Well, as another year inches to its conclusion and we look back on the smoldering rubble we call 2020, I can't imagine a more important topic for our focus than God's providence over all things. Of all the things we could have never expected to experience and witness in 2020, Scripture tells us that God governs over all things according to His will and for the ultimate good of His bride.

Making that case is Pastor John and his next book release simply titled Providence. A 750 page book releasing in less than two months on January 12th is Pastor John's biggest solo book project by far and we're mentioning it this week because you can now pre-order the title from our friends at Westminster Books for just $19.99 a copy.

We're thankful for their partnership and encourage you to order through them as you consider supporting faithful independent Christian booksellers. Go to WTSBooks.com to pre-order, that's WTSBooks.com and there you can get it for $19.99 a copy. Last time on the podcast on Monday I talked with Pastor John about the book and his hopes and dreams for it.

There I mentioned Pastor John has recorded for us two audiobook excerpts, the introduction and the conclusion, two sections that offer a really good preview of the entire book. And with the demands on his time it's it's pretty doubtful that he'll be able to read any more of it than these two sections.

I'm grateful that he did. So today here is the introduction, it's 32 minutes long. The conclusion coming up next time on Friday is 55 minutes long. Combined it's an hour and a half of audiobook recordings that will serve as our podcast content for the next two weeks as we take a brief break for Thanksgiving.

We're gonna return with new episodes on Monday November 30th to unveil some new features to the podcast that are coming up in December. Looking forward to sharing those with you then. Until then, here now is John Piper reading the introduction to his forthcoming book, Providence, coming out on January 12th.

Introduction. Four Invitations. God has revealed the goal and nature and extent of his providence. He has not been silent. He has shown us these things in the Bible. This is one of the reasons that the Apostle Paul says all Scripture is profitable. The prophet lies not mainly in the validation of a theological viewpoint, but in the revelation of a great God, the exaltation of his invincible grace, and the liberation of his undeserving people.

God has revealed his purposeful sovereignty over good and evil in order to humble human pride, intensify human worship, shatter human hopelessness, and put ballast in the battered boat of human faith, steel in the spine of human courage, gladness in the groans of affliction, and love in the heart that sees no way forward.

What we find in the Bible is real and raw. The prizing and proclaiming of God's pervasive providence was forged in the flames of hatred and love, deceit and truth, murder and mercy, carnage and kindness, cursing and blessing, mystery and revelation, and finally, crucifixion and resurrection. I hope my treatment of God's providence will have the aroma of this shocking and hope-filled reality.

In this introduction, I would like to offer you four invitations. Counterintuitive Wonders First, I invite you into a biblical world of counterintuitive wonders. I will argue that these wonders are not illogical or contradictory, but they are different from our usual ways of seeing the world—so different that our first reaction is often to say, "That can't be." But the "can't" is in our minds, not in reality.

How unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways. For example, in the justice of his judgment, God raises up a cruel shepherd for his people and then sends punishment on that shepherd. "Behold, I am raising up in the land a shepherd who does not care for those being destroyed, or seek the young, or heal the maimed, or nourish the healthy, but devours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs.

Woe to my worthless shepherd, who deserts the flock, may the sword strike his arm and his right eye, let his arm be wholly withered, his right eye utterly blinded." Zechariah 11, 16-17. This jars us. For most of us, this is not how we usually think about the ways of God.

First, that God "raises up" a brutal shepherd for his people seems to implicate God in sinful brutality. Second, that God judges the shepherd for his worthlessness seems like capriciously condemning what he himself ordained. There are many such scenes in the Bible, and I will argue that in them all, God is neither sinful nor capricious.

If we are prone to be critical rather than be changed, we should put our hands on our mouths and listen. We are sinful and finite. God is infinite and holy. "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55, 8-9.

I am inviting you into a world of counterintuitive wonders. I hope that you will let the Word of God create new categories of thinking rather than trying to force the Scriptures into the limits of what you already know. When Paul calls us to be "transformed by the renewal of our mind," part of what he has in mind is the overcoming of our natural resistance to the strangeness of the ways of God.

Immediately before calling for transformed minds, he writes, "Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor, or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." Romans 11, 33-36. In the end, my invitation into the biblical world of counterintuitive wonders is an invitation to worship. God is vastly greater and stranger and more glorious and more dreadful and more loving than we realize.

Immersing ourselves in the ocean of his providence is meant to help us know him, fear him, trust him, and love him as we ought. Penetrating through words into reality. Second, I invite you to penetrate through words into reality. Providence is a word not found in the Bible. In that sense, it is like the words "trinity," "discipleship," "evangelism," "exposition," "counseling," "ethics," "politics," and "charismatics." People who love the Bible and believe that it is God's Word want to know what the Bible teaches, not just what it says.

They want to know the reality being presented, not just the words that were written. The Bible itself makes clear that it is not enough just to say the words of the Bible. The Bible mandates that all churches have teachers. All churches are supposed to have elders, and elders are required to be teachers.

