Ron Dunn Podcast - God's Providence

Episode Date: July 20, 2016

Pastor Ron Dunn preaches a message from Genesis 28:15.

You are listening to the Ron Dunn Podcast. Ron Dunn is a well-known author and was one of the most in-demand preachers during the latter part of the 20th century. He led Bible studies all over the United States, Europe, and South Africa. For more information and resources from Ron Dunn, please visit rondunn.com. One of my earliest memories when I was a kid is of my mother embroidering pillowcases. Do women still do that today? They don't do it much, do they?

But I remember my mother used to sit on the couch for hours embroidering pillowcases. Of course, this was before all the time-saving devices were invented, and she still had time to do this sort of stuff. And I remember one day, I don't know, I was seven or eight or nine, and I walked into the living room, and she was in the kitchen, and there on the arm of the couch was a pillowcase she was working on. And I'd never really paid too much attention to what she was doing. And I just went over and looked at that pillowcase, picked it up. And I was just astounded at what my mother had been doing.

Because when I looked at it, I was greeted with nothing more than a jarring mass of tangle threads of different colors going in all directions, making no sense at all. It looked like somebody in frustration and anger had just taken a needle and thread and had just jabbed through a pillowcase without any plan in mind. And I thought, boy, this is what my mother's been doing. But then when I laid it down,

I flipped that pillowcase over. And on the other side, there was a beautiful picture of a bluebird sitting in a limb of a tree singing. I still have that pillowcase, as a matter of fact. And it just amazed me that what looked like total nonsense and absence of any rhyme or reason on one side.

On the top side, made perfect sense and was created a beautiful picture. I wonder if your life has ever looked like the bottom side of that pillowcase. Mine sure has. Has your life ever seemed to be just a tangled mass of threads fleeing in all directions, not making any sense,

and you can't make any sense out of it, and you don't know why this is this way and why this thread is here. Well, you just, there's nothing there. You see, our problem is that we're too short and we can only see from the underside. If we were tall enough and could see from the top side as God can see, we would see that God is always weaving out of those meaningless circumstances a beautiful picture of our life. I found a quote the other day from John Flavel

who was an old Puritan. And he said, Oh, how ravishing and delectable a sight it will be to behold at one view the whole design of providence and the proper place and use of every single act which we could not understand in this world. I think there will be a time when we will see our lives as God sees them.

And we will be speechless at the way God has taken every conceivable event in our life, good, bad, and indifferent. While we thought perhaps we'd even been abandoned by God, at the time he was weaving a beautiful picture. That's called providence. It's a word that we don't use much anymore. It's almost extinct like an old car resting in a junkyard. We just don't use it much anymore. The old divines, the old Puritans used to speak of it often and they always capitalized it. Providence for them almost became a synonym for God. But through the years as we become more scientific and more sophisticated and more materialistic and have lost a certain

depth of faith in God, we have forgotten providence. Not realizing that it is probably the greatest gift of grace in His care for us and is more than likely the greatest foundation for our faith in God than anything else. Providence, the Lord will provide. You remember in Genesis chapter 22 when Abraham was taking Isaac up on the mountain of Moriah. And about halfway up, Isaac said, Father, here is the wood and here is the fire. But where is the lamb for the offering? And he said, the Lord will provide.

And when God delivered Isaac and put a ram in his place, he named that place Jehovah-Jireh, which means the Lord sees or the Lord provides. And that's the first mention of providence in the Bible. The Lord will provide. The Lord sees and will provide. And so as I started to say a moment ago, the word providence comes from two words, two Latin words. The prefix is pro, which means to be in front of or to see ahead. And the other is video, which means to see. To see before is the literal reading of the word. The providence of God means that God sees ahead of time what's going to happen in our lives. But

it means more than just the fact that God sees. It means that God oversees it means the fact that more than just that God watches but that he over watches us in other words he is active in what he sees for instance you and I use Providence every day of our lives. I have arthritis. And I have it really bad in my legs and knees and feet. Now it's in this shoulder really bad. And if I don't take my medicine that the doctor gives me, I really just about crippled and so when I get up in the morning I take that medicine and when I go to bed at night I

take that medicine why because I know that if I don't do this and I'm going to have great pain the next day that's's providence, you see. I see ahead, and I make provision for so that when the time comes, the need will be met. Why do you buy life insurance? They call it life insurance. It's really death insurance, but I don't think it'd sell very good. You know, I want to sell you some death insurance. You know, it sounds much better to say life insurance, but we all know what it is. Why do you buy life insurance? Well, because you can see ahead, and you know that one of these days, precluding the Lord's return, you are going to die. And so when you die, you want your family, those that are left to be able to get by, to have provision so they can live their life.

And so you exercise providence. You see ahead of time that you're going to die, and so you make provision for that so that when the time arrives, the need is already met. You go on a picnic, you know that you're going to have to eat, and so you prepare a basket lunch. I mean to eat, and so you prepare a basket lunch. I mean, well, you'd better prepare a basket lunch or you won't have anything to eat. That's providence.

