God Over You #1

Welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for joining us as we continue teaching God's people God's Word. Don begins a new message today, so without further delay, let's join him right now in The Truth Pulpit. I view it as my God-given responsibility these days to commit felonious assault on the mindset of the existing evangelical church. That's why we've been doing this series for the entire year building a Christian mind.

That's why we'll be doing it for a few more months still to come. I want you to understand that the stakes are enormously high and that we are not trying to swim downstream with common thought prevailing among those that call themselves Christians. We believe that those who call themselves Christians are the predominant problem in the world today. And because of that, we have to address it and address it clearly, directly, and boldly.

There is no other option. The modern church has deluded millions and millions and millions of people for decades and decades now with its misrepresentations of the nature of God, the nature of man, the nature of sin, the nature of Christ, the nature of the gospel, the nature of repentance, the nature of faith. And it has conditioned generations to have wrong presuppositions about what it means to be a Christian and therefore what to expect from the nature of the Christian life. And as people come, and I'm just so very grateful that the Lord has brought all of you here today and not just here today but so many of you to be an ongoing part of our church. It's a real blessing to my heart as I said on Tuesday. It's such a blessing to have people gather around that really want the Word of God rather than programs and entertainment in their church experience. That's a blessing to me and it's a great encouragement to me. And the hundreds of you that come week by week and Tuesday by Tuesday, you have no idea how important and crucial you are to my own life and encouragement in these particular days in which we live.

And so I speak as to friends here but I speak with urgency as well. Because the church has deluded so many millions for so many decades, we speaking as broadly the church at Evangelical Church, broadly speaking, have entirely false expectations about the nature of Christian life and what should happen and what will happen if we are Christians and if we walk with Christ. And because we have false expectations, we order our prayers entirely wrongly. We view ourselves as being essentially okay, not having any real major defects of just needing some help from God and a little bit of help from Christ to boost us into heaven. But that we have this idea that we are fundamentally okay, we're fundamentally righteous and if we just live in a fundamentally righteous way and, you know, and in a morally respectable way, the life will go the way that we want it to and God will be obligated to come alongside and help us and give us what we want when things don't go the way that we desire. If I am moderately religious, life will go well with me and my kids will be acute and obedient and they will all become Christians as well.

And when I want somebody to become a Christian, that person will become a Christian without fail. And we just have an entirely wrong mindset about the world in which we live. We live in a world that is under a curse because of the fall of Adam and we shared in that fall of Adam.

He was our representative of all of humanity and when he fell, the world fell under a curse and therefore we live in a world where the ground produces weeds and thistles instead of being easy to till, that being a symptom of the curse under which we live. And we all have this sense that we would never admit that we probably wouldn't even recognize, but we all have this sense that I'm going to be the exception and not really be weighed down by those things. You know, everything's going to go well with my family and everything's going to go well in my realm no matter what happens and all of the evil and problems are out there rather than those that affect me. Well, as many of you are finding in your own life and in your own sorrows, you're realizing that's not the way it is. And so the presuppositions that you've been conditioned to believe from the prevailing evangelical mindset over the past 50 years since Bill Hybels rose to prominence in Willow Creek is to make you think that God exists to help you and make everything go okay. And that's not true.

That is not true. And the sooner that we demolish the foundation of that false philosophy and it collapses, the better it will be for everybody even though it's going to be very painful in the process to let that happen. And I would hardly be a faithful pastor to you if I wasn't mindful of the deep sorrows that so many of you are going through and give you a perspective that would help you process this and to realize that you're not crazy, that you're not, you know, that God's not being unfair or different with you and to help you see that that mirage that has been created by others over decades is just precisely that. It's a mirage. And you get there. You get to where you think. It's palm trees and a water, a shady oasis to drink quietly and pleasantly from. And you get there and you find out this is just a desert.

