Important verses:
Ecclesiastes 7:13 “Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?”
Genesis 50:20 “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good”
Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
- First, from Ecclesiastes 7:13:
“Consider the work of God”. What are the works of God? His Word, His Decree, His Commands? Do we consider God’s work? Consider man – the work of God – as a vessel made by the hand of the Potter, what right do we have to speak back to the Creator? Has He made us such and such? What is your strength when compared to His omnipotence – can you undo yourself? Can you make yourself taller? Can you by concentration [and not by external means or withholding nourishment or by an accident] stop your own heart and die as you sit in your chair? Of course you cannot.
When you consider the work of God in the heavens – can you stop the wind or cause the sun to stop shining? Of course not. So we see now that man in his finitude has very limited ability to do anything. Isaiah 43:13 – “Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it?”
- Second, from Ecclesiastes 7:13:
“For who can make that straight, which He hath made crooked?” Ecclesiastes teaches that God sovereignly ordains those difficult providences that appear ‘crooked’ to us. In a fallen world, these include afflictions, disabilities, disappointments, and sorrows. They are not outside His decree, though they are part of a creation subjected to futility because of Adam’s fall. Man understands that a child is usually born with all her faculties, but what of a child born blind? Mute? Developmentally disabled? Has God made them too? Yes – all made by God in a fallen world.
Here we have to acquiesce that God’s will in a world fallen will have anomalies that most would call abnormal from the human perspective. Are they really abnormal? Is there a purpose? Some children are born ill and have a short life. Is there a purpose in this?
In God’s Providence, He makes one vessel to honor and one to dishonor – and these are bends that are known only to Him. For the elect, once we understand our position, we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. God has done these things for His own purpose and pleasure
God providentially also knows the bend of the will, for when Christ speaks to the rich young ruler, He talls him to sell everything he has and follow Christ. The young man went away sad because he was wealthy, and in this matter, God knows the bend of a man’s disposition, which He also keeps to Himself.
In His providence, He can and does place things in the way of man that will make his course crooked and bend him to do something different. It may be contrary to the way of that man so that he has to change and adjust, but these changes are wrought in the mind of and by the hand of God.
God ordains occasions of testing and stumbling according to His holy purposes, while never tempting anyone to sin (James 1:13). To claim otherwise is to make minimal the sovereign Hand of God and fly in the face of Lamentations 3:37 “Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?”
- So what is the distinction between sovereignty and providence?
The Sovereignty of God is His absolute position of authority and supreme right to rule all things. His Providence is the active action used of God to perform His will in the life of His creation – including the life of man. Do they concur?
Yes. The doctrine of Divine Concurrence is God’s actively sustaining all events while ordaining that secondary causes act according to their own nature.
God is not merely observing events. He is not merely permitting history. He is actively sustaining every action that occurs. As the Apostle declares: “For in him we live, and move, and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) No creature possesses independent power of action apart from God. There is not one action in the universe that happens apart from the Divine Will of Omnipotent God. Louis Berkhof described concurrence as: “the co-operation of the divine power with all subordinate powers, according to the pre-established laws of their operation, causing them to act and to act precisely as they do.”
- Consider Joseph – from whom we get the verse in Genesis 50:20 “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good”.
First, Joseph’s dreams come from God, and his brothers were already evil and envied him; they sell him to the Midianites, ruin his coat, and return to Jacob with an evil and false report about Joseph and false demise. God providentially ordains the Midianites to be there at that moment, and permits the hard hearts of his brothers to throw Joseph into a ditch and sell him. All this God does without being the author of their sin. God causes him to go to Egypt where God makes him the second person behind the Pharaoh.
God causes the issue with the baker and butler by creating situations where everyone needed to make a choice one way or the other, and Joseph dreams prophetic dreams from God, and relays them to both the butler and baker, which eventually come to the ears of Pharaoh. In all of these events, God is not the author of evil nor is He tempting any man, as the evil comes from within the heart of man himself acting on his own evil desires.
