God’s Providence Among The Nations – Part 1 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

Some think random chance dictates what happens on planet Earth, but believers have this perspective. The Bible reveals God as more than just a bystander. He actively determines the fates of nations. Today, a look at how God superintends what we call history.

From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, does God's providence mean nations are not responsible for their actions? Well Dave, as you and I know, the Bible has what I like to call an antinomy. Now, I don't use that word very often, but what it means is, on the one hand, you see God's sovereignty. He is ultimately in control. On the other hand, he holds us as humans accountable for what we do, and in the very same way, nations are also accountable. Though for the believer, it's wonderful to know that God has the ultimate voice and the ultimate power and direction of the nations. I'm holding in my hands a book that I believe will help you run the Christian life successfully, or at least more successfully. It's entitled We Will Not Be Silenced. In this book, I discuss the radical secularism of our culture, how these cultural streams are trying to impact us, and the price that we have to pay to stand against those currents that are anti-Christian. For a gift of any amount, we're making this book available for you, and at the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you some contact info.

Listen carefully, and then I want you to write down how you can connect with us. When the Supreme Court of the United States decided to intervene in the logjam and chose George Bush as president rather than Al Gore, entailed in that decision was the demise of Saddam Hussein. Now, no one knew it. The court didn't know it. We didn't know it. George Bush didn't know it. God knew it. But there is a connectedness in history.

History is actually going somewhere. In fact, sometimes some of the smallest events have spawned some of the most dangerous and huge global conflicts. For example, World War I, it is generally believed, was actually begun because Ferdinand of Austria was visiting Sarajevo, and there he and his wife were assassinated. What's interesting is that as he was driving along in his car, there were others who tried to assassinate him, and they either missed or their bombs didn't go off. And so the driver, in desperation, decided to go elsewhere. And as he turned down a side street, there was another assassin there who accomplished the deed.

That was the key that started the engine. And in 1914, World War I began 30 days after that assassination. So there's a connectedness in history. We can't predict what history is going to do because we know nothing. We know very little about all of the connections.

But there's a cause-effect relationship, and only God really knows. Now, when we think of history, there are three agencies that we have to consider, all impinging on what we read today in the headlines. First of all, there are the human leaders. Here we're talking about kings and presidents and those who would lead empires. We're talking about George Bush and Saddam Hussein and Churchill and Hitler. These are the players that we know about. They're the ones who read the speeches.

They're the ones who make the decisions for peace or for war. But I want you to know that behind, behind those leaders, there are also demonic forces. In the 10th chapter of Daniel, it is very clear that God just pulls back the curtain. Daniel is there praying, and he's saying, oh, God, please help us.

And he fasts for three weeks. At the end of three weeks, Michael, the archangel, comes to Daniel and says, Daniel, I've been trying to get through to you ever since you began to pray, but the prince of Persia withstood me. In other words, as Michael was coming down as an angel, there were other forces, demonic forces, that were hindering him that were really the forces assigned to Persia.

And finally, Michael got through. So back of the headlines, back of what we read every day in our newspapers, there are all of these forces, human beings and demonic forces as well. But the third agency, and that which is most important, is God himself. Because today we're going to speak about the providence of God in nations, the providence of God in nations. And what we will discover is that God is moving the nations along.

That word providence means that God determines to move all things to an appointed end. And today we're going to see this in scripture. To speak of the providence of God among the nations, I could speak literally from hundreds of different passages in the Bible, because it's everywhere. Open your Bible and you're probably on a verse that talks about God's sovereignty and providence in the nations.

For example, Jesus made the statement in the New Testament. He said that the armies of Titus were God's armies. You remember that parable Jesus said, the Lord sent forth his armies to destroy the city.

Wow. The armies are God's, even wicked armies are God's armies. So what I'd like to do is to give you three assertions today, and I want you to take your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Daniel. This is the only book of the Bible that you'll have to turn to as you follow along. This is Daniel chapter four.

We're going to begin there and then we will also be looking briefly at chapter five. Daniel chapter four. Now keep in mind that Daniel had a vision here in this fourth chapter, and the vision is that King Nebuchadnezzar in all of his pride is going to be humbled, and God is going to do the humbling. It says in verse 16, God is speaking, let his mind be changed from that of a man and let him be given the mind of an animal until seven times pass by for him. For seven years Nebuchadnezzar is going to live like an animal. The word that we use today for this is called zoanthropy. It still happens today, by the way.

It is a mental condition of insanity where people actually begin to think that they are animals and live like them. But the reason for this is given in verse 17 of chapter four. The decision is announced by messengers, the holy ones, declare the verdict, now notice, so that the living may know that the most high is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowest, the lowliest, or some translations say the lowest of men. Wow.

