Reflections on the Providence of God

In studying the epistle to the Philippians God has amazed me with the incomprehensible grandeur of His providential workings in the salvation of His elect and the begetting of the church. There was a point in time on the "finished" side of the cross and resurrection when men and women who would be involved in the Philippian church were as of yet completely ignorant and unsuspecting of God's gracious intervention. They slept, arose, learned, played, ate, drank, and breathed in the normalities and typical occurrences of life. None of them, however, did any of those things with the conscious awareness of God. None of them were awakened by the urgency of spending time with Jesus.

Saul spent his days in vigorous study and murderous threats against God's Church. In the same day, Lydia, perhaps, frequented the waters nearby seeking to fish out the shellfish for the purple dye found within its throat, and selling her goods to others. Meanwhile, a slave girl with a spirit of divination would sit in front of men and women to tell them their fortunes, bringing in the cash for her owners. At the same time, a jailer played the role of family man, while working the graveyard shift at the prison. And the inmates that he watched endured the same daily grind of survival, incarceration, and hopelessness. And what of the young man from Lystra, Timothy; what youthful endeavors did he day after day after day attend to?

Each of these persons, diverse in ethnicity, age, religion, presuppositions, backgrounds, and monetary class attended to their typical day, deeds, and conversations without the slightest bit of knowledge that God had in eternity past ordained and was now effecting the circumstances whereby within a short time all of them would come face to face with the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ in the preaching of the Gospel. For God's providence is plain from the biblical account, that:

Accordingly, God met Saul on his way to Damascus to persecute the disciples there, but Christ converted him to defend what he formerly threatened, Acts 9:1-19.

God then called Saul, a Hebrew of Hebrews, to be His instrument to carry His name unto the Gentiles - and kings and the children of Israel, Acts 9:15.

Having called Saul as an instrument to the Gentile nations, God refined and glorified Himself in that calling in Antioch of Pisidia. For after he had preached the Gospel to the Jews there, and the next Sabbath had come, a great many Gentiles attended, to which the Jews became jealous and contradicted what Paul was saying; therefore, Paul responds by telling them their condemning fault and blindness, for the Gentiles were included, and thus, Paul sought it all the more eagerly, Acts 13.

God brought Paul to the habitation of Timothy on his second missionary journey, having apparently already converted the boy, and thus Paul was inclined to have Timothy accompany him, Acts 16:1-5.

God then directed their missionary endeavor. He, in infinite wisdom and purpose, forbid them from their own human endeavors and re-routed them to Macedonia, by which the Gospel was destined to enter Europe; and it must be believed that God's intention was thus to save those who were currently unsuspecting and presumably going about their daily order even still, unaware that the Gospel would soon be among them in effectual power, Acts 16:6-10.

And God's providence is especially seen here, once they arrive in Philippi, for many things happen here to advance the Gospel that can only be attributed to the grace and glory of God's providential workings; thus,

1. Paul seeking a synagogue on the Sabbath found none, but rather a congregation of Gentile women who being proselytes had gathered for prayer just outside the city gates. Hereby, God greeted Lydia in the Gospel, "(opening) her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul," Acts 16:14. Lydia believed and her household as well, being baptized and bearing immediate fruit, Acts 16:15.

2. That in the course of their ministry they attracted a demonic tag along, a slave girl who doubled as a fortune teller. For many days she did this, crying out, "These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation," whereupon Paul, becoming annoyed of the correlation between God's kingdom and that of darkness, commanded the spirit to come out in the name of Jesus, and in a display of glory, the girl was healed, Acts 16:16-24.

3. But God's providence not yet being satisfied in the place made use of the previous occurrence to enrage her owners and eventually the greater crowd, so that Paul and Silas were stripped, beaten with rods, and imprisoned, whereby the Gospel now came face to face with the unsuspecting inmates and a third shift jailer.

a. Here the inmates, having no doubt caught wind of these missionaries and the beating that they had incurred, yet heard them praying and singing hymns to God (Acts 16:25) - they were listening to them! They exhibited by the exceeding grace of God the true joy of authentic believers, who with chains on their feet and wrists and lashes on their back yet rejoice in the midst of suffering because of their love for and joy in Christ Jesus and His Gospel. So it must have been a convincing thing when by a prison shaking, shackle loosening earthquake God opened the prison doors and unfastened everyone's bonds, that He could and would do the same for them spiritually in Christ.

b. And now the jailer thinking himself under the death sentence and aiming to commit himself to an "honorable death", found that he need not, for Paul cried out to him that he had not lost the inmates presence. Thus having certainly witnessed much of their partnership in the Gospel, fell on his knees and asked with much earnestness, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Upon hearing the remedy of Christ, he believed, his household also, was baptized and bore fruit, Acts 16:25-34.

By these evidences, God's providence founded the church at Philippi - for God converted the means of the Gospel (Paul), and by the means, which He sovereignly directed to Philippi, and also by many providential workings and effectual grace, brought a host of people into the covenant of Christ, who until that glorious intervention neither sought Him nor desired Him nor considered Him for themselves.

And how this is the case of our own salvation! That God had set many things in motion that we were unaware of until they presented themselves in order to secure our salvation and, by our conversion, the salvation of others still, right now, unsuspecting!

What heights of grace and glory do these realities of God set before us? I did not awaken one morning and think to myself that today I will "give my life to the Lord." I attended to my typical days, my regular activities, my ordered vanities, the same conversations, all with not even a symblance of a thought or affection Godwards. I was dead in my sins and trespasses. But God, in His marvelous providence set many divers things in motion and at their fullness of time, the Gospel of God and the power of His effectual call found me, not vice versa! For I grew up in what cannot properly be titled a "church", though I did not know it; I attended youth service, but due to sin heard nothing; I slept, ate, and drank; I went to school, watched television, and played basketball with imaginary people guarding me; and I am certain that what God had ordained in eternity past was already being carried out, but of those innumerable things I cannot know, but I do know that He caused a young girls father to transfer from out of state, a girl that I would begin to date in high school, a girl who was a believer in Christ whom I had apparently fooled into thinking that I was as well, so that by her invitation I stepped out of my "church" for the first time and into her Southern Baptist affiliated church, whereupon I heard the Gospel for the first time, God's Spirit beating within my chest and opening up the eyes of my heart to see sin, judgment, its abiding principle, consequence, and the eternality of that consequence; two months later at that same church at a youth service, the Gospel was heralded once more by which God opened my heart to the comfort of Christ as the resolution to the conflict that I had internally been dealing with from the previous encounter - and then at somewhere between the two o'clock and three o'clock hour of the night God, Himself, re-created me in Christ! God did this work! God, in His gracious providence, saved me in and through my Lord Jesus Christ! God wonderfully intervened - and guess what (?) I didn't think that God had violated my right of free will either like so many today, and if He did, then thank God for that in Jesus' name!

Brothers and sisters, praise your God today for His providential work in your life. And know that if these things be so, and they are, that there are many even today whom you will come in contact with who are unsuspecting of God's intervention; that you are not only greeting them with yourself, but with the Gospel of Christ within you; by you God makes his appeal to the unsuspecting sinner. This is how He has decided to make use of His children - and it is glorious calling that we have to "proclaim the excellencies of Him who called (us) out of darkness into His marvelous light," 1 Peter 2:9. Let us beseech God that we might recognize the opportunities in a given day to come under the excellency of His providence and, by His will, be the providential means of Christ to the one who even now least suspects to meet the Lord of glory! In Jesus' name. Amen.