The task of a teacher is not just to read the Bible to his hearers, but to explain it. And explaining means using other words besides the ones in the text. Throughout the history of the church, heretics have frequently insisted on using only Bible words in defending their heresy. This was certainly the case for the fourth-century Arians, who rejected the deity of Jesus and were happy to use Bible words to do so.

RPC Hansen explained the process like this, "Theologians of the Christian Church were slowly driven to a realization that the deepest questions which face Christianity cannot be answered in purely biblical language because the questions are about the meaning of biblical language itself. The longer I have studied Scripture and tried to preach it and teach it, the more I have seen the need to encourage preachers and laypeople to penetrate through biblical words to biblical reality.

How easy it is to think we have experienced communion with God when our minds and hearts have stopped with verbal definitions, grammatical relations, historical illustrations, and a few applications. When we do this, even Bible words themselves can become alternatives to what Paul calls "spiritual understanding." I am going to use the word "providence" to refer to a biblical reality.

The reality is not found in any single Bible word. It emerges from the way God has revealed himself through many texts and many stories in the Bible. They are like threads woven together into a beautiful tapestry greater than any one thread. We are using a word that is not in the Bible for the sake of this larger truth of the Bible.

Of course there are dangers in doing this, just like there are dangers in using only Bible language which can be twisted to carry false meanings while giving the impression of biblical faithfulness. I will mention one danger among others. Since the word "providence" is not used in specific biblical texts, we have no biblical governor on its meaning.

We can't say, "The Bible defines providence this way." We could say that only if the Bible actually used the word "providence." Whenever you ask what a particular word means, there must be a meaner if the meaning is to have validity. So if the meaner is not one or more of the biblical writers, then when I use the word "providence," I must assign a meaning.

That is what I do in chapter 1. I don't assign an arbitrary meaning. I try to stay close to what others have meant by the word in the history of the church, but I do choose the meaning. You can see what this implies. It implies that the issue before us in this book is not the meaning of the word "providence." The issue is this.

Is the reality that I see in the Bible and call "providence" really there? There's no point in quibbling over whether "providence" is the best word for the reality. That is relatively unimportant. The all-important question is whether there is a reality in the Bible that corresponds to my description of the goal, nature, and extent of God's purposeful sovereignty.

You will see in chapter 1 why I use the short definition "purposeful sovereignty" for "providence," but for now, I am simply flagging the danger that it would be a sad mistake to miss the biblical reality by focusing on the word. A God-entranced world. Third, I invite you into a God-entranced world.

Jesus said to look at the birds because God feeds them and to consider the lilies because God clothes them. Jesus' aim is not aesthetic. His aim was to free his people from anxiety. He really considered it a valid argument that if our Heavenly Father feeds the birds and clothes the lilies, how much more surely will he feed and clothe his children?

This is simply astonishing. The argument is valid only if God really is the one who sees to it that the birds find their worms and the lilies wear their flowers. If birds and lilies are simply acting by natural laws with no divine hand, then Jesus is just playing with words.

But he is not playing with words. He really believes that God's hand is at work in the smallest details of natural processes. This is even clearer in Matthew 10 29 through 31. "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father.

But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore. You are of more value than many sparrows." God does not just feed the birds and clothe the lilies. He decides when every bird, countless millions every year, dies and falls to the ground. His point is the same as in Matthew 6.

He is your father. You are more precious to him than birds. Therefore you don't need to be afraid. That kind of pervasive providence combined with that kind of fatherly care means he can and will take care of you. So seek the kingdom first with radical abandon and don't be anxious.

Charged with Grandeur This God-entranced view of the world was not peculiar to Jesus. The psalmist sings to the Lord of his specific care of the creatures he has made. "These all look to you to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up.

When you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed. When you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the ground." Psalm 104 27 through 30.

God's involvement in nature is hands-on. The kind of closeness that causes the biblical writers to make declarations like, "He makes grass grow on the hills. The Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. The Lord appointed a plant. God appointed a worm that attacked the plant. He brings forth the wind from his storehouses.

He it is who makes the clouds rise, who makes lightnings for the rain. He rebuked the wind and the raging waves." This is not poetry for godless naturalistic processes. This is God's hands-on providence. God does not intend for us to see ourselves or any part of the world as cogs in the wheels of an impersonal mechanism.

The world is not a machine that God made to run on its own. It is a painting or a sculpture or a drama. The Son of God holds it in being by the word of his power. Gerard Manley Hopkins expressed it unforgettably in his sonnet, "God's Grandeur." The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out like shining from shook foil. It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil crushed. Why do men then now not wreck this rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod, and all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil, and where's man's smudge and shares man's smell?

The soil is bare now, nor can foot feel being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent. There lives the dearest freshness deep down things, and though the last lights off the black west went, oh, morning, as the brown brink eastward springs, because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with, ah, bright wings.

Seeing the Rising Sun I will never cease to be thankful that in my college days Clyde Kilby was one of my literature professors. He gave us a lecture once on the awakening of amazement at the strange glory of ordinary things. He closed the lecture with ten resolutions for what he called mental health.