There's nothing here. Martin Lloyd Jones in his book Truth Unchanged, Unchanging on page 105 said this, and it kind of helps set the context for what I want to say here, says, we all have the fatal habit of pinning our hopes to something that is going to happen. We all have the fatal habit of pinning our hopes to something that is going to happen. We hope that things are going to get better. We hope that we're going to be healthy. We hope that we're going to be prosperous. We hope that there's not going to be any major problems in our families.

We hope for this or we hope for that. And when there are difficulties, we're pinning our hopes that God will change that to our liking during our earthly lifetime. That's the way people live. That's just how it is. Now, you may not like getting the reality of the way that you think exposed like this, but let's just deal with the fact that that is how we think.

That is what we want. And as a result of that, that trajectory and mindset and set of presuppositions takes you in a entirely different trajectory, away from biblical thinking and biblical living. And that's why we must have a biblical mind developed within us in order to process these things rightly.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones' grandson, Christopher Catherwood, has written a number of books about his grandfather. And he says this in a different book. He said, many of those who knew Martin Lloyd-Jones and were helped by him were able to say that what often helped the most was that he was able to teach them how to think and to do so biblically. This meant that when something arose in their life years later, when they no longer had him as their pastor, they were able to use the methodology of thinking through what the Scripture said about the problem and work out from there what they should do. End quote. We have to be able to think biblically.

And nothing about the prevailing sentiment in the evangelical church for 50 years has taught us to do so. And so what we do, instead of thinking biblically, instead of living biblically and realistically, we live by false hopes, driven by false theology that is fueled by false motives, even as we do so with an air of outward spiritual respectability. And so we think, I will be healthy. I will be prosperous. I will be happy. I will be fulfilled. My kids will be cute. My kids will be obedient. My loved ones will become Christians. My loved ones will love me and be close to me forever. None of that is promised to us in the Word of God.

None of it is. But until you're willing to forsake those things and embrace what biblical truth is and to embrace what we'll see today as the central biblical principle by which you should order your life, as long as you're clinging to these things and thinking that somehow you're entitled to them or that God has promised them to you, you will live in a fantasy world, number one. Secondly, when things start to go wrong, you'll wonder if maybe I've sinned, why is God upset with me? Or thirdly, you'll start to blame the people around you and find fault in the systems or the organizations or the people that are around you and become a great big pain in the neck to them, all because you're being operating on, you are operating on a false premise and false presuppositions about the whole way that life is going to go and is supposed to exist. I do want you to understand that I am assaulting, I am assaulting the very fundamental ways that most Christians think about life. This is a colossal collision of monumental proportions that I am making here this morning. We have a fantasy that we live in a world where our desires will determine the outcome.

I want it to be nice and so it will be nice in the end. You know, then the name it, claim it philosophy, you know, you just speak into existence the reality that you want it to be as if we were sovereign over things. It's ridiculous. We live in that fantasy rather than taking seriously the reality that the world in which we live in is cursed, that life is expected to be difficult eventually, if not right now, and that life will come with many disappointments that are grievous and difficult, whether it's on a superficial circumstantial level or at the most profound levels of relationships and affections that we have. All of those things being rooted in a prevailing mindset that is simply just not biblical.

And that's why this series we've been doing is so critical and so needed and is not yet done. And beloved, it's why we need the doctrine of divine providence to be clear and articulated in our minds. Among other things, the doctrine of divine providence will help us live according to truth rather than according to our fantasies. And beloved, rather than, and this is just so fundamental, this is the difference between taking off in an airplane that's pointed east versus a plane that is pointed west.

It takes you in completely different directions. Either we will live our lives by pinning our hopes on what we want to be true in the future when maybe your spouse won't change, and maybe your kids won't become Christians, and maybe your financial difficulties will never turn around. And instead of pinning your hopes on those things that may or may not happen, I know what it's like to have profoundly disappointed hopes.

