If you wouldn't open your Bibles
with me to Exodus chapter two, Exodus the second chapter. We'll begin reading in verse
one of Exodus chapter two. And there went a man of the house
of Levi and took the wife and daughter of Levi. And the woman
conceived, and she bare a son. And when she saw him, that he
was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could
not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes,
and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child
therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river's bank. And
his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.
And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river,
And her maidens walked along by the riverside. And when she
saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.
And when she had opened it, she saw the child. And behold, the
babe wept. And she had compassion on him,
and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children. Then said
his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a
nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?
And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went, and
called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto
her, Take this child away and nurse it for me, and I will give
thee thy wages. And the woman took the child
and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto
Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name
Moses. And she said, Because I drew
him out of the water. And it came to pass in those
days when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren,
and looked on their burdens. And he spied an Egyptian smiting
in Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that
way. And when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian
and hid him in the sand. And we went out the second day,
behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together. And he said
to him that did the wrong, wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And
he said, who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest
thou to kill me as thou killest the Egyptian? And Moses feared
and said, surely this thing is known. Now when Pharaoh heard
this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the
face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian. And he sat
down by a well. We'll end our reading there.
Let's bow before our Lord together in prayer. Our great God, our holy heavenly
Father, Lord, we thank you so much that here in the middle
of the week, in the middle of the work week, in the middle
of having to go out and be in the world, that you've given
us this opportunity to come out of it and come together with
our brethren to hear word from thee. And Father, I pray that
you would do that for us this evening, that you would enable
us to hear word from thee. that you would speak to the hearts
of all those who are gathered here together this evening, but
you would speak in power, that you'd give us the faith, the
heart, the love, to see our Lord Jesus Christ and believe on Him,
to run to Him for mercy, to run to Him for everything it is that
you require of us, righteousness, holiness, wisdom, acceptance,
that you'd cause us to run to Christ, and that you would find
us in him, accepted in the beloved, not having a righteousness that
we've earned by our morality and our law-keeping and our religious
activity, but that which is through faith, the righteousness of Christ
by faith. Father, let the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ be exalted and magnified this evening. Enable your people
to in awe and wonder sit at His feet and worship Him. And Father,
enable us to leave here and go back home tonight with our hearts
filled with Christ, with our hearts comforted in trusting
Him, with our hearts assured by trusting Him. Let us find
peace for our souls in trusting Christ and Christ alone. And
what we pray for ourselves, Father, we pray for all of your people
wherever they're gathering together tonight, across this country,
across the world. Father, bless for your great
namesake and for the good of your people. Father, we pray
a blessing for your people that you brought in the time of trouble
and trial. Father, we freely confess that
we are the most blessed people on the face of this earth. You've
blessed us so richly, but we also confess that we need you
every hour. We're still in this flesh, just
a pile of dust, poor and needy. And Father, we pray that you'd
be with your people that you brought into the time of trouble,
the valley of sickness and heartache and not understanding what's
going on, not understanding. Father, be with your people.
Oh, how we pray you comfort their hearts, that you would see fit
to heal and to deliver father above all that you would give
them a fulfillment of your promise that you're with your people
whenever they go through the deep waters and through the fires
that you're with them one thing we think we've learned that there's
many things that we can do without in this life but we cannot do
without thee father we cry with the psalmist of old take not
thy presence from us we pray All these things we ask and we
give thanks in that name which is above every name, the name
of Christ our Savior, amen. I've titled the message this
evening God's Providence in Salvation. A better title would probably
be God's Sovereign Providence in Salvation, but that long of
a title won't fit on Sermon Audio, so we'll just call it God's Providence
in Salvation. And I'll tell you what I want
us to be reminded of this evening. is that our God sovereignly ordains
every event in human history. Every one of them. Now, human
history, that's a big subject. Everything that's going on in
this world today is such a big subject, we can't really get
our minds around it at all, can we? But I do know this, even
though we can't get our minds around it, Almighty God controls
it all. Every event, I mean every particle
of dust flying through the, I mean everything, everything. But maybe
if I bring it down a little closer to what's important to us and
down a little closer to something that maybe we can at least start
to understand a little bit. Our God sovereignly ordains every
event in our lives. In our lives. Everything that
happens to us. Everything that happens around
us. is what our loving heavenly father ordained to happen before
time began. There is nothing that happens
to anyone that God wished he could have prevented. Now God's
finger did it all, everything, I mean everything. And this is
also true. Everything that God does, he
does for the glory of his son and the salvation of his people.
