Second London Baptist Confession of Faith 5.4-7
Truth for Life • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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-If we are going to grow and mature in the faith, it sometimes means that we have to wrestle with ideas and topics that might not come easy to us or sit well with us. But if we are to ensure that our faith does not remain surface level, we put in the effort to deal with these things.
-It makes me think of my shoulder after surgery. If I didn’t do the stretches or the exercises, my right arm would just atrophy and become useless. Normally in life my motto is NO PAIN, NO PAIN. But if I want to ever have full function of my right arm and shoulder again, I work through the pain and put in the effort to strengthen it.
-Many people have a weak faith because they don’t put in the effort in trying to understand the faith. They’re good with a 2-minute dosage of spirituality, but that is not going to grow you. So, sometimes to get deeper you wrestle with things, and you might not come out in the end with a complete understanding, but at least you have learned more about God’s greatness and eternal character. And that’s what happens when you look at a topic like God’s providence. It’s in the Bible, so you have to deal with it, but that also means you have to deal with the implications.
-So, a question might pop up about God’s providence having to do with the existence of sin. Questions like How do we account for the presence of sin and evil in God’s creation if God is sovereign? If God is in control of all things, how can He hold me responsible for my sin? And there’s probably many others we could come up with. Because, you have to think things through. Does God know the future? Yes. Is God able to control all things? Yes. Did God know before He created the angels that Satan and others would rebel? Yes. Did God know before He created the universe and humanity that they would rebel and fall? Yes. Could God in His providence have stopped all of this? Yes. So, why didn’t He? Well, that’s where the wrestling begins.
-We’ve been using creeds and confessions to help us deal with some of these topics. They are summaries of Biblical teaching. We know they come from a certain point of view, so we might not agree with all that they say, but they at least give us a starting point. As of late, we’ve used the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith as that starting point, and I want to read the final paragraphs of what it has to say about God’s providence.
Confessing the Faith: The 1689 Baptist Confession for the 21st Century (V. Divine Providence)
5:4 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 humans. God’s providence over sinful actions does not occur by simple permission but by a form of permission that God most wisely and powerfully limits and in other ways arranges and governs. Through a complex arrangement of methods He channels 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.
5:5 The perfectly wise, righteous, and gracious God often allows His own children for a time to experience a variety of temptations and the sinfulness of their own hearts. He does this to chastise them for their former sins or to make them aware of the hidden strength of the corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts so that they may be humbled. He also does this to lead them to a closer and more constant dependence on Him to sustain them, to make them more cautious about all future circumstances that may lead to sin, and for other just and holy purposes. So whatever happens to any of His elect happens by His appointment, for His glory and for their good.
5:6 God, as the righteous Judge, sometimes blinds and hardens wicked and ungodly people because of their sins. He withholds His grace from them, by which they could have been enlightened in their understanding and had their hearts renewed. Not only that, but sometimes He also takes away the gifts they already had and exposes them to situations that their corrupt natures turn into opportunities for sin. Moreover, He gives them over to their own lusts, the temptations of the world, and the power of Satan,21 so that they harden themselves in response to the same influences that God uses to soften others.
5:7 The providence of God in a general way includes all creatures, but in a special way it takes care of His church and arranges all things to its good.
-God’s providence extends to even the sinful acts of His creatures, yet He Himself, being perfectly holy and pure, is not the author of sin nor is He a partaker of sin. Our human minds can’t fully wrap around this, but God knew that sin would be introduced into His perfect creation, He allowed it to happen, but then He is able to take it and use it for His own good purposes. We’ve used the story of Joseph before to demonstrate such things. Another story that demonstrates this providence is God using the wrong motives of people and nations as instruments of discipline, but He then judges those same people and nations for what it is that they do.
6 I sent him against a godless nation, I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry, to take plunder and to carry away loot, to trample them down like dirt in the streets.
7 But he does not agree with this; his mind does not reason this way, for his goal is to destroy,, and to eliminate many nations.
12 But when the sovereign master finishes judging Mount Zion and Jerusalem, then he will punish the king of Assyria for what he has proudly planned and for the arrogant attitude he displays.