This is one of the reasons why I'm so animated about it. Instead of pinning our hopes on what may or may not happen and what has not been promised to us in the Word of God, what you and I need to do is we need to live our lives according to the reality of Scripture that has been laid out before us and what the nature of reality actually is, and the course that things will actually follow. The world does not bend to your desires or mind.

I mean, even our loved ones don't bend to our desires when they get old enough to have their own independent thinking. And we can't shield ourselves from this by creating a little bubble in which we live, controlling every possible external influence. Sooner or later, sooner or later, the world crashes in and you're not in control anymore, and then what?

And then what? Who are you going to blame? Who's going to bear the brunt of your disappointment and fear?

Your fear and your disappointment. Look, I could stand up here and be all sugary today and try to be real relational and all of that, but you know what? Churches that do that for you are a dime a dozen.

They are a dime a dozen. At some point, we need to let the truth speak to us and respond to the truth and get serious and sober about the nature of biblical reality. And among other things, this will help us all live according to truth rather than our fantasies. And the problem is, and the reason that I've spent so much time and reordered the order of service on this today is this. The problem that those of you gathered here today that are sympathetic to the ministry and for whom I give thanks to God, the problem is that without even realizing it, you're not really hearing the truth because you are processing it through entirely wrong presuppositions about what life should be and what you want life to be. You know, we're not going to order things according to the politics that we want and like. We're not going to be able to order things so that everything goes according to plan and we're comfortable and our neighbors stay on their side of the fence and all of that.

That's not life. The question is, what are we going to do about it? And more importantly, what would God have us do about it? But when you have wrong presuppositions controlling your thinking and thinking that it should be okay, it should be comfortable, this is what God wants, when that's controlling your thinking then even when you're sitting under the Word of God, you're processing it in a way that means that you're missing the whole point. And so yeah, I'm going to continue my effort to commit felonious assault on the mindset that prevails in the broader evangelical church as long as God gives me strength to do it. Now, with that said, we all know the Scripture that says in Romans 8.28 that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

Romans 8.28, and that's kind of a framing consideration and principle going forward through the remainder of today's message. But understand, beloved, that God's going to define what's good by His standard, by His wisdom, by what He decreed before eternity began, what His purposes were in creation, and what His long-term eternal goals are to conform you to the image of Christ, not to give you a pain-free existence here on earth, but to conform you to the image of Christ where you are in a position and you are fit to give glory to Him throughout all of eternity, and where you have learned not to love this world so much and to have your hopes pinned in this world and relationships in this world to the exclusion of the glory of God and being conformed to the image of Christ. Look, you don't have to be a Christian. You do not have to be a Christian at all to want your relationships to be happy, for your family to be harmonious, for your business to be prosperous, and to be comfortable in life.

You don't have to be a Christian to want that. And if God is going to work things according to His purpose and according to His ideas that are good, then what we may find is that our desires are disappointed, that the things that we hope for are withheld from us with a greater spiritual goal in mind that you would be weaned from your love for this world. You would be delivered away from that, of loving that which is passing and temporal because here we have no lasting city.

We have no lasting city here, beloved. That's what Scripture says in the book of Hebrews. That's not what we're even seeking as true Christians.

That's not even what we're after. And so what we have to be mindful of is that the good that God works out and causes all things to work together for good is not according to our standard and our desires, but according to His wisdom and His eternal plan, and those two may not be the same. And so may the Lord soften and open our hearts for what we have in front of us now. We've been surveying the doctrine of divine providence. We started that last week in our message, God Over All, and what we said was that divine providence is broad, it covers everything in the universe, it's detailed down to the hairs on our head and when birds live and die, and that it's personal.