In the Biblical narrative with Joseph, seemingly small things have a large impact. In every decision, God is immediately working – either in an efficacious way like the dreams and prospering Joseph, and in permissive ways like ordaining his brothers sovereignly to govern their already sinful hearts toward God’s righteous purpose – to become evil and sell him as a slave.
The ultimate goal when you review the entire narrative, was that God planned to reveal His glory through the deliverance from Egypt and providing the promised land. Every small nuance, word, dream, relationship, decision were all decreed by God for His ultimate glory.
Review this epoch in reverse: the Hebrews enter the promised land, they leave Egypt with millions of souls, God is revealed through plagues to Pharaoh, the life of Moses, the Hebrews are enslaved after they become sizable, Jacob and his eleven sons are invited to Egypt, the brothers meet Joseph, God prospers Joseph in the court of Pharaoh, Joseph is jailed and has dreams, he is enslaved, sold to Midianites, is thrown in the pit, hated by his brothers, finds himself far from home, has dreams that he relays to his father and brothers. Dreams given to Joseph by God.
Joseph’s brothers intending evil to Joseph while God intends the deliverance and preservation of His people. The same event. Different intentions. One sinful and one holy. In every decision of the Joseph narrative, God is present not merely as spectator, but as sovereign sustainer and governor of every act, whether through active blessing, providential ordering of circumstances, or the righteous overruling of sinful human intentions.
Consider Joseph was sold to the Midianites when he was 17, and meets his brothers when he is 39 – and in prison for 13 years. He had every right to be bitter, but he sees the hand of God in his suffering.
If you were to ask Joseph if it was worth it, what would his answer be?
The 1689 LBC Chapter 5.4 clearly answers the question regarding the Providence of God:
- “The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God are so thoroughly demonstrated in His providence, that His sovereign plan includes even the first fall and every other sinful action both of angels and men. God’s providence over sinful actions does not occur by simple permission. Instead, God most wisely and powerfully limits and in other ways arranges and governs sinful actions. Through a complex arrangement of methods He governs sinful actions to accomplish His perfectly holy purposes. Yet He does this in such a way that the sinfulness of their acts arises only from the creatures and not from God. Because God is altogether holy and righteous, He can neither originate nor approve of sin”
Also think on this – in 1 Samuel 16:14-15 when Samuel annointed David, scripture says this – 14 “But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him. 15 And Saul’s servants said unto him, Behold now, an evil spirit from God troubleth thee.” Consider this carefully – an evil spirit from Whom? From the Lord. What of Job 1:12 when satan tormented Job by God’s permission? Our sovereign God and sustainer has many things He can refine the believer with just as He did with Job – yet the spirit sent to Saul was for his torment. The same Lord and God will use what He pleases to work His Divine Will in man, and no one can say to Him “why are you doing such and such?”. Remember Isaiah 43:13 “Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it?”
Having seen that God sovereignly ordains every event, we must now ask the question every suffering believer eventually asks: ‘To what end?’ Paul answers that question in Romans 8:28:
- Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
We need to look closely at this verse, and see what it does not say. It does not say that all things are good. There are evil actions, evil people, bad outcomes, hurt, injury, everything that you can imagine that is negative in your life. These evils are not good, because not all things are good. What the verse DOES say is that they are all working together. All working together for good. Your good if you love Christ.
Again, read carefully. Not everything is working together for the good of all man. No. It does say that all things are working together [whether evil or not] for the good of them that love God. This is the qualifier. To them that are the called [the elect] according to His purpose. The elect love God. They are called for His divine purpose, therefore everything in your life good or bad is working toward your eventual good and benefit.
What of the non-elect? No – for the reprobate, God’s Providence ultimately serves His righteous judgment rather than for eternal good, including those manifestly good things. He is a fine citizen, husband, father, employee. These things – while allowed by God and providentially wrought in his life too – all cause him to be eternally undone in the end. Those goodnesses and blessings from the hand of God will testify against him in the day of judgment.
