Genesis 50:20 (ESV) 20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.
Proverbs 19:21 (ESV) 21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.
The last couple of weeks I have been studying the Providence of God for my adult Sunday school class. It wasn’t long into my research and study that thoughts and theological positions such as Molinism, Thomism, and Augustinianism gave me a headache. In some cases (Molinism and Augustinianism were variations on the same theme). I thought, how do I explain these competing and sometimes complementary views? If I had a headache over such deep theological questions and views, how would I parse the nuances and separate competing views and make sense of this to those I was teaching without passing on my own headache to those in my class? Even further, did I really understand the differing views well enough myself?
The answer to those questions are the problem-solving issues any teacher of the Scriptures faces. It is then, you realize that such topics such as the Providence of God cannot be fully understood or digested to the point that any serious student of the Word and theology will fully ponder its depths.
Psalm 92:5 (NKJV) 5 O LORD, how great are Your works! Your thoughts are very deep.
Psalm 139:17 (ESV) 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Isaiah 55:9 (RSV) 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Today was one of those days while I was reading, that I was overwhelmed. How fallible I am in explaining the truths of the Word of God. How really inadequate I am in painting a picture of the eternal and transcendent God we worship. Even the Cross of Calvary, I find myself without words that express what I see in the Scriptures and my heart revels in, but my voice can’t fully explain. These truths over-whelm me and I wonder why God placed me in the ministry to teach His Word.
When it came to the subject of God’s Providence there was no doubt I was out of my league. Just how do you express in any meaningful way that “Providence means that God has not abandoned the world that he created, but rather works within that creation to manage all things according to the “immutable counsel of His own will”[1] or the “the governance of God by which He, with wisdom and love, cares for and directs all things in the universe?”[2] Or that it is the sovereign control of everything exercised not through the miraculous, but through ordering all the complex natural events so that they accomplish His will.[3] We have definitions. But when we contemplate their meaning and ramifications we end up with further questions of complexity and wonderment. We can certainly find comfort in that God is control of the affairs of the universe and even more to our point of view, the affairs of men and His loving care of His children. But we cannot really ponder the depths of His Providence energized by His nature.
Very often when I get home from a Sunday of teaching and preaching, I get this sick feeling in me that I only gave the people who came to church that day, crumbs, not because of any other reason than the God we worship is unsearchable (Psalms 145:3) and my inadequacy to paint a picture that would drive them to ponder the greatness of our God.
-Michael Holtzinger
[1] Westminster Confession of Faith, V, i
[2] https://www.gotquestions.org/divine-providence.html
[3] John MacArthur, MacArthur New Testament Commentary – Romans 9-16, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1994), pg 342.