nor man is sovereign over the blindness of unbelievers, the fragile perseverance of Christians in faith. God is sovereign over that. God is sovereign over the new birth. He's sovereign over every blood-bought perseverance in faith.

The banner flying over every conversion is God made us alive in Christ by grace you have been saved, Ephesians 2, 5, and over every miracle of perseverance, conversion, lasting, God says, or we say, "Now unto Him who is able to keep you from stumbling." I remember the first T4G after I finished at Bethlehem, I guess I was 67, and that April, I guess I was 68 then.

First time to preach it together for the gospel, not being a pastor. And this is the text I preached on, because I was just... All I could do was reflect on how He'd kept me, how He'd kept me. Forty-three years in the ministry, and I made it. I didn't wreck it.

Now to Him who is able to keep me from stumbling and to present me blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time, now and forevermore. I mean, that's just about the greatest doxology in the Bible, and what prompted it?

He kept us. That's why He's saying that. Now unto Him who is able to keep, keep, let your heart sing. If you're older and you haven't yet made shipwreck of your faith, sing that. If you're younger, hope that, believe that, lay hold on that. God is sovereign over your perseverance, and God was sovereign over your salvation.

So here's my conclusion, I'm almost done. I conclude that the truth of God, the promises of God are going to triumph, all those promises. So number one, the gospel of Jesus Christ will successfully penetrate all the peoples of the world and will gather into Christ all God's elect, ransomed elect.

Number two, all of these ransomed, the bride of Christ will be sanctified and glorified and made perfectly beautiful for the eternal enjoyment of her husband, Jesus Christ. And thirdly, this beauty of the bride will be the sinless echo of Christ's excellencies, His preciousness reverberating back to Him in the all-satisfying experience of pleasure that she has in Him.

The truths, these realities cannot fail because God's providence is all governing, all-pervasive, purposeful sovereignty are true. They're going to happen. God will see to it that everything is under control to bring about these three glorious end-time consummation promises or as He says in Isaiah 46.10, "My counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose." Let's pray.

Lord, where would we be in the suffering and the sorrows and the miseries of this world if we did not know that You were a God of purposeful sovereignty, namely a God of providence? And so I bless You. It is well, Lord. It is well with our soul when we ponder how glorious is the outcome of these promises because Your providence is undefeatable.

Lord, put ballast in the boats of our people. Many of them shed tears over the difficulty of this doctrine. They just at first are flummoxed by it. They don't have categories to embrace it. Oh, make us patient, pastors. Help us to build into them over time a deep love for Your sovereignty.

So put ballast in their boats so there are millions and millions of Christians across the world who when their boat meets great suffering waves, they will not capsize. Help us to be that kind of pastor, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.