That's the ultimate reason behind it all. That's what it's all
going to work together to accomplish, the glory of Christ and the salvation
of his people. Not one of them will ever be
lost. Now, sometimes we think we can
see that, don't we? We see God working and we see
this happening. I say, oh, I see that. I see God working here for the
good of his people, for the glory of his son. Sometimes we can't
see it because It's just too big for us to grasp. What God
is doing is so far beyond our grasp, we can't see it. But it's
still true, nonetheless, that God has purposed every event
of human history to happen just exactly the way they are happening,
to glorify his son and the salvation of his people. And our text tonight
gives us a very good illustration of that. So the first thing I
want us to see in this passage I just read, God's providence
is not laid out to us in a straight line. You know, if it was a straight
line, we could see from here to the end of it and we know
what's going on, wouldn't we? But God's providence is never
laid out to us in a straight line. And here's the reason for
that. God has ordained that you and
I walk by faith, not by sight. You know, if I could see everything
between here and there, I wouldn't need faith, would I? No, God
hides his providence so that we walk by faith, not by sight.
We follow the Lord by faith. We follow the Lord because we
trust him, not because we know what he's doing and how he's
gonna do it. If we trust the Lord, really
and truly, as much as we would like to see all the way down
the road, if we trust the Lord, we don't need to, do we? Because
we trust him, we trust him. Faith means trusting what you
can't see. That's what faith is. Faith is
just believing what God said, even when you don't understand
how he's gonna do it. Now in this situation here that we read
in Exodus chapter two, we know that God has heard the cries
of his people. Moses says that God has remembered
the covenant that he made with Abraham, Isaac, and with Jacob.
He remembered God's promise that his people will go down to Egypt,
and after 400 years, he'll bring them out, bring them to a land
that he promised. God remembered his covenant, and God sent the
Deliverer. God caused the Deliverer to be
born, the one who's going to grow up and lead God's people
out of bondage in Egypt. The Lord told Moses' parents,
your baby boy's the Deliverer. Now they knew it. They knew the
Deliverer's here. But the Lord's not gonna deliver
Israel by the arm of the flesh. It's gonna be by faith, by faith. You think how Moses' mother acted
in faith. She hid that baby for three months.
And then she put that three-month-old baby in a basket made out of
reeds and slime and put him in the Nile River and turned and
walked away. Left her eight, nine-year-old
daughter there to watch from afar, see what might happen.
But now that took faith. Would you even turn around and
leave your baby, your three-month-old baby in the bathtub for a minute?
No. She put that baby in the Nile River and turned and walked
away. That's fate. She believed that baby's going
to be the deliverer. But if she was walking away,
you know a mother's heart. Could you have blamed her if
she thought as she's walking away, her heart is, you know,
up here in her throat and it's beating so fast she can hardly
breathe. She put that baby in the Nile River and she had to
wonder. I mean, you wouldn't, I don't
know if she did, but you couldn't blame her if she wondered, can
anybody please tell me how my baby's gonna not drown in the
Nile River? Can somebody please tell me if I leave my baby there
on the river, how in this world is he gonna end up being the
deliverer of Israel? Could somebody please tell me
that? Well, I don't know how it can
be, but she still believed God. I know she did, because she put
the baby there and walked away. She believed God. She had to
think, I don't know how God's gonna accomplish his will. I
can't see how it's gonna be from here. But I believe he will. I believe God's gonna do what
he promised. So she left that baby there in the river. You
see, it was God's purpose all along that Moses deliver Israel. But he had to leave his parents'
house to do it. He had to go live in Pharaoh's
house and be raised by Pharaoh's daughter Beloved and educated
by Pharaoh because that was God's will. And while Pharaoh, this
little boy, however old he was, you know, when he grew enough
that his mother brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, now he's
out of sight. Here he is behind the castle
walls. And you know, you can blame them if they worried. Are
they gonna indoctrinate Moses into hating the Hebrews? Are
they gonna teach him to hate Israel? They didn't know what
was going on behind it. behind with him. So what were
they forced to do? Trust the Lord. They had to trust
him. They couldn't see how God was
going to work it all out because it's not in a straight line.