Now what? What do I do now? What is it to consider these things [trials, stumbling blocks, tests, crosses] as the work of God?
1. Where does it come from? What is the origin? The possibility does exist that the test or trial has its origin in your sin and disobedience. The man that loses his money gambling cannot say that the providential hand of God did this to him. This origin comes from himself. If it [the trial, test, stumbling block] comes to us from another person, we need to understand the Hand of God in it, with God providentially steering the actions of others – even if it is to our hurt. In Divine Concurrence, God sovereignly and providentially is working in all men, both believers and unbelievers, all in accordance with His Plan. Do not think that the unbeliever is not also guided by God in all things; the Lord in His providence allows man to live and breathe by “common grace”, but has witholden His “saving” grace to that man: he is permitted to stumble and sin because God has not elected him to that saving grace. That man can and does sin according to the full inclination of his fallen nature – as he is not indwelled by the Holy Spirit of God. If he is to be ultimately reprobate, still God is using him for His own Glory and the glory of His elect. Consider Psalm 73. How does God place people in your life, and for what purpose? The question is answered in verses 16-18: 16 “When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; 17 Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end. 18 Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction.”
2. Seeing the hand of God in it. Whatever the circumstances or origins, we need to be looking for the providential hand of God behind these actions and tests. If we are not looking for the hand of God, then we will turn the first cause into a god itself – because we are not regarding the works of the Lord – nor the operation of His hands. Be careful to be watching for God’s Providence in all things, and especially in trials and testings.
Some men are defined by their circumstances, and others choose to define themselves apart from their circumstances – they define themselves first in Christ – and the circumstances are defined apart from them. Take care not to use your circumstance and make it into an idol – by using it to define you, and as a perpetual excuse. This will cause you to focus on your idol and not the Omnipotent God Who works all thing for His good pleasure.
3. Represent it to ourselves as a work of God, which He has allowed to His wise and holy ends. It is wrong to overlook God in our test and trial, as He has ordained them.
- God from eternity has purposed this for us. 1 Samuel 3:15 “And Samuel lay until the morning, and opened the doors of the house of the Lord. And Samuel feared to shew Eli the vision. 16 Then Eli called Samuel, and said, Samuel, my son. And he answered, Here am I. 17 And he said, What is the thing that the Lord hath said unto thee? I pray thee hide it not from me: God do so to thee, and more also, if thou hide any thing from me of all the things that he said unto thee. 18 And Samuel told him every whit, and hid nothing from him. And he said, It is the Lord: let him do what seemeth him good.”
- God has ordained your suffering for both your good and the good of the body of Christ. We are called to bear one anothers’ burdens inside the body – you may be working through some experience that may help another believer in their trial, they may have been through a trial you are in the midst of and can help you to pray correctly. We must remove our own pride and not feel shame about our trial, and this way the body of Christ can be perfected.
- There may be material help needed, and it is unwise to feel you can “go it alone” through your trial. We are here for each other.
- Your trial may not be brief. That should not change our perspective in the trial. God is still sovereign over all matters, regardless of duration.
- You may not live to see the end of your trial. Resignation to the Will of God whatever the outcome He decides should be our desire. If you are a true Christian, your trial ends in glorification at death, and you may not see your answer until then.
We should go to this fountain:
James 1:2 “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; 3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. 4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”
1 Peter 4:16 “Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.”
- You will be tested if you are a believer. Scripture does not say “if” but “when”. Expect it.
- The testings will be diverse. All kinds, even the unexpected.
- Your faith will be tried.
- This trying of faith results in patience.
- You will be perfected by this patience you exercise. This implies that some of these tests may endure and not be brief. Paul asked for the thorn in the flesh to be removed three times, but God told him in 2 Corinthians 12:9 “And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
- Patience is a fruit of the Spirit for your and my perfection.
- God promises that we will be perfect and entire
- We will lack nothing in and after the trial if God sees fit to allow it to end.
- It is God that gives purpose to suffering if you will but look for it.