Providence of God

doctrine · 27 episodes

233At the Right Hand of the Father 5 Jan 2026 32:19¶ 99 “We need to consider not just his outpouring of the Spirit upon his church, and his active use of his Church, his Word, his…” 32:58¶ 100 “These are not historical accidents. This is not inevitable historical evolution on a cultural level. This is Jesus at work through sinful broken tools…”

209Read the Text, What Does it Say? 27 Jan 2025 21:23¶ 76 “I think it points to the underlying frustrations that we’re having with these, that none of them acknowledge God as the sovereign true orchestrator…” 22:11¶ 79 “Yes. There were things beyond our imagination that God brought together. They didn’t just come together. God brought them together at that point to…” 35:37¶ 124 “No. If you mean the citizens of the kingdom are those who belong to the church, that’s fair enough. In my systematics syllabus that’s…”

194Hadassah, Queen of Persia 27 May 2024 39:23¶ 128 “It’s significant at this point that the things he uses are insomnia and a beauty contest, and the faith eventually of one bold young…” 39:14¶ 127 “Because in fact God is the one who did it. He’s the one who accomplished the salvation. It was not due to the virtue…” 32:39¶ 102 “Yes. At the same time, in the Lord’s providence, the king can’t sleep. Maybe we should all remember this when we have insomnia and…”

166Prayer and Work 26 Jun 2023 24:38¶ 88 “Wait, are you talking chance or are you talking providence?” Yes. This is the time to remind ourselves again, sort of like Esther but…” 25:26¶ 91 “Notice, the queen is there. That’s part of his plan here, which again suggests who the queen has to be. As far as the…” 26:08¶ 92 “He does not know, but he does know that as far as human reckoning is concerned, he’s got the best chance. He’s got the…”

165Esther 19 Jun 2023 47:57¶ 158 “Most of life is that way, not that most of our Christian life doesn’t make mention of Jesus or God or miracles or promises,…” 48:39¶ 159 “If we want to know how God works, this is a great book to read because he’s worked through sinful people’s choices.” 48:46¶ 160 “My cheater’s answer is of course it’s still a religious book because it’s a book talking about history, and history takes place in God’s…”

163Priorities and Providence 5 Jun 2023 27:43¶ 80 “Next, God rules in the created order and in the government of men, and his action in both spheres are covenantal. It is not…” 28:45¶ 85 “We have to recognize, as they did in Jerusalem in those days, that God rules all of it. God has a plan here and…” 28:12¶ 81 “They may not be the kind of successes we had in mind. We may think we’re ministering to Group A, and suddenly something leaks…”

158Daniel in the Lion's Den - A Resurrection Story 6 Mar 2023 7:27¶ 28 “But then that was the set-up for God coming in with all of the miracles from Moses, and smashing the greatest empire on earth…” 7:48¶ 30 “Someone said that providence is a great diary but a rotten predictor.” 9:30¶ 38 “Here we have Belshazzar who came up and did not know Daniel, or pretended not to know him, and refused to know his God,…”

157The Handwriting on the Wall 20 Feb 2023 34:38¶ 142 “God is constantly working through little things, small lives, small nations, little churches, the prayers of a handful, the sermons of two or three…” 35:08¶ 143 “We want the big spectacular stuff. The whole fascination with prophecy is I think our belief that God needs to come down in fire…” 35:53¶ 146 “And yet through that, God brought Messiah into the world, so we need to get off of this. God can send a Great Awakening.…”

154Dry Bones 23 Jan 2023 34:42¶ 110 “The Heidelberg Catechism speaks of God’s providence as “his almighty and ever present power, whereby, as with his hand, he still upholds heaven and…” 35:10¶ 111 “That’s not what these people understood by providence. They understood that sometimes God poofs into history and does really nifty things, then poofs out…” 34:00¶ 109 “I remember one lady wanted to put her son in our school and it was good. She came and asked me what I taught.…”