They just had to trust the Lord. And then when Moses was grown,
now this is what everybody thinks that while his mother was weaning
him and raising him, she taught him. She taught him the scripture.
She taught him who God is. She told him that God has said
you're the deliverer. She told him all about the God
of covenant, the covenant promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now Moses has grown. He spent
all those years growing up in Pharaoh's house. And I'm telling
you, this guy, he had to be somebody. Remember how handsome he is.
I mean, he's so handsome. He's in line to the throne. I
mean, he's raised with the best education that could be had at
that time. And he's a grown man and he comes
strolling out in Egypt to see what's going on with his people,
the Hebrew people. And Moses thought, I'm the deliverer. I see an opportunity here to
jump in and start delivering my people. He saw one of those
Egyptians beating one of those Israelites, one of his kin. And Moses said, I'm gonna solve
this deal. And he killed the man. He thought, I'm gonna kill
him. I'm just gonna start this thing. I'm gonna lead Israel
out, you know. And we'd all think, that's a
good idea. But instead of delivering Israel, Moses got run out of
town on a rail and had to cross the desert on foot by himself
until he ended up finding a woman to marry. And he ended up keeping
his father-in-law's sheep on the backside of a mountain for
40 years. just spent that time almost completely alone, being
with those sheep, so he forgot how to even speak to people.
He knew how to whistle and whatever noises you make to get sheep
to do what you want them to do, but he forgot how to talk to
people. Moses forgot all that military
training he received in Pharaoh's house. He forgot all that diplomatic
education, all that, the refinement to education, you know, which
fork to use and all that. He forgot it all. 40 years he
was gone from Egypt. Now Moses is 80 years old. Now,
people just don't take up a brand new career when they're 80 years
old. You don't do it. You retire when you're 80 years
old. And now this 80 year old, You're telling me he's gonna
walk back across the desert with a stick in his hand, a walking
stick, and he's gonna go now, now that he's forgot everything,
now that he's without power, now that he's without strength,
now that he's without education, now you're telling me he's gonna
go back out over there and deliver Israel from the most powerful
nation in the history of the earth? Really? I remember Brother Henry said
about this one time, he said, you're getting kind of old for
that kind of work, aren't you, Moses? 80 years old, but off he went,
walking across the desert by himself. See, that had to happen
because that's the providence of the Lord. The Lord's going
to accomplish His will, always. In this case and every other
case, the Lord's going to accomplish His will, but He's not going
to do it with the arm of the flesh. No, it will always be
by the power of the Lord, by the doing of the Lord. The Lord's
gonna do what he does in such a way that his people are gonna
say, God did this. I didn't do this. We didn't do
this. God did this. See, that's what faith sees.
God did this. It's his providence, his work,
not mine, and he's gonna accomplish it without the help of the strength
of the flesh. And he's gonna just keep it concealed
in such a way that we have to walk by faith, not by sight. All right, here's the second
thing. God's providence, and you know, we're sovereign gracers
now. We believe in the sovereignty and power of God, so we talk
a lot about God's providence, don't we? How many times have
you heard the phrase, somebody say, well, that's providential.
You know, like that is providential, but this over here is not providential.
We know this, everything's providential. But God's providence. is never
what we expect it to be. And what I mean by that is this,
the Lord is seldom, I would say never, but maybe sometimes we
might know something. So I'll stick with seldom. The
Lord is seldom doing what we think he's doing. See, God's
purpose is so big, so vast. We can't comprehend it. All we
can see is what's happening here, but the ripple effects go way
out here. This might be what God's really accomplishing, and
we don't know it because we'll never see it. You see what I'm
saying? We don't know what the Lord's doing in any matter, and
I warn us, just be mighty careful to ever say, oh, I see what God's
doing here. I see what God's doing here.
Let me give you a few examples from our text. Suppose you and
I lived in Egypt at that time. And we heard the deliverer's
been born in Egypt. He's being hid by his parents.