-Assyria was a proud warrior nation, and they wanted to loot and kill and destroy. Since that was already their heart, God in turn used them as instruments of discipline against the northern kingdom of Israel, as Assyria took them into captivity. But the Assyrians were obviously sinful in their actions and attitudes, so they would fall under God’s just judgment for sin. The Assyrians wanted to conquer nations for their own wicked benefit, and God used that to direct them as means of discipline, but God would not let their sin go unpunished. This is a bit mind-blowing, but such is the providence of God.
-But we might question that if God is providential like this to use sin, is He not providential to prevent sin? Because, all of us struggle with sin of some sort, and we wonder why God doesn’t just zap us with an extra dose of holiness so that we would not commit the same sin over and over again. Yes, God could do something to take that sin away, but sometimes He does not. Why not? Well, sometimes He uses the sin in our lives to do a work of sanctification and growth. He allows us to struggle to grow us in some way.
-You have heard of the illustration of the butterfly where the struggle of getting out of the cocoon strengthens the wings of the butterfly. Without the struggle, they would not be able to fly. There may be some spiritual benefits that we would miss out on if we didn’t have our struggle. As the fifth paragraph summarizes, THE PERFECTLY WISE, RIGHTEOUS, AND GRACIOUS GOD OFTEN ALLOWS HIS OWN CHILDREN FOR A TIME TO EXPERIENCE A VARIETY OF TEMPTATIONS AND THE SINFULNESS OF THEIR OWN HEARTS.
-Why might He allow such things. Well, it says it might be to chastise us for our former sins. God uses current sin to discipline us and force other sins out of our lives. Or, He allows the sin to have its way with us in order to humble us with the awareness of our own corruption and deceitfulness. You are familiar with the verse:
9 The human mind is more deceitful than anything else. It is incurably bad. Who can understand it?
-The heart/mind of man is so good at deception it can deceive us into thinking it isn’t deceitful. And sometimes God allows sin in us to show us how bad it really is. Sometimes God allows it in our lives so that we will learn to depend on Him and not ourselves…so we come to the realization:
5 Patiently wait for God alone, my soul! For he is the one who gives me hope.
6 He alone is my protector and deliverer. He is my refuge; I will not be shaken.
7 God delivers me and exalts me; God is my strong protector and my shelter.
8 Trust in him at all times, you people! Pour out your hearts before him. God is our shelter. (Selah)
-Sometimes God allows the sin in our lives in order to protect us from future sin. There is an interesting case with Hezekiah where he and the people were prideful, God made sure they knew it, but Hezekiah didn’t learn his lesson:
25 But Hezekiah was ungrateful; he had a proud attitude, provoking God to be angry at him, as well as Judah and Jerusalem.
26 But then Hezekiah and the residents of Jerusalem humbled themselves and abandoned their pride, and the Lord was not angry with them for the rest of Hezekiah’s reign.
31 So when the envoys arrived from the Babylonian officials to visit him and inquire about the sign that occurred in the land, God left him alone to test him, in order to know his true motives.
-And we know from the rest of the story that in his pride, Hezekiah showed these officials all of the riches of Jerusalem, and so God through the prophet said that everything he showed the Babylonians would be carried away by the Babylonians at some later point. His past pride should have given him a lesson to prevent future pride, but it didn’t. But God might allow our current sin to teach us to beware of future sin.
-But God not only uses sin in the lives of His people, He can also use it in the lives of unbelievers to fulfill God’s plans and purposes. What we find is that God will use the sin of unbelievers to blind and harden their hearts even further and then use them for His purposes. Unrepentant sinners are given over to their sin instead of the grace of God freeing them from their sin.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.
-But then these hardened sinners are used by God to further His will. We consider Pharaoh and his dealings with the people of Israel. Pharaoh was already an idolatrous, hard-hearted sinner who styled himself to be a god. He did not recognize Yahweh God as anything. He didn’t think he answered to anybody. So, we read where God says:
3 But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and although I will multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt,
-But then we also see
15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and did not listen to them, just as the Lord had predicted.
-Pharaoh’s heart was hardened by his own choices, and then God confirmed that hard heart and then used that hard heart to cause Pharaoh to lead his armies to chase after the Israelites leading to their destruction in the Red Sea.
-While we might not be able to fully grasp God’s providential control over everything, we do know that He works it for our good and His glory. He will use it to ultimately take care of us and to advance His agenda. May we pray that that HIS KINGDOM COME AND HIS PROVIDENTIAL WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.