It's knowing ahead of time what's going to happen or what the need is going to be and making provision now so that when the need arises, you'll have it there, you see. Now, in the same way, God sees ahead of time and sees perfectly all of our life, and He knows everything that's going to happen in our life, and so He makes preparation in advance so that whatever the need is at that point in our life, He'll be there. The provision will already have been made. You take creation for example. You take creation. You know, it's interesting to me

that God made water before He made fish. I mean, He didn't make fish and say, well, now y'all flop around on the ground while I make some water for you to swim in. No, He didn't do that. He made the water and then he made the fish. He didn't make man and then say, now hold your breath while I make air. He made air before he ever made man.

He made plants and growing things before he ever made animals that would need to eat them. In other words, you see what I'm getting at? Before the problem ever arose, the provision was already there. You see? And so that's why He says that Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. You see? God saw ahead of time that man would sin and so would need a savior and so he prepared ahead of time so that when the time

arrived the provision would already be made now there is a story in the bible oh the number of stories in the bible and the problem is i've had trouble trying to decide which one to use but the one i want to use is about j. A perfect picture of God's providence. Now, we all know the story of Jacob. We know how he had cheated his brother Esau, and he's running from home, and he spends the first night at Bethel. And he falls asleep and has this vision, this dream.

This is in Genesis chapter 28, by the way. And the dream is this, that there is a heaven opened and there is a ladder ascending to heaven from earth and there are angels going up and down on that ladder. What a spectacular vision that was. Now the significance of heaven opened and that ladder reaching from earth to heaven was God was saying to Jacob, I am accessible, you see. I will be available to you. And so Jacob just was, you know, beside himself with this.

And look at verse 15. Here's what God promised to Jacob. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Now we're talking about the three cries of every believer. Every believer goes through these stages. The first stage is, God is with me.

We come to Christ, for the very first time we meet God and experience God, and God makes us a promise. He said, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. He says, none of these leave you nor forsake you. He says, none of these that the Father has given me will I lose. He says, through Paul, I will finish and complete what I have started in you. He says to Jacob, I will be with you and I will bring you.

I am with you and will watch over you everywhere you go. Isn't that what we believe as Christians? Don't we believe as Christians that everywhere we go, God is with us? And that everywhere we go, God is going to watch over us? And we would just rejoice in that. And that's one of the great aspects of being a Christian. I know that wherever I go, God is with me. And I know that He will fulfill every promise

that He has made to me. You see, nothing but good can come from my life eventually, because God has promised to be with me wherever I go, and he's promised to perform all that he has promised. Well, you know the story of Jacob and Joseph. He had, Joseph, you know, was a little brother and his elder brothers didn't like Joseph. And I can understand that because Joseph was obnoxious, to tell you the truth, as a kid. He kept having these dreams and in these dreams God was telling him

that one of these days, and in these dreams, God was telling him that one of these days, one of these days, the elder brothers would bow down to the younger brother. Now, that may not mean much to us today, but that was unheard of in the Hebrew way of life. I mean, the younger brother, oh no, no, the elder brothers were always the rulers, but Jacob kept having this dream that one of these days his older brothers would bow down to him. Now, it's all right to have that dream if you keep it to yourself.

But he wouldn't. And he'd see his brothers in the morning and say, hey, I had a dream last night. God showed me that one of these days you fellows would be bowing down before me. Oh, that just angered. Oh, it made them mad.

And he kept repeating it, kept repeating it. And then they were off working one day, and Jacob bought Joseph a new sport coat. And Joseph sauntered down there to where his elder brothers were working and said, Hey, notice this. Dad bought me a new sport coat. Where's yours? And his brothers said, that's it. And you know the rest of the story.

They threw him in the pit. The Midianite came along. They sold him to Egypt, to Potiphar, and he was in prison for a while. But you know, eventually, you know the story, how that eventually Joseph was made Secretary of Agriculture, and he sat upon a throne. He had been gone for 17 years, and a famine arose in the earth. Now Joseph, oh I tell you this is beautiful. Joseph had foreseen through God that there was going to be

a seven year famine in the land and he persuaded Pharaoh to go ahead and start laying by enough grain so that when the world was in famine they'd be able to feed the world. Isn't that amazing? If those brothers

had not done what they did to Joseph they would have starved to death during the famine. But anyway, so there's Joseph. And so the brothers hear that there's food in Egypt and they come and they meet Joseph. Now, they don't recognize Joseph because it's been 17 years he's grown up.