They're hiding him out there, they're keeping him, and he's
being hid by his parents. But now he's born, the deliverer's
born. You just wait. Now what we think is, you know,
Moses' parents are gonna hide this boy, they're gonna raise
him, they're gonna teach him to be the deliverer of Israel,
and the Egyptians will never find him. And they're gonna raise
him until it's time for him to step out in his, you know, vigor
and power, Deliver Israel, because God's going to sovereignly protect
him. I see what God's doing there. God's sovereignly protecting
him, keeping him in until it's time for him to be the deliverer.
We think, I know how this is going to work. His parents are
going to teach him guerrilla warfare. They're going to teach
him things that he can do to weaken Egypt. They're gonna teach
him how to win friends and influence people. I bet little boy Moses
had a personality that was just magnetic, don't you think? And
they thought, boy, this magnetic personality, that's what God's
gonna use to draw people to him. So he is just gonna be able to
lead this big slave uprising and deliver all of us from Egypt. I can just see it happen. I know
that's what God's doing. This kid is sharp as a tack,
that's what's gonna happen. That's what we'd say. We'd say,
well, I see what God's doing here. And then, after we had
God all figured out, we'd see Moses' mother put him in a little
basket in the Nile River and walk away. And we'd say, what's
going on? What's going on? But then, we'd
see Pharaoh's daughter find that baby Moses, and we'd think, oh,
now I see. Now, I didn't see before, but
now I see. Now I see what the Lord's doing,
it's so clear now. Moses is gonna be raised for
a little while by his mother. Not only is she gonna get to
raise him, Pharaoh's gonna pay her to raise him. So she can
get some extra money for doing what she do already anyway, loving
and raising her baby. And I see what God's doing. He
just make Pharaoh pay her. This poetic justice. I see what
God's doing. His mother's gonna teach him
who he is and what he's supposed to do. And then he's gonna go
to Pharaoh's house And he's going to get all this power. Oh, he's
going to become so powerful. He's going to be Pharaoh's grandson.
Pharaoh's going to fall in love with him. Pharaoh's going to
teach him and educate him. And I just know, I see it. Moses
is going to end up sitting on the throne of Egypt, just like
Joseph did. And once he's on the throne,
he's going to issue a decree that all the Hebrews are free.
I see it. I know what God's doing. And then we see Pharaoh run Moses
out of town on a rail. run like a scared jackrabbit
with his tail between his legs. And we wonder, what's God doing?
You know why we became disappointed? We thought we knew what God was
gonna do, and it's not what he was doing. We tried to figure
out what God's doing instead of trusting by faith. And then,
for 40 years, for 40 years, we would wonder, what is the Lord
doing? Is Moses gone for good? I mean,
where is he? Where's this deliverer of Israel?
I mean, did we confuse things? I thought I knew what the Lord
was doing. It seems so obvious, but it's not happening. What's
going on? You see the problem with all
of our ideas, and can't you apply that, this very same thing to
things going on in your life? I can promise you, I can apply
to things going on in my life. The problem with all of our ideas
is this. All of our ideas include the
arm of the flesh. That's the problem with all of
our ideas. That's why the Lord never uses
my ideas. Because my ideas include the
arm of the flesh. And that's not the way the Lord
does things. In every situation, here and in our lives and the
things that we're dealing with every day, I'm telling you, this
is what the Lord's doing. He is removing all hope in the
flesh. And when all hope in the flesh
is gone, then and only then will the Lord act and accomplish His
will and His purpose. And He's going to do it in such
a way that we can never take any credit for it. See, by faith,
we're going to have to see God did this and He gets all the
glory for it. We're going to give it to Him
all because that is where it belongs. That's the way God does
things. All right, here's the third thing. I mentioned this several times
and this is really the main point that I want you to take home
with you tonight. God's providence always works together to accomplish
the salvation of his elect people. And there's such a beautiful
picture of that. Look at verse four in Exodus two. And his sister
stood afar off to wed or to know what would be done to him. And
the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river
and her maidens walked along by the riverside And when she
saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.
Now, I don't think people bathe every day in Egypt at this time.
But on this particular day, it just so happened, Pharaoh's daughter
needed a bath. And she went down to the river.
Now, there are lots of rivers in Egypt. There are lots of waters.
