1297. The God Who Governs All Things

Welcome to The Daily Platform, our program features sermons from chapel services at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Every day students are blessed by the preaching and teaching of the Bible from the University Chapel platform today on The Daily Platform were continuing a series called our great God.

Today's message will be preached by school of religion professor Dr. Dan Allender, the title of his sermon is the God who governs all things. We are of course in a doctrinal series this semester entitled our great God. The first several weeks we were looking at the person of God who he is what he's like and for the last three weeks or three occurrences of the series we been looking at God's work. What he does. Dr. Crockett preached on creation. The God who made everything and it falls to me providentially to speak on Providence.

The God who governs all things. So let's be clear right from the beginning God governs all things I say I says this perhaps as directly and clearly as anyone in Isaiah chapter 46. He quotes the Lord. He is a prophet speaking for God, and God says I am God and there is none else. There is none like me, declaring the end from the very beginning, and from ancient times.

Declaring things that are not yet done, my counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. I have purposed it. I will also do it God governs all things what things well all things well all things, there are specific passages in Scripture that speak of specific things that he governs and these are comforting words, he governs nature. Psalm 19 the heavens declare the glory of God. Let me get my slide in that area. The heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament shows his handiwork.

All of Cosmo's speaks to us of what he has done and what he is doing.

You look around you out of broken world. The world after the fall damaged by sin and it still speaks clearly as Dr. Crockett noted of what God is doing God is strong, God is smart God is good he's given us everything we need for free errors.

Water Street foods fragrance right out of their everything you really need is free. Now I pay for my food. But what I'm paying for is for other people to grow it for me and to truck it to me and a restaurant. I'm dying for other people to cook it for me and bring it to my table. But the fruit is very God directs in nature. God directs in our lives in human lives gives life Isaiah again. Chapter 42 thus says the Lord God, the Lord even created the heavens and stretch them out. He spread for the earth that which cometh out of it. He that giveth breath on to the people upon the earth, and spirit to them that walking God is the one who gives us life. Dr. Pettit said that on the I forget what term he used exactly, but he was politely saying I'm the oldest coot on the Bible. Faculty how do I get to be the oldest coot on the Bible.

Faculty well I just can't breathe in and God. God preserve me from certain death on that bungee jumped 6 months after I let off that platform, a woman from New Zealand did in the cord broke and she went into the sand as he in the class X rapid with 500 feet over 500 pounds rubber band tied to her feet and she survived. I would not have serious concern.

God gives life God decides when it begins and when it ends and you and I can trust him for that decision. God directs life. Psalm 139-I've got just the first paragraph about appear you know my down sitting and mine uprising you understand my thoughts. You understand my ways, you know, my words. You direct my life.

I don't have time to tell you how I arrived on the Bible. Faculty. Some people think it was America.

Theologically, I would say technically was Providence, not America, but at the perfect time God aroused in me a sense of dissatisfaction with my stewardship of my training and I began to think I thought I had never thought before and that was maybe he wants me to leave many. He wants me to go somewhere else.

The servant I couldn't imagine doing and so I decided one day that I was going to call an older man that I respected highly can. Hey, we attended the same church at the time and I was going to ask him to go to lunch because he left the University wants and everybody was happy and and it was all good and I was going to talk to about that and the day before I was going to call and I walked into the dining, and Dr. Bob Bell of the seminary stopped me and said hey we need another faculty member you interested. I told Dr. K about that later. He said I hate to miss out on a free lunch. God directs he's got to do a lot of directing for you down the road and you can trust that he directs the circumstances of life. What else does he govern governs the nation's Daniel says he takes Kingsdown and he sets them up. He raised up Assyria against Israel, he raised up Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon against Judah. He raised up Cyrus in Persia to send Judah back home again.

He has raised up our government Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, competent and incompetent. God has given us those who rule over and we should pray for them and we should thank God for his wisdom and his aims in giving us the leaders he has given us.

What else is God govern well. He governs everything Paul says by him that his son Christ by him all things consist.

This is a really interesting statement to me this word consist means hold together, hold together. Now I read a lot of critical authors who like to say that the Bible is full of sight scientific inaccuracies and that these poor benighted people in the first century or 15th century BC didn't have our scientific understanding and so they wrote a lot of just really unscientific.

Paul writes by him all things hold together. Now if you were living in the first century with Paul what direction would you think things naturally go when a house wears out what direction does it go, it falls down right when when things outlive their strength. They fall down. He doesn't say by him all things are held up.

He says by him all things are held together now. I doubt very seriously the ball will start talking about the strong nuclear force, when he wrote that, but in fact we learn that in the nucleus of atoms.

There are positively charged particles and like charges are supposed to repel and all those protons don't repel something holding them together in the physicists call that the strong nuclear force.

Paul had no way of knowing that what things to be doing is not falling down what they ought to be doing is flying apart. He was ahead of his time. I wonder Christ holds everything together your life my life. The world the cosmos.

He's got this look like when God governs well.

He preserves what he's created a promised after the fun seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. And we have seen days and nights every 24 hours. Ever since Nehemiah says in his great prayer in chapter 9 you God have made heaven and earth and the seas and you preserve them all.

And despite all we have done to damage this plan, it still runs. It's an astonishing system.

People provides for his creation. Psalm 104 is a meditation on that. He feeds all the animals and that means all of these complex biomes with food chains with alpha predators. I've been up close to Lyons in the Serengeti in Tanzania in Africa.