It's personal. In fact, let's go back to where we left off in Psalm 139 to enter into Scripture here today. And just by way of reminder, Psalm 139 verse 13 says, "'For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother's womb, I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.'" In other words, God had a sovereign plan for your life in place before you were conceived in your mother's womb. Jeremiah spoke about this in a personal way when the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet and in chapter 1 verse 5 said, "'Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations.'" God telling Jeremiah, "'I had a plan in place from all of eternity before I ever formed you in the womb. Now I'm calling you into that ministry, Jeremiah, that I've given to you, and now it is time for you to set out and embark upon it.'"

Now what's true of Jeremiah individually, what we see from Psalm 139 generally speaking is true of all of us. God has prepared a life for us to live, and for some it may be an easy path, for some it may be very, very difficult. The challenge, the duty, the responsibility that we have is this, not to lust after, covet after the life that God has given to someone else, but rather to embrace the life that God has given to us individually and say, "'God, now in light of the life that you have given me, how would you have me live?'" God in light of the life that you have given to me, what shall I do from here going forward? Beloved, you and I, we can't change anything about the past.

What we have is today looking forward. And in light of all of your sins, all of your successes, all of your failures, whatever that mixture of things is, here's where you are today, now what is the question? And the question is not, what do I hope will happen with my loved ones?

What do I wish would change about the things around me? Forget all of that stuff. That's the wrong way to think if you don't first have the doctrine of divine providence established fully and greatly in your mind. If we're not thinking theologically about life, we're not thinking rightly at all. That's fundamental to building a Christian mind. And so, let me repeat the definition that I've given you of divine providence. I ask you to write this down because in one sense, beloved, today's message, there's a sense in which everything that we've been doing since January 17th has been building up to this message today. There's a lot more to come, but this is so fundamental that we have spent seven months laying a foundation to be able to preach this one message.

That was the plan all along. That's how important this is. Because it goes to how we interpret life and what we do with it in the days the Lord has given to us. So a definition of divine providence. God continually upholds His entire creation and sovereignly works in absolutely everything that happens and thus directs all creatures and events to accomplish His will. God continually upholds His entire creation, He sovereignly works in absolutely everything that happens, He directs all creatures and events to accomplish His will. All creatures, all events to accomplish His will.

And that's embedded in Romans 8.28 itself. He causes all things to work together for good. All things to work together for good. God has His arms around all of it, His infinite arms around the infinite complexity of an infinite universe and all of the infinite variations of life that come to us. He has His arms around all of it and somehow in a way that I don't pretend to understand, without forcing people to do things, He works through all of the free actions of men to direct it so it accomplishes exactly what He desires, all for His glory when it's all said and done, and all for your good in the end.

Now let me just stop here, call a time out as it were, and just fundamentally lay on the table for your heart to answer this question within yourself. Do you believe that? Do you believe that? Do you believe that God upholds His entire creation? Do you believe that God sovereignly works in absolutely everything that happens? Do you believe that He directs all creatures and events to accomplish His will?

Yes or no? You either believe that or you don't. Some of you sadly have been conditioned to, you know, think that Satan is thwarting God's plan left and right, not realizing that the devil is God's devil. The providence is the way that God works out His eternal plan. And the Christian mind, many of you are here truly born again believers, praise God for that, if you've been born again then you are to develop a Christian mind. And the Christian mind is increasingly aware of the fact that God has planned your life and He will accomplish His purpose.

Your Christian mind is to become increasingly aware that God has planned your life and He will accomplish His purpose. That's the way that you think. That's the fundamental premise upon which all of life is built, that you think like that.

God has planned it, God is working it out. He will achieve His purpose and everything fits within that broad category of thought. But it's more than that, beloved.

It's more than that. This is more than just a matter of thinking, although it is preeminently that. There is also the preeminent matter of the desires and affections of your inner man. How does your soul respond to that? How do your desires respond to that? It's not just that you think this way, beloved, I can change it this way and kind of adapt it to what we've been doing on Tuesdays, which if you haven't been coming on Tuesdays I invite you to talk to anyone that's been attending on Tuesday and they'll tell you how essential it is that you be there, how important what has been happening over the past several weeks is, and what's happening.