Remember all those magicians, those false prophets, wherever
they were, said, oh, there's lots of waters in Egypt. But
she just so happened, just so happened to pick this place,
this river, not this pond over here, not that river, but this
river. This place is where she chose
to have a bath on that day. Just so happened. And it just
so happened, she happened to arrive right after Moses' mother
put that baby in that ark and turned and walked away. He was
there for just no time. And it just so happened Farrell's
daughter showed up. And she was just curious enough
to send her maidens to see what's in that basket. She didn't know.
The baby wasn't crying. She didn't know. I mean, she
could have just thought, eh, forget it. I'm going to take
a bath. No, for some reason, she became curious. And she sent
her maidens down there looking at that basket. And when she
saw the baby, she just so happened to fall in love with it. Now,
the last person on earth that you would think would fall in
love with a Hebrew baby boy is the daughter of Pharaoh. Pharaoh
is the one who ordered the death of all Hebrew boys, baby boys. Pharaoh ordered that. Now, I
know something about daddy's girls. Daddy's girls are gonna
bite their daddy. Daddy's girls think, boy, whatever
daddy says is right, even if it don't happen to be. Daddy's
girls, they think it's right. She just wasn't gonna question
her daddy. She loved her daddy, whatever her daddy said. But
you know what? Even though she should have turned
that thing upside down and drowned that baby, because that's what
her daddy said, she fell in love with that baby. Just so happened.
Now, if you don't see the sovereignty of God in that story, you're
blind. Or you just don't want to see
one or the other. But there's also a beautiful picture of salvation
here. Just like Pharaoh's daughter,
she came down to the river, it says. The son of God one day
came down. He came down to where his people
were. And when he found them, he found them helpless. They're
as helpless as this little baby, they're dead. So they're helpless,
they're dead in sin, they can't do anything to save themselves.
They're completely and utterly helpless. And unless somebody
does something for them, right there's where they're gonna die.
But the Lord came to where his people were, came on purpose,
because he loves them. And when the Savior got to where
his people were, you know how he found them? He found them
under the curse of the law. That's how baby Moses was. He
was under the curse of the law. The law said he had to die. He's
under the curse of the law. You and I are born under the
curse of the law. God's law demands that we be put to death for our
sin. Just the same way Pharaoh demanded the death of all those
boy babies. And the source of judgment and the source of death
was the Nile River. That's where they were supposed
to take those babies and drown them in the Nile River. Pharaoh's daughter drew Moses
out of those waters The Savior came to his people and he reached
down and he lifted him out He lifted him out of the curse of
the law. He lifted him out of the from under God's judgment
and he gave him life and Here's how he did it He did it by dying
in the place of his people See, there still had to be death.
Now Pharaoh's law is unjust. God's law is just. God's law
demands there be death for sin. So in order to save his people
from their sin and accomplish his father's eternal will, the
Lord Jesus Christ died so that his people could live. God's
son was born on earth as a man. Just a man, just like you and
me. Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, but he's the God man. The God man was born under that
law. The same law that demands our
death. That's the law he was born under. He was born obligated
to keep it. He was born obligated to obey
it. And he grew up under that law. And he kept it so well. He kept it perfectly. He kept
it so well, the scripture says he honored and magnified the
law. Nothing you and I have ever done has honored the law. We've
dishonored the law. We've not magnified the law.
The Savior honored and magnified it. And the way Moses grew up
was a picture of that. Now Pharaoh, he's the law. I
mean, he is the law of the land. There can be no questioning his
commandments, his judgment, he's the law. And the law demanded
death for Hebrew baby boys. And Moses grew up under that
law, under the man who was the law. He was the law in Egypt
and Moses grew up under it, and Moses pleased Pharaoh, just like
the Lord Jesus pleased his father by obeying the law that he grew
up under. But there came a day that Moses displeased Pharaoh. Look over at chapter two, verse
11. And it came to pass in those
days when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren
and looked on their burdens And he spied an Egyptian smiting
a Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that
way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian
and hid him in the sand. And he went out the second day.
Behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together, and he said
to him that did the wrong, wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And
he said, who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest
thou to kill me as thou killest the Egyptian? And Moses feared
and said, surely this thing is known, Now, when Pharaoh heard
this thing, he sought to slay Moses. See, now Moses had done
the thing that violated Pharaoh's character, that violated Pharaoh's
law. He tried to set Israel free. He began to try to set those
slaves free, and Pharaoh would not abide it. He used to be so
pleased with Moses, but now he demanded that Moses die. Now you see the picture. This
is what happened to Christ our Savior when he was made sin on
Calvary's tree. Oh, he pleased his father. He pleased his father so well,
the father spoke from heaven and said, this is my beloved
son in whom I'm well pleased. I'm well pleased with him. And
even though the father was well pleased with the son, Even though
everything that the Lord Jesus did as a man under the law pleased
his father, when Christ was made sin, the father demanded that
he die. And the father didn't send an
executioner to do the job, he did it himself. He took the sword
of justice and plunged it into the heart of his fellow and put
his son to death. Now Christ died. but not in the way that you and
I would have thought. See, our God is sovereign. I'll
tell you what that means. He always does His will. He does
His will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of
the earth, and none can stay His hand or say to Him, what
doest thou? And since God is sovereign, as if to make a demonstration
of it to all of creation, God often uses His enemies to accomplish
his purpose. He uses people who do wrong.
It's wrong. It's sinful. It's wrong. It's
rebellious. But our sovereign God uses it
to accomplish his purpose. Pharaoh and his daughter are
sworn enemies of God Almighty. They're sworn enemies of Jehovah. But God used them to raise the
instrument of their own destruction. You think of that. And the Lord
did the same thing with both the Jews and the Romans at Calvary. Remember, the Jews brought our
Lord to Pilate. Pilate was a big deal, and the
power had gone to his head. And he bragged to the Lord, don't
you know I've got power to release you or power to crucify you?
But in reality, he didn't, did he? Pilate could only crucify
the Lord. because that was the Father's
will. The Lord just used Pilate as an instrument to accomplish
his will. And then the Jews, you know, they had hated this
man Jesus of Nazareth for a long time. I mean, how many times
did they try to make up these big plans, you know, to take
him and kill him? And they finally thought they'd hatched a plan
that would work. And they're going to get rid
of this Jesus once and for all. And boy, when they got their
hands on him. They did everything their wicked
imaginations could come up with to do. They lied on him. They beat him. They mocked him.
They turned him over to the Romans who did the same thing. Just
did every wicked thing they could think of to do. Something moved
in the heart of those Roman soldiers to beat this man more than anybody
else they'd ever crucified. so that his visage was marred
more than any other man that they'd ever crucified. For some
reason, unbeknownst to them, they took out such hatred on
this man, Jesus of Nazareth. You know why? They're instruments
in the hand of God, accomplishing his will. After they did everything
that they wanted to do, both the Jews and the Romans, when
they did everything that they wanted to do, let me ask you,
did they accomplish their will? They didn't, did they? Well,
they did everything they wanted to do. All they did was do what
God determined before to be done. And God wrote it in the Old Testament.
So we know this is not just them acting on their own. This is
what God determined before to be done so that there would be
a sacrifice for the sin of His people. I wrote this statement down.