Real close and real close, you know what they do when you get real close to the more you want because they're not afraid they have no predators and you're not a predator either. They can be your predator if they want to. We were sitting in a vehicle, a safari vehicle and the lion and his one of his wives were walking around the vehicle and rubbing up against it parking it cannot and are driver and experience to guide name Vincent I think the world of him. He said if you want to die Out, nobody got out of the car. God orchestrates all of that and species after species live he directs natural events. He stops the rain in Israel for three years of the word of the prophet and that he started up again. He sends flags to Egypt to humiliate and invalidate all Egyptian God.

He directs world events, the rise and fall of empires.

The location of all the people groups of the earth and all of their interactions. He directs personal events. The psalmist says promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south, but God is the judge and he put down one and set up another he directs the little tiny details the sparrow that falls the lilies of the field. The hairs on your head. The hairs on my all of that he governs so Joseph is sold into Egypt because of his brothers jealousy and hatred and because of his honesty. He ends up in prison right down the cellblock from Pharaoh's bottler.

Ruth is a Moabitess living in a foreign village goes to the community feels and says I guess I'll lean over there and that portion of the field belongs to a man named Boaz who is one of two kinsman redeemer's of her mother-in-law, Naomi, Esther's people are imperiled by the hatred of a powerful government official and one night. The king can't sleep and he sends his servant into the archive warehouse to get a copy of the Congressional record battle putting the sleep and the servant rubs the sleep out of his eyes and walks into the warehouse and picks a clay tablet to pay any goes back and he starts reading about a man named Caesar Augustus decides he needs more money for his military and his building projects and so he ordered that all in the Empire will be counted. A census will be taken for purposes of taxation and because of that there is a carpenter from a backwater village called Nazareth, who has at great inconvenience to return to the village of his ancestors. Bethlehem, where his betrothed, who is great with child will reach the time of delivery and in the fullness of time. Messiah is born exactly where the prophet had said God governs all things all now let's think about something okay I don't know if you see him, but there's an elephant in this room, so let's talk about the elephant if God's directing everything then are we just puppets.

Are we just robots. Are we really making many of our own decisions.

Is this all kabuki theater while Scripture clearly says that we make choices. It calls on us to make choices. And it holds us accountable for those choices are choices are real choices.

How does that work of God directs and governs all things. How are our choices real choices will that's a conundrum that's perplexing and some of you think you understand it will be telling there something you haven't thought of you don't understand, but if it's perplexing how can it be true when they suggest something to you. I'd like to suggest that these perplexities are not a bug.

There a future when explain what I mean by that. The way the agnostics and the atheists tell the story a long time ago a bunch of people wanted to come up with a way to explain the world that was really confusing and mysterious because they were prescientific and so they invented stories about God's and the Greeks and the Romans invented their stories in the Aztecs invented their stories. It is human nature to try and explain what you don't understand because the scientists have, to explain those things as supernatural events and you know it's all God's will.

Let's suppose that's true.

And let's suppose that this God is somebody that we invented, or more correctly, the people at 1500 BC or as the skeptics say 600 BC invented.

Let's suppose that's what happened. Would we have invented a God, the puzzled look would reinvent a God who even occasionally embarrasses us in front of our friend went on, I can't really explain weight invented a God who explained things that's the reason the skeptics say we invented it to explain stuff.

This one puzzles us.

Now suppose that there really is an infinite God, by definition, infinite, and suppose that our brains are not infinite. I realize that more and more everyday. These perplexities are exactly what we expect our perplexity has explanatory power for the biblical God we didn't invented and the fact that sometimes God steps over the horizon of my understanding should encourage me that he's the real deal that I did make him a there is a God in heaven. He has all authority and all power and he governs all things for the good of his creatures, and most especially for the good of his people. If you by faith are his child that he is directing everything small and great, toward your growth. Your good and his glory now you're looking down the path of your life and there's a long road ahead.

Now that we assume for you. There's a long road ahead. I have had students who died within days of graduation. I have had students who died before they graduated.

But we assume there's a long road and you may be concerned about any number of things that might be on that road do I know enough. Do I have the skills. Am I strong enough physically and emotionally.

Will there be trials, will there be sorrow will there be pain. God is directing all the affairs of your life and you can trust him in the sorrow and pain and trials and the fears you can trust him to work for your good and to bring you out at the right place.

I'm the oldest viable faculty member.

I'm 40 years down the road from you. Let me say to you what I heard a dear saint of God say many years ago to a group of women she was addressing. She said, it'll be fine. Our God reigns. Walking is like let's pray.

Father, we confess that we don't understand we don't understand how you can govern all things we don't understand why you do some of the things you do, but we do know that you are alive that you are all mighty and that you are good and that you ask us to trust you to place our little hands in your hand and to follow you down the road that lies ahead may each one of us follow you with confidence even in times when we don't understand. We ask this in Jesus name, amen. You been listening to a sermon preached by Beecher you school of religion professor Dr. Dan Allender, I'm Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University and I invite you to join us at our beautiful campus in Greenville, South Carolina to see how you can be prepared academically and spiritually to serve the Lord through one of our more than 100 undergraduate and graduate programs. For more information about Bob Jones University, visit www.btu.edu or call 800-252-6363.

Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow for the conclusion of the series titled our great God here on The Daily Platform