If we are going to talk about the providence of God, we must start with the existence of God. God is the name that we give to ultimate reality — that is, the reality that existed before the universe of space and time and matter and energy and created consciousness. These realities are not ultimate. They are in relation to God like a drop of water in the ocean. They are small and utterly dependent on God. He could blink and the universe would go out of existence.

Every child asks sooner or later, “Who made God?” And, with a wonder that we should never lose, the big-eyed child hears the words, “Nobody made God. He was always there. Forever. He had no beginning.”

As Christians, we believe that this ultimate reality is personal, not material. He has existed absolutely and without beginning as one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe this because God has given us existence and has revealed himself, mercifully and wondrously, in nature and history, and in the incarnation of the Son, and in an inspired book, the Bible. He told Moses, “When they ask who sent you, tell them, ‘I Am’” (see Exodus 3:14). He simply is. His name Yahweh means “the one who is.” He is ultimate reality — before, and outside, and governing all other reality.

Defining ‘Providence’

That brings us to the providence of God. The word providence is not in the English Standard Version of the Bible, nor the New King James Version, nor the New Revised Standard Version, nor the Christian Standard Bible. Therefore, we can’t define providence on the basis of biblical usage. Instead, if I am going to use it, I should make clear what I mean by it, and since I don’t want to be novel in what I believe and teach, I should also make clear how my definition is in sync with historic confessions of faith.

My basic definition of providence is that it refers to God’s purposeful sovereignty. It’s not just his sovereignty. The sovereignty of God is his right and power to do whatever he wills. There is no power outside of God that can prevent God from doing what he wills to do. But that says nothing about what he does with that sovereignty. For what purposes does he use his sovereignty? How extensive is his sovereignty in achieving his purposes? Those are the key questions of providence.

“Nobody made God. He was always there. Forever. He had no beginning.”

The Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 11, asks, “What are God’s works of providence?” And it answers, “God’s works of providence are, his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures, and all their actions.” The words holy and wise connote purpose and design. The words “governing all his creatures, and all their actions” signify the full extent of God’s sovereign rule.

So, my aim in this message is to show from Scripture the extent of God’s providence and then the ultimate aim in all his works of providence.

Extent of God’s Providence

We start with God’s act of creation. “Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!” (Psalm 95:6). Those words are a call to humble ourselves and acknowledge that our existence as individual persons is owing to God, not just man. “Your hands have made and fashioned me” (Psalm 119:73). “Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his” (Psalm 100:3). What he made he owns. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1). God made us and he owns us. And he may do with us what he pleases. We are not our own. And if we are Christians, we are doubly not our own. We were bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:20).

Not only are we created, but we are rebel creatures. Every human being is born in sin. “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). “All . . . are under sin. . . . ‘None is righteous, no, not one’” (Romans 3:9–10).

This sinfulness of our own vaunted self-exaltation, self-sufficiency, and self-determination is an infinite moral outrage as it exchanges the glory of the infinite God for pathetic, finite images, and worships and treasures the creature over the Creator. Therefore, our sin deserves an infinite punishment, which will be meted out either on us in hell or on Christ at Calvary. Therefore, in all the works of providence, God can do us no wrong. Because in this world we always deserve worse than we get. Or to say it another way: No matter what we suffer, we always get better than we deserve — always. If you are tempted to accuse God of injustice toward you, you do not know the seriousness of sin.

Over Animals and Nature

Focus now on that part of creation that is not human. The whole world of nature is the work of God, both in its origin and all its processes. “He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names” (Psalm 147:4). “He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing” (Isaiah 40:26). Billions upon billions of stars do his bidding.

And when we descend to earth, we hear the psalmist say, “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps” (Psalm 135:6). “He rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry” (Psalm 106:9). “He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses” (Psalm 135:7). “[Jesus] rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm” (Luke 8:24). So, let us say with the disciples, “Even winds and sea obey him” (Matthew 8:27).

Do you believe that — that every hurricane, every monsoon, every typhoon, tornado, tsunami is appointed by God for his wise purposes? The wind and the sea obey him. And he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. One word from Jesus, and the tornado disperses. One word, and the hurricane ceases. One word, and the plane flying into the World Trade Center is blown sixty feet to the side and misses the building and saves two thousand lives.

And not only the wind and the seas but the earth and the mountains and the earthquakes are in his hands.

He who removes mountains, and they know it not,
     when he overturns them in his anger,
who shakes the earth out of its place,
and its pillars tremble. (Job 9:5–6)

He was not asleep when the earthquake struck in Myanmar last Friday, nor was he powerless. He shakes the earth, and the pillars tremble, and three thousand people die. And God has wronged no one. If you ask Jesus, “Why?” one of his answers will be, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5).