140All Things New 17 Oct 2022 28:47¶ 81 “Now I suppose is as good a time as any to try to make that jump. The thing that would allow us to say…” 32:49¶ 95 “Exactly. Christianity allows us to look at all of the universe and say this is all God’s playground. This is his canvas. This is…” 33:19¶ 96 “This is what it means when it says, “All things work together for good to them who love God.” It doesn’t mean that all…”

138Freedom, Miracles, and History 3 Oct 2022 39:54¶ 142 “This is one of those rare times in history where God says, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.” Sometimes God wins…” 40:43¶ 143 “But then sometimes in the history of the world God has intervened, and it’s impressive and sometimes we tend to think, “Well, that’s how…” 41:05¶ 144 “God can and does interrupt his normal faithful covenantal providence and do things that by our standards are absolutely spectacular, but that’s kind of…”

137Unto Us A Child Is Born 26 Sep 2022 21:27¶ 78 “If there’s a lesson here for us, I think that at least part of it is that. First, God has not abandoned history. Secondly,…” 38:09¶ 157 “So you can go through these things and see the hand of God in retrospect, but it’s not how we would have done it.…” 38:28¶ 158 “I remember hearing I think a Lutheran pastor talking about God’s providence and the hard providences. God has put himself there, but that’s not…”

136The Lost Empire 19 Sep 2022 26:40¶ 98 “Again, I appreciate the angle Bryan was taking. It’s not simply that God says, “Oh, there’s a threat to my people. I must do…” 26:13¶ 97 “When we look around today, some of these things should sound real familiar, like yesterday’s headlines or tomorrow’s. We need to understand that God’s…” 30:14¶ 108 “He ordains that they’re effective despite themselves. Sin is stupid and sinners stab each other in the back routinely. God will let them prosper…”

135Conspiracy Theory 12 Sep 2022 17:09¶ 58 “Did it accomplish something? Well, it didn’t accomplish what they wanted. Did it accomplish anything at all? I mean God is sovereign. Obviously this…” 17:34¶ 59 “God is letting this happen to us it because he has a bigger plan than theirs. The plan of the Father, Son, and Spirit…” 18:16¶ 60 “He knows what they’re going to accomplish. He brings them about to accomplish his own purposes, to forward the kingdom of his Son, and…”

117More Things Are Wrought By Prayer 9 May 2022 20:13¶ 66 “There are no natural laws that run the universe. God runs the universe, personally and immediately by his providence,” whereby as it were by…” 18:07¶ 57 “One of my favorite psalms is Psalm 104, which is just one long ode to the providence of God, where we’re told in no…” 18:53¶ 59 “I had been taught to be a good Calvinist and believe in predestination, but my idea was, “So God planned everything and then let…”

104David the Anointed King 7 Feb 2022 30:02¶ 112 “There’s nothing outside of God’s providence. Nobody gets into office accidentally. They may have committed evil to get there, but that too is within…” 29:23¶ 111 “That’s John Locke and that’s Tom Jefferson and that’s one way you certainly can read the Declaration of Independence, but that’s not biblical. The…”

90An Unlikely Hero - Throwing Out a Fleece 1 Nov 2021 22:40¶ 63 “The Heidelberg catechism says, “What do you mean by the providence of God? The everywhere present power of God, whereby as it were by…” 18:36¶ 50 “There is no thing called nature. There is the creation ordered and ruled personally by a sovereign God who does as he will, and…” 20:49¶ 55 “Dominion implies predictability, a pattern of behavior on God’s side that we can trust, not because God is bound by any law of nature…”

85A Mother in Israel (Part 1) 27 Sep 2021 26:08¶ 87 “But no, wait. They actually did the fighting.” That’s the way Providence works, strangely enough. God uses means. Yes, he could lightning bolt everybody.…” 26:47¶ 89 “It is a lightning bolt, but we oftentimes have trouble seeing how something could be a human action and a divine action at the…” 19:40¶ 61 “Whereas Barak and Deborah’s God is the sovereign God who stands outside of the universe and who stands within the universe, both transcendent and…”