If you're neglecting that teaching and not even reviewing it, listening to it after the fact if you can't be here, that's not good. Let me say this about providence, and this is kind of where we're going for the rest of the day today. The Christian heart, the Christian heart is increasingly satisfied with the fact that God has planned your life and that He will accomplish His will. We're aware of this intellectually. We're satisfied with it, even if it's not what we wanted to begin with. We're aware of it.

We're satisfied with it. I'm going to give you five ways in which this works out, and I have never been asked to, probably for many good reasons. I've never been asked to teach a session or a class on preaching. I've never been asked to do that, and that's fine. If I was an outside observer and saw the way that I preached and the way that you're supposed to preach and how I actually preach, I probably wouldn't invite myself either. That's all right.

I can live with that. But today, you know, if there's 250 people in the room here, I have 250 preaching students in front of me. You're all becoming preachers today with an audience of one, yourself, the man in the mirror, the woman in the mirror. You need to learn how to preach to yourself in light of the doctrine of divine providence, and that's what I want to teach you here today. First of all, what does divine providence do to you?

What does it do? Let me put it this way. What effect should the doctrine of divine providence have upon a believing heart? Whether you're here today happy, angry, dissatisfied, fearful, confident, doesn't matter. None of that matters. How we feel about anything does not matter here today at all. It's not important. The important thing is to understand the spiritual impact that the fact that God upholds his entire creation and works in everything that happens, how that is supposed to affect you in the depths of your inner man.

It's utterly transforming. And as we go through these five principles, this is what you are to say to yourself as you walk through life. Not just today, this is what you are to be preaching to yourself for the remainder of your days. Point number one, divine providence makes you, number one, submissive in your adversity. Submissive in your adversity. Now you're probably like me to one degree or another. My initial response to adversity is often to complain and grumble against it. That ain't good. I shouldn't be that way, especially having been a Christian as long as I am. I should know better.

I should be better. I'm still growing in these things too. But submissive in your adversity, number one, beloved, if God truly upholds his entire creation and sovereignly works in absolutely everything that happens and directs all creatures to accomplish his will, if God is working out a purpose that will prove good to you in the end without fail in all of its details, then there's a conclusion that you have to draw from that. If we embrace that and we affirm what scripture says to be true, then there is a momentum, there is a spiritual force that is unleashed on our hearts that we have to bend to and respond to because providence teaches us to yield to God in our adversity. Whatever the adversity is, beloved, I don't say this unsympathetically, but it really doesn't matter.

This transcends individual lives, individual circumstances, individual sorrows. It's greater than all of that. These things were true before you were born. They're true now. They'll be true after you're gone. We're dealing with eternal principles here that are greater and more important than the matters that afflict us in everyday life. And here's the way that you think about these things. If providence is true, and it is, then you look beyond your circumstances to see the God who ordained them for you. You look beyond your circumstances to see the God who ordained them for you. Psalm 139, you appointed my days before there was one of them. You know the number of hairs on my head. You know when a sparrow falls. God, you're aware of all of this, your love eternally established in the sacrificial substitutionary death of Christ on the cross for me.

Then I have to view everything in life in light of that and look beyond the circumstances to see and to worship the God who ordained them. That's Don Green here on The Truth Pulpit, and here's Don again with some closing thoughts. Thank you, Bill. Just before we close, my friends, I just want to let you know that this podcast is made possible for you by the generous support of many friends of our ministry.

We're grateful for that. If you have supported us, I want to say a special word of thanks to you for all that you've done to make this possible. If you would like to join in the support of our ministry, you can do that so easily by going to thetruthpulpit.com.

That's thetruthpulpit.com. You'll see the link to give, and you can add your support to the others who make this possible for us. Thank you for whatever you do and whether you give or you don't give.

Know that our love and prayers are with you. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time as we continue to study God's Word together here on The Truth Pulpit. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.