Notice it. God gives the kingdom to whomever he wishes. It is God who rules. You say, well, did God give Hitler the kingdom of Germany for those 12 and a half years?

The answer is yes. Of course God gave the kingdom to Hitler for those 12 and a half years. He also gave the kingdom to Nero.

He gave the kingdom to the actual ancient Chaldeans who incidentally were Babylonians and it says of them in the book of Habakkuk chapter one verse six, God is saying to Habakkuk who's crying up to God and saying, things are so bad, why don't you do something in Israel? God says, I am doing something. He says, behold, I raise up the Chaldeans that bitter and cruel foe that will march through the land. Doesn't that take your breath away just to read it? God says, I will raise them up. You say, well, wait a moment now.

I can't handle this. You're saying that they ruled according to the will of God. Well, there are two understandings of the will of God in scripture.

The first is God's revealed will, what he tells us to do. God is a God of justice and compassion and righteousness. They didn't live or rule according to that will to be sure.

They oppose justice and righteousness and fairness and everything that God stands for. But they ruled according to God's secret hidden will. The Bible says that God is the one who rules all things after the counsel of his own will. And in that sense, God's providence literally encompasses everything.

They were part of the total scheme. Well, let me clarify very briefly. First of all, obviously, God does not do evil. Wicked men and Satan do evil. So we're not saying that God does evil. We are saying that God uses evil. We are saying that God allows evil. Obviously, he could have chosen to not allow these evil rulers to exist and to live.

So that what we need to do is to understand, and this is a mystery that we cannot unravel, we simply have to rejoice in it despite the fact that it blows our minds, is that you have three streams that flow into history. You have the human rulers, you have the work of Satan, you have the providence of God, and those three streams together are the river of God's providence. It was right when Luther said, even the devil is God's devil. And we can say, even Saddam Hussein is God's Saddam Hussein, evil though he was and inspired, obviously, by wicked and evil spirits. At the end of the day, it is God who rules. I can't put it together that men do whatever they want to do. They are evil men because they want to be evil men, and they will be judged as evil men in very specific and particular ways.

They will be judged, but in doing what they want to do, they are still accomplishing a higher purpose. God rules among the children of men, and no empire can arise without God's help and without his aid and without his providence. Did you know that that was always believed here in America? Benjamin Franklin was not a Christian. As a matter of fact, before he died, he said, you know, my friend Whitfield, you know, he was good friends with George Whitfield, the great preacher. He said, my friend Whitfield wished for my conversion to Christ. But he says, that has not happened. And then shortly before he died, Franklin says, why should I believe on Jesus now? Soon I shall know whether or not it is so.

What an awful way to die. But Ben Franklin, along with all of the others of his time, were deep believers in providence. You see, they believed in God, but they did not believe in the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. But it was Ben Franklin who's speaking about the contest with Britain. He says, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. And have we not forgotten this powerful friend?

Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can arise without his aid?

And the answer is obviously it cannot. Providence. Do you know that in American history, during this period of time, when they used the word providence, they capitalized it?

Because really, it was a synonym for God. People understood providence, that God directs the affairs of men. And the first assertion today is that no empire can arise. No king can come to power. No president can be installed apart from God allowing it, apart from God standing back of it, and God ultimately ruling in the affairs of men.

I hope that you can rejoice in that because it has tremendous impact as to how you live your life. You know, I remember a Christian leader saying, God had nothing to do with President Clinton going to office. It was the American people that voted him in. Oh yes, of course it was the American people who voted him in. But I want you to know today that no one can arise apart from God's will.

Just accept that. Do I have a witness, by the way? You have a witness, good. Second, nations decline according to God's will. The Bible says in the book of Job, he makes nations great and destroys them. He enlarges nations and disperses them. As you know, this is a second message in a series entitled God and the Nations or the God of the Nations. And last time we talked about the origin of the nations and we saw that according to the book of Acts, it is God who determines the time and the place and the duration of nations.

That's what Paul says. Today we shall see the demise of a nation according to the will of God. You know, of course, that I should point out that Daniel mentions Nebuchadnezzar and I fail to tell you how his prophecy, how Daniel's prophecy came to pass.

You can read it for yourself. Nebuchadnezzar, you remember, did turn out for seven years living like an animal. As a matter of fact, it says at the end of the time in chapter 4 verse 34, at the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my sanity was restored.