But Joseph recognizes them. And, you know, you know the story. But he accuses them of being spies. And he said, how do I know you're not spies? And they said, oh, we're not, not we're not we've come and we've heard that you have food we've come he said well I don't trust you he said here's what I'll do I'll give you all the grain you want if you'll leave what's that little boy's name

Simeon that little brother with me here as collateral. So I know you'll come back, and I'll know that you're not spies. And, of course, they protested, but there was nothing they could do. And so they left Simeon. Now, Joseph had it planned that those who were loading up their sacks of grain would include money and other treasures. Now, the boys didn't know this, and so when they got home,

they looked in there and they said, What is this? Where does this come from? And they said, Uh-oh. They said, We have been set up. This stuff's going to be missing, and they're going to think we took it, and they're going to use that to kill Simeon. All right, now I want you to turn to chapter 42. When they come back and report this to their father Jacob, verse 35, and as they were emptying their sacks there, in each man's sack was a pouch of silver. When they and their father saw the money pouches, they were frightened. Their father,

Jacob, said to them, you have deprived me of my children. Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more, and now you want to take Benjamin. Now watch this. Get this. Everything is against me. That's the second stage of the Christian life. That's the second cry of the Christian. Everything is against me. We start out by saying God is with me. Everywhere I go, everywhere I go, God's going to be with me. He's going to watch over me and protect me and perform all of the promises that he's given to me. But then, you see, as time goes by, those promises fade in our memory. And we have a tendency to judge things by what we see. We don't understand that what we see is not the ultimate reality

always, that things are not always as we perceive. And so then he cried out, everything is against me. Everything is against me. Have you ever done that? Have you ever had that feeling, boy, everything is against me? As a matter of fact,

if you turn back to chapter 42 and verse 28, here's what the brothers said. They said their hearts sank and they turned to each other trembling and said, What is this that God has done to us? See, you start blaming God. What is this that God has done to us? Everything is against me.

Everything is against me. And here was Joseph. Now watch it. To me, this is the most beautiful part of the whole story. against me everything is against me and here was Joseph now watch it to me this is the most beautiful part of the whole story he said Joseph is dead known that for years and now Simeon is no more he is dead but what Jacob didn't know was that Simeon, whom he thought was dead because of what he saw, Simeon was more secure and safer than had ever been in his life because he was in the protective care of his brother who loved him.

Isn't that amazing? Joseph judged by what he saw and thought that what he saw and what he figured was the ultimate reality. And he said, Simeon is dead. And all the time Simeon was safer than he had ever been. But he cried, all things are against me. Oh, unbelief has a short memory. We say at one time, oh, I know that God is always with me. And then when circumstances contradict everything that we seem to believe,

we say, everything is against me. Everything is against me. I've talked to people like that, Christians like that, who because of various disasters in their lives, they've said, everything is against me. What is this that God has done to me? Well, we've got to rush on with the story. You know the story.

Well, you know how it ended up. They went back and they took Benjamin with them this time because he had wanted Benjamin. And so this time Joseph couldn't stand it any longer and he revealed to the brothers who he was. He said, I am your brother Joseph. And he said, God sent me here. I love this.

God sent me here to preserve your life. Well, I thought the brothers sent him there. Well, that's your opinion. Joseph's opinion was that God was behind all of this, you see. God knew there was going to be a famine in the land, and so he arranged that Jacob would be there a Joseph would be there at the right time so that when the need arose in the life of Jacob whom he said he would always be with when that need arose the provision would have

already been made and so when the brothers come back this time with their wagons loaded down and with their brothers and they announce, they say, hey, we've got good news for you. Joseph is alive. And he's a big dog over there in Egypt. And he's invited all of us to come and live with him. Here's what Jacob said, chapter 45, verse 28. And Jacob said, and I'm reading from the NIV which is not a very good translation here. And Israel said, I am convinced. The Hebrew says, I have everything. It is enough as one translation reads. My son Joseph is still alive.

I will go and see him before I die. That's the third cry of the believer. I have everything. I have everything. And I want to say to you, some of you this morning may be murmuring and saying, everything is against me. Everything is against me. What is this that God is doing to me? But I want to promise you you I want to promise you that God is faithful to his word and he's weaving a beautiful pattern and you see it from the bottom side and it looks as though God is not making any sense in your life but I promise you that one of

these days one of these days when you see your life as God sees it, you'll say, I have everything. I have everything. I have enough. Providence of God. And we're going to talk about this tomorrow and Wednesday because there's much more to it than this. We'll see how providence works and the mystery of providence. Why is it so hard for us to understand? I want to talk about the existence of good and evil and how they're balanced out in the economy

of God. So I hope that you'll be here and enjoy this study. Pastor do you have a word? You don't? That's providence. All right, let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your ever watchful hand and, an ever active hand over us. And that you see our lives, but you do more than that, you oversee them. And that you are a hands-on God,

active in our lives. And we know, because you've said so, that everywhere we go, you're with us, and you'll bring to fruition all the promises you have made. But there are times when those promises seem to fade from our memory,

and we begin to judge things on the basis as they appear to us, and we say, everything is against me. I thank God, dear Lord, that one of these days all of us will be able to say, I have everything. It is enough. And so may we rest today in your providence, knowing that whatever we come up against, you have already seen that and made provision for it. And while it may not make sense to us now, as Jesus said in John 13, when He began to wash the disciples' feet,

He said, You do not now know what I do, but you shall know hereafter. Thank you for our time together. And bless this day for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. Ron Dunn's podcast is available only for personal edification, not to be duplicated, uploaded to the web,

or resold without prior written consent. It is managed and operated by Sherwood Baptist Church. For more Ron Dunn materials, sermon outlines, devotions, and scanned pages from his study Bible, please visit rondunn.com.