All the motions of earth and sea and sky are in his hands. “By the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters are frozen fast” (Job 37:10). “He gave them hail for rain” (Psalm 105:32).

He gives snow like wool;
     he scatters frost like ashes.
He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs;
     who can stand before his cold? (Psalm 147:16–17)

I would send rain on one city,
     and send no rain on another city;
one field would have rain,
     and the field on which it did not rain would wither. (Amos 4:7)

And thus, drought and famine are from the Lord.

I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain. (2 Chronicles 7:13)

I . . . command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. (Isaiah 5:6)

I have called for a drought on the land. (Haggai 1:11; see also Deuteronomy 28:22)

He summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread. (Psalm 105:16)

He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:45)

You cause the grass to grow for the livestock . . . that [man] may bring forth food from the earth. (Psalm 104:14–15)

It is not for nothing that we should bow our heads over every meal every day and say with trembling, “This is grace; this is all grace.”

The whole world of nature is one great intricate process of divine providence. And we have not even spoken of the lilies of the field that he clothes (Matthew 6:28), the birds that he feeds (Matthew 6:26), the frogs and gnats and flies and locusts that obey when summoned by his voice (Exodus 8; 10), the lions that keep their mouths shut (Daniel 6), the plant and the worm that obediently teach Jonah God’s truth (Jonah 4:6–7), the clogged Egyptian chariot wheels (Exodus 14:24–25), the manna from the sky (Exodus 16:4), the sun standing still (Joshua 10:12–13), the inexhaustible oil and flour (1 Kings 17:14–16), the opening of prison doors (Acts 5:19) and iron gates (Acts 12:10), the falling off of prison chains (Acts 12:7), the worms eating Herod (Acts 12:23), and the dice that roll in every board game on the planet (Proverbs 16:33).

Over the Affairs of Men and Nations

And when we turn from nature to the affairs of men and the great movements of nations, God reigns supreme. “O Lord . . . you rule over all the kingdoms of the nations” (2 Chronicles 20:6). This is what Nebuchadnezzar had to learn the hard way: “That the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men” (Daniel 4:17). “He does according to his will [in heaven and on earth] and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:35).

The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
     he frustrates the plans of the peoples. (Psalm 33:10; see also Isaiah 19:3)

The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord;
     he turns it wherever he will. (Proverbs 21:1)

That includes Trump and Putin and Zelenskyy and Xi Jinping. They can do nothing but by God’s design.

“No matter what we suffer, we always get better than we deserve.”

And so it is with all other created minds, including Satan, demons, angels, and all humans. “[Jesus] commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him” (Mark 1:27). Satan and his demons are on a leash. They can do nothing but what fits into God’s plan. He even uses Satan to accomplish his saving purposes (as in the case of Jesus’s death and Paul’s thorn).

Over Every Will

Nor can any man act outside the sovereign will of God. And yes, that implies that God wills that sin take place. If you do not have the category that God can will that sin be without himself sinning, the very gospel will unravel in your hands. Because God not only willed that his Son would die, but he also willed how he would die — namely, that he would be unjustly condemned and killed (Isaiah 53). Therefore, God willed that sin happen without himself sinning. This is why we can say that no human act lies outside the sovereign will of God.

Many are the plans in the mind of a man,
     but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. (Proverbs 19:21)

The plans of the heart belong to man,
     but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. (Proverbs 16:1)

As for you, you meant evil against me,
     but God meant it for good. (Genesis 50:20)

The Lord of hosts has sworn: “As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand.” (Isaiah 14:24)

Don’t say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.” Instead, say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:13, 15). Every human, at all times, “lives” and “does this or that” if the Lord wills. So then, as Paul says in Romans 9:15–16, “‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.” Therefore, in the affairs of nature and nations and all demonic and human action, God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11).

Over Sickness, Disease, and Death

To draw out one crucial implication of this all-pervasive, all-inclusive providence, death and life and health and sickness and disability are in the hands of God. Satan is real, and he strikes his blows, but not without God’s permission and design. Satan can make people sick (Luke 13:16), and Satan can kill (Revelation 2:10). But the same banner flies over it all: What Satan means for evil, God means for good.

When Job’s ten children were killed by the collapsing house because of a strong wind,

Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:20–21)

And the inspired writer said, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (Job 1:22). And when Satan struck him with boils, Job said to his wife, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” And again, the inspired writer said, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips” (Job 2:7, 10). In fact, he adds in Job 42:11, “[Job’s family] showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.” Though Satan was an instrument, it was ultimately God who took Job’s children and God who gave him the boils.

When Moses objected to God’s mission for him to go and speak to Pharaoh, claiming he was not good with his mouth, God said in Exodus 4:11, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” That’s what Jesus believed. Because when his disciples asked him about the blind man, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:2–3). This man’s blindness was for the display of the glory of God in his life.