Did you know that if you think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, you're insane. It was Nebuchadnezzar who walked on the, his palace in verse 30 and says, is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence of my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty? And the Bible says the words were still on his lips when a voice came from heaven and said, Nebuchadnezzar, you're going to be with the animals for seven years until you learn some humility. But I want you to know how well he learned it.

Just listen to this. He says in verse 34, at the end of the time, my sanity was restored. Then I praised the most high. I honored and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion. His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the people of the earth are regarded as nothing.

He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth and no one can hold back his hand or say to him, what have you done? And in verse 36, it says at that time, my sanity was restored. You know, when you go into a mental institution, what you find is people who oftentimes have gone through so much anguish that the only way they can cope with it is think that they are someone whom they aren't. I have met people who say that they are Jesus Christ.

There are people who think that they are great and that's insanity. And so what God did is he humbled this king. Do you think that King Nebuchadnezzar is going to be in heaven?

I think so. It says in verse 31, now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the king of heaven because everything he does is right and all his ways are just and those who walk in pride, he is able to humble. That sounds like a converted man. Imagine being able to see Nebuchadnezzar someday in heaven and say, wow, you built Babylon. Do you know that my eyes have seen the Ishtar Gate where Nebuchadnezzar lived? In the 1920s, the German archeologists went to various sites and did archeological work and I don't know whether they had permission or not, you'll have to ask them, but they took many things from the ancient world and brought them to Berlin. For example, the Pergamum Museum has the Pergamum Altar, but it also has the Ishtar Gate.

They took it apart brick by brick, shipped it to Germany, built a museum where you can see it today and rebuilt it there so that you can walk along where Nebuchadnezzar walked and see what he saw, at least part of what he saw in his prideful days, but God humbled him. God humbled him. Well, as I was mentioning, second nations decline according to God's will. In Daniel chapter five, you have his son falling into the sin of his father. His son did not learn from his father's mistakes. I wonder if that's ever happened before in history.

Is this the first time? Is it the last time that a son has not learned from his father's mistake? My dear friend, it is very evident that pride is really the root of all other sins.

Lucifer fell because of pride. The implications are absolutely huge and when it comes to radical secularism, it is really man taking the place of God and the implications are frightening. That's why I've written the book entitled We Will Not Be Silenced. I deal with many different issues. I deal with such things as the culture that we see today on the internet. My intention is to help us all be fortified against those kinds of cultural currents, the radical secularism that seeks to stamp out the Christian message. For a gift of any amount, we're making the book available, We Will Not Be Silenced. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com. Did I say that too quickly? rtwoffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337.

That's 1-888-218-9337. Time now for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. The rise and fall of Adolf Hitler is a subject of much study by Pastor Lutzer who's written a book on the subject of the Nazi leader. This has prompted one listener to ask, in your book on Hitler, you say that God protected him from assassination a number of times. Does that mean that the Germans who tried to assassinate him should not have done so? I'm thinking, for example, of Bonhoeffer and his support of the assassination of Hitler.

Dr. Lutzer? Well, I'm very glad to answer that question and really it comes in two parts. The first part is just because God obviously protected Hitler and God did protect him, there were so many attempts on his life, there were so many miraculous things.

Let me just tell you one story. Even when Hitler was a soldier, he was in the barracks, he was eating with other men, and unexplainably he took all of his things, his food and everything, and went somewhere else and moments later a bomb fell there and killed all the soldiers. He'd have been killed if he hadn't have left. So those kinds of things happen in history, but your question is, does that mean that the Germans who wanted to assassinate him were doing wrong? And the answer is no, because there's a sense in which God keeps evil rulers alive, not just Hitler, but other evil rulers have lived who perhaps would have been assassinated or should have been assassinated because they were so evil. So just because God's providence enters into everything doesn't mean that we should back off and not be involved in the controlling realities of our leaders and the implications. But your question about Bonhoeffer is very interesting because there's a lot of discussion about him, because first of all, he was a pacifist, and then he changed his mind and joined the resistance.

So some people have criticized him for that. But Bonhoeffer justified it by saying, if somebody is going down a street and just randomly killing children, for example, you have a responsibility to assassinate, to kill that killer. And Hitler was so bad that Bonhoeffer became part of the resistance, and he ended up dying for it. It's a complicated issue. If you read Bonhoeffer, you know that he didn't make this decision lightly.

But sometimes in life, there are very difficult decisions with no real good choices. Some wise counsel from Dr. Erwin Lutzer. Thank you, Dr. Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer, or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 N. LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. As we wrestle with the mystery of God's hidden will, we must acknowledge His sovereign control of history. Sometimes He uses the bad guys to judge the good guys. Next time we learn this, our task is to trust His purposes to be right, no matter what. Thanks for listening. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.