Here are two of them. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are, but simply be glad that they are. I shall fully allow them the mystery of what C.S.

Lewis calls their divine, magical, terrifying, and ecstatic existence. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.

Because of Kilby's eye-opening influence, and because of what I now see in the Bible as an all-embracing, all-pervasive providence, I live more consciously in a God-entranced world. I see reality differently. For example, I used to look at sunrises when I was jogging and think that God has created a beautiful world.

Then it became less general and more specific, more personal. I said, "Every morning God paints a different sunrise. He never gets tired of doing it again and again." But then it struck me. No, He doesn't do it again and again. He never stops doing it. The sun is always rising somewhere in the world.

God guides the sun 24 hours every day and paints sunrises at every moment, century after century, without one second of respite, and never grows weary or less thrilled with the work of His hands. Even when cloud cover keeps man from seeing it, God is painting spectacular sunrises above the clouds.

God does not intend for us to look at the world He has made and feel nothing. When the psalmist says, "The heavens declare the glory of God," he does not mean this only for the clarification of our theology. He means it for the exaltation of our souls. We know this because of what follows.

In the heavens He has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Psalm 19, 4 and 5. What is the point of saying this? When we look at the handiwork of God in creation, we are to be drawn into bridegroom-like joy, and into the joy of an Eric Little running with his head back, elbows pumping, smile bursting in chariots of fire, basking in the very pleasure of God.

I am inviting you into a God-entranced world. No, we are not naive about the miseries every sunrise meets. You will perhaps be shocked at the implications of God's pervasive providence in the suffering and the death of this world. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. And the exalting Sun dawns on 150,000 new corpses every morning.

That's how many people die every day. In a world with this much God-entranced beauty, and this much God-governed horror, the biblical command to "rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep" means that we will continually be sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. To know God. Fourth, and finally, I am inviting you to know, maybe as you never have known, the God whose involvement in his children's lives and in the world is so pervasive, so all-embracing, and so powerful that nothing can befall them but what he designs for their glorification in him and his glorification in them.

The death of the Son of God ransomed a people for God from every tribe and language and nation. The transaction between the Father and the Son in the death of Christ was so powerful that it secured absolutely, for all time and eternity, everything needed to bring the Bride of Christ safely and beautifully to everlasting joy.

Romans 8.32 may be the most important verse in the Bible because it establishes the unshakable connection between the greatest event in the universe and the greatest future imaginable. He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Indeed, how will he not? All things, all things. Let no one boast in men, for all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future. All are yours and you are Christ's and Christ is God's. 1st Corinthians 3 21 through 23.

All things ours because the Father did not spare the Son. When Christ died, everything, absolutely everything that his people need to make it through this world in holiness and love was invincibly secured. God the Father predestined it, everything we need and promised it to us. God the Son purchased it for us.

God the Spirit performs it in us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. I would like to help as many as I can to know the God of all-embracing, all-pervasive, invincible providence. His Word is spectacularly full of knowledge about God's ultimate goal. Cover to cover it rings with the riches of his grace toward his undeserving people.

Page after page tells the stunning story of the nature and extent of his providence. Nothing can stop him from succeeding exactly when and how he aims to succeed. I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, "My counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose." Isaiah 46 9 and 10.

Goal, nature, extent. The book is divided into three parts. Part one defines providence and then illuminates a difficulty, namely the self-exaltation involved in God's aim to display his own glory. Part two focuses on the ultimate goal of providence. Part three focuses on the nature and extent of providence. I have chosen this order, goal before nature and extent, because I think we understand more clearly what a person is doing if we know the end he is pursuing.

If I know your goal is to build a house in Minnesota, I will understand what you are doing when you dig a massive hole in the ground. Basements are important in this climate. Otherwise, without knowing your aim, I won't know what the hole in the ground means. The nature and extent of the hole is explained by the goal.

I refer to the ultimate goal of providence because God is always doing 10,000 things in every act of providence. That is an understatement. Each of those 10,000 things is intended, which means that God has millions and millions of goals every hour. He accomplishes all of them. We don't know most of them.

That too is an understatement. So part two of this book is not about trying to know all these goals. That is impossible. What I want to know is where everything is going. What is the goal that guides everything? Then we can grasp more fully the nature and extent of his providence.

By the question of extent, I mean how much and how completely does God control things, including human beings. By the question of nature, I mean, for example, what means does God use to control things? Is the word "control" even the right word? It is not my default word to describe providence, not because the word is false, but because it tends to carry connotations of mechanical processes and coercive strategies.

I will use it, but I hope to continually show why these connotations do not attach to God's providence. Providence is all-embracing and all-pervasive, but when God turns the human will, there is a mystery to it that causes a person to experience God's turning as his own preference, an authentic, responsible act of the human will.

God is sovereign over man's preferences. Man is accountable for his preferences. God's hidden hand in turning all things and his revealed commands requiring all obedience are in perfect harmony in the mind of God, but not in our visible experience. We are obliged to follow his revealed precepts, not his secret purposes.

We will see that such is the nature of providence.