Purpose of God’s Providence

That last statement turns our attention now from the extent of God’s providence to the purpose of it. Jesus said this blindness is “that the works of God might be displayed.” This is what we find throughout the whole Bible: All the works of providence have this ultimate end — the display of the manifold excellencies of God.

This was the plan from before creation. Ephesians 1:4–6 says, “[God] chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world. . . . He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the [good pleasure] of his will, to the praise of [the glory of his] grace.” God’s free grace, rooted in nothing outside himself, but only in “the good pleasure of his will,” is the apex of his glory. It’s not the totality of his glory, but it is the highest spray of the volcano of the totality of his excellencies.

All the works of providence in the whole history of Israel for two thousand years had this purpose: the display of the glory of God. Jeremiah 13:11 says, “I made the whole house of Israel . . . cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory.” These are “the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise” (Isaiah 43:21). “Your people shall all be righteous . . . the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified” (Isaiah 60:21). “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (Isaiah 49:3).

And when Messiah Jesus finally comes into the world to purchase a people to praise the glory of God’s grace forever and ever, he prays like this:

“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” (John 12:27–28)

Jesus died to vindicate the righteousness of God in saving sinners (Romans 3:25) and to put the grace of God (the love of God, Romans 5:8) on supreme display. And in so doing, he purchased a people whose reason for being was to join God in making much of God: “You are . . . a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). “Bear much fruit that your Father may be glorified” (see John 15:8). “You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20). “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Glorified in the Hearts of the Redeemed

What we love to emphasize here at Bethlehem College and Seminary is that no one will fulfill the purpose of God’s providence — that is, no one will glorify God the way he should — unless he is enjoying God the way he should. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. This elevates the significance of the affections of the heart to the highest place. So many people think that our spiritual emotions are peripheral and secondary. And we are saying, “No, they are essential because without them God is not glorified the way he intends to be.”

Consider this scene: As you stand before a king to give him glory, you bow and thus attempt to glorify him with your body. But suppose that while your body is bowing, your lips are whispering, “I do not admire this king.” Then you are not glorifying him as he intends to be glorified.

Then suppose that you not only bow but that your lips speak aloud, “You, king, are very great and strong and majestic.” But while you are speaking, your mind is thinking, “But I do not think this is true. He is not great and strong and majestic.” Then you are not glorifying him as he ought to be glorified.

Then suppose you not only bow and speak, but now you also think in your mind, “This king is great and strong and majestic,” but in your heart you do not want him to be king. You know he is great, but you do not like him. You do not enjoy him, delight in him, or treasure him. Then you are not glorifying him as he ought to be glorified.

“God’s ultimate aim in all the works of providence is that God would be glorified in the gladness of his people in God.”

Do you see where this takes us? Jesus said, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me” (Matthew 15:8–9). Unless we move from our bodies to our lips to our minds to our affections and arrive at the place where we want God to be God, and we delight in God, and we enjoy God and are satisfied in God, and we treasure God above all things, we do not glorify him as he ought to be glorified. Therefore, God’s ultimate aim in all the works of providence is that God would be glorified in the gladness of his people in God.

And this divine purpose for all the works of providence will go on for all eternity as God reveals more and more of the inexhaustible riches of his grace. Ephesians 2:7 says that he saved us “so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Theater and Drama

It will take endless coming ages for God to put the immeasurable riches of his grace on full display for the enjoyment of his people, because we cannot take it in all at once. We are finite. We are not God. And we never will be. But we will be happier and happier and happier from age to endless age. Because the display of the glory of grace that makes us happy will be drawn out from God’s infinite fullness forever and ever. There will never be a day in eternity when his mercies are not new in the morning. This ever-increasing happiness of the redeemed in the glory of the Redeemer will be the essence of the goal of all the works of providence.

It will not be the totality of God’s glorification, but it will be the essence of it. In the new heavens and the new earth, the heavens will be glad. The sun and moon and shining stars will praise the Lord. The earth will rejoice. The seas will roar with praise. The rivers will clap their hands. The hills will sing for joy. The field will exult and everything in it. The trees of the forest will chant their praise. The desert will blossom like the crocus (Psalm 96:11–13; 98:7–9; 148:3; Isaiah 35:1). The created world — liberated and perfected (Romans 8:21) — will never cease to declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:20–21).

The perfected theater of creation will be glorious, radiant with God. But the drama — the human, heartfelt experience of God in Christ in the theater — will be foremost in magnifying the God of all-pervasive providence. And the unparalleled beauty and worth of the Lamb who was slain will be the main song of eternity. And the joy of the children of God will be the main echo of the infinite excellencies of God. And that joy — our joy in God — will be the focus of God’s eternal delight.