I've been thinking about it, thinking about it, and thinking
about it. I've been thinking about it because it's too big for the
human mind to comprehend. But you think about this. Our
God is sovereign over even the free will actions of man. Man
does what he wants to do. It's his free will. It's his
choice. He can choose to do this or choose not to do it. He chooses
to do it. And when he does, he does what God determined before
to be done. I mean, you want to know the
definition of absolute sovereignty? God's sovereign over even the
freewill actions of sinful man. It's too big to comprehend, but
now that's true, isn't it? You see, at Calvary, Christ must
be slain. He must suffer and he must die. But the Jews can't do it. Because
the Jews' form of capital punishment is stoning. The Jews can't do
it. The Jews have to turn him over
to the Romans because the Romans' form of capital punishment is
crucifixion on a cross. And years and years and years
and years before Rome started crucifying people on that hill
outside of Jerusalem or everywhere else in the Roman Empire, God
said, whoever's lifted up upon a tree is cursed. And years later,
The Savior was lifted up on a tree to show you and me, he's bearing
the curse of sin for his people. If Christ died for you, God did
all that to show you, now you trust Christ. He bore the curse
of sin for you, so you'll never bear it. He died separated from
God, so you never will. Now you trust him. That's why
God did all that. It's to save his people, it's
to accomplish the redemption of his people by the blood sacrifice
of his son. God even used Satan to accomplish
his will. I mean, you think of that, okay,
you think, well, men aren't all that smart and they're not all
that powerful. This is Satan. God used even Satan to accomplish
his will. You see, Satan understood the
promise made back there to Adam and Eve in the garden about the
seed of woman. He knew there's a man coming to put him out of
business, gonna crush his head. Satan understood that. Satan
knew who the Lord Jesus was. He knew this is the Son of God
in human flesh. He's come to put Satan out of
business, to crush his head, and God allowed Satan to move
in the hearts of men, to betray the Lord, and then to crucify
the God of glory. And as the Savior was suffering
on that tree, Satan had to think, Got rid of him forever. Satan
had to think, I've got rid of the son of God. I've defeated
God's purpose. And God used that cross, the
cross, the instrument that would slay his son, the instrument
that would show he's bearing the curse of sin for his son.
God used that cross to destroy the power of Satan forever. The
cross sealed Satan's doom just as surely as Moses sealed Satan's
doom. The Red Sea, picture of God's
wrath or the picture of Pharaoh's wrath. You know, you could throw
babies in that Red Sea and drown them. That instrument that Pharaoh
determined to get rid of God's people, what did God do with
it? He used that instrument to destroy
Pharaoh. He used Satan as the instrument
of his own destruction by moving men to crucify the Son of Glory.
And when Christ died and he gave up the ghost, redemption was
accomplished. All of God's people are delivered.
They're delivered from the power of sin. They're delivered from
the curse of sin. They're delivered from the condemnation of sin.
They're delivered from the fear of the law. They're delivered.
God Almighty accomplished his purpose in the most unlikely
way. that men would have ever dreamed
he would have done it. Unlikely. And then, God tells his people
about it in the most unlikely way. You'd think if God did something
like this so wonderful for his people, you'd think God might
send an angel to tell us about it. You'd think maybe Savior
himself would come back in the flesh and tell folks about it.
People believe him. I mean, surely you'd believe
an angel, but if you wouldn't believe an angel, surely you'd believe
Christ risen from the dead if you saw Him in the flesh. But
that's not the way God does it. God tells His people, He lets
them in on what He's done for them in the most unlikely means. By having one sinful man tell
other sinful men and women what Christ has done, who He is, what
God's purpose is in the redemption of His people, and the Holy Spirit
uses that faulty preaching. Not preaching of a faulty savior,
not preaching of a faulty doctrine, but from the faltering lips of
a sinful man to give his people eternal life. To reveal Christ
to them, to give them faith in Christ. That's why men call it
foolishness. Please God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them to believe. Men call that foolishness
because that's the most unlikely way we could think of that God
would reveal himself to a sinner. But you know why God does it
that way? So that God gets all the glory for him. If you've heard from God, and
God given you faith, and God strengthened your faith, God
feeds you and edifies you and enables you to keep going, You
know, a little further, and he does it from the preaching of
the gospel from these lips. You have to say, God did that. You have to. I mean, if you know
me at all, you have to say that. That's what God did. Aren't you
thankful God does it that way? I am. I'm so thankful that God
does it that way, because that gives us rest in Christ. It gives us rest in the sovereign
providence of God even when we don't understand what He's doing.
And I love it that way, don't you? Let's bow together. Our Father, we're so thankful
for this blessed passage of Your Word that You've let us look
into. So thankful for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ that
You've showed us in it. And Father, I pray You take Your
Word as it's been preached. Cause it to reach the hearts
of Your people Father, let us see your glory. Reveal your glory
to us. Cause us, each one, to believe
in and rest in Christ our Savior. Cause us to flee to him. Father,
how we thank you for such a refuge. How we thank you for such a deliverer
that we can trust, absolutely trust our eternal souls to him.
Father, we thank you. We pray you bless your word.
Bless us in hearing. Father, this great blessing we
ask for Christ's sake, for his glory and his sake alone. Amen. All right, Sean.