83Baal and Astarte 13 Sep 2021 34:57¶ 123 “Yes, God lifted the curse. Yes, God sent rain because Elijah his friend asked him to, but it was not time for full-scale revival.…” 36:31¶ 127 “We’ve talked about this. This is deism, and Calvinism can fall into it if we do not balance our doctrine of predestination with a…”

80Othniel and Achsah 23 Aug 2021 6:55¶ 30 “Yes, yes, because that would be circumventing the chain of command otherwise. Yeah, we’ve kind of got a little fussy and silly and have…” 7:23¶ 31 “In the rest of our experience, those things that we want and need for body and soul – yes, he tells us to pray…” 6:01¶ 24 “I have known young women who have waited way into their 30s for Prince Charming to show up, and I know godly ladies, sweet,…”

70Science and Wonder 23 May 2021 58:20¶ 184 “This is the biblical doctrine of providence. God runs the universe personally and immediately. He doesn’t create some system of laws that mediate between…” 58:35¶ 185 “Rather, the laws as we perceive them are simply our perceptions of God’s covenant faithfulness, his infinite dependability down to the nanosecond and the…” 58:08¶ 183 “And of course what everyone heard is “God created” and all hands go up. “Yes, God created everything. He created the natural laws.” I…”

66History as Story 4 Apr 2021 29:23¶ 128 “No. Providence is God’s total control of all things – “the everywhere present power of God whereby, as it were by His hand, He…” 28:31¶ 126 “Yes, there were interesting things that God did that stood out that helped the colonists, and part of the problem here is people say,…” 30:14¶ 135 “Yeah, how many things does it take for God not to control before he loses control completely? How about if there’s this little bacteria…”

59Happy New Year... Again 14 Feb 2021 10:53¶ 39 “So we’re given not process, but this festival teaches us a God who acts into history – a God who initiates history, a God…” 11:42¶ 41 “God predestined everything in the beginning. He sort of planned it and wound it up like a clock and then he just lets it…” 12:29¶ 43 “This is certainly not what the Westminster Confession teaches – that God is able to act through means, beyond means, without means – and…”

28Prince of Egypt (part 2): Of Miracles and Magic 12 Jul 2020 9:56¶ 30 “God is delighted in the world he’s made, so he keeps telling it by his immediate divine power and providence to do it again.…” 10:21¶ 32 “Yeah. There’s a passage in Jeremiah, and I don’t remember where it is but you can all look it up, where Jeremiah says, “Can…” 11:04¶ 34 “It’s that consistent. What we have discovered is God’s consistency, his covenant faithfulness.”

15The Babylon Project 12 Apr 2020 34:21¶ 114 “The first thing I said, “I’m glad to see you all. How many of you came because of the way I spelled faeries?” and…” 32:50¶ 109 “I’ve actually had to explain this to Christians far too many times. I will go to people and say, “This is a trick question,”…” 33:19¶ 111 “No. There are lots of people in the room, and 6-day creationism and generic evolution are not the only players here. I’m asking you…”

13The Day the World Died 29 Mar 2020 32:22¶ 104 “God’s providence is not something where God peeks in now and then and goes “Gee, nifty.” It’s God’s constant covenantal governance of grace. Sometimes…” 31:58¶ 103 “But the point for this discussion is this. Why don’t we want to remember the flood? This one’s easy. This is why this can…” 32:37¶ 105 “To what degree those miracles made use of natural processes is hard to say at this point. There’s a danger in trying to press…”

3Chaos, Order, and Origins 19 Jan 2020 12:17¶ 31 “We read the text as a text that tells us certain things about a true God who exists outside of this realm you perceive…” 12:44¶ 32 “We do have change, real change. We have real development. We have a story that’s in progress, and the order is intentional. It’s imposed…” 13:12¶ 33 “We’re quite comfortable with all this, and we’re not surprised to see our Father’s hand, even down to saying, “Isn’t it great that God…”