A Sovereign Bullet: Finding Unshakeable Hope in God’s Meticulous Providence

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:00:00] I invite you to pray with me, would you pray? Father in heaven, we at this moment need you.
[00:00:07] I need you to help me to speak with truth according to your word, with clarity, with appropriate affections for what is great and what is horrible, with love and with humility.
[00:00:27] these young people need your help to understand, to penetrate through words to realities and to feel the weight of those realities and to be transformed by them. I pray that your meticulous providence would be understood and would
[00:00:54] become an integral part of their lives so that they have amazing boldness in this world ready to lay down their lives because their God rules everything I ask this in Jesus name Amen on April 20 2001 fighter jet in over
[00:01:21] Peru part of the Peruvian Air Force locked in on an a missionary aviation plane carrying a young family and a pilot and open fire mistaking supposedly the plane for drug trafficking one burst of shots went
[00:01:48] through the legs of the pilot who put the plane into a emergency dive and landed it in a river and everybody was able to get out before it sank but another bullet had gone by the husband's head Jim Bowers was his name and
[00:02:08] shattered the windshield and another bullet went into his wife's back came out the front went into her seven year seven month old daughter sitting in her lap and killed both of them what would you say at the memorial service if you
[00:02:35] were the husband having lost your wife and your seven-month-old daughter what would you say there are thousands of people today I'm tempted to say millions who are being taught by high-profile people in this country who would say you
[00:02:59] ought not to be looking for a divine purpose I'll give you a quote when an individual inflicts pain on another individual one should not go looking for in quotes the purpose of God in the event Christians frequently speak of the
[00:03:27] purpose of God in the midst of tragedy caused by someone else but this I regard the author, our regard to simply be a piously confused way of thinking. So as Veronica and Charity are shot dead by a Peruvian fighter jet, don't ask about
[00:04:00] God's purpose. It's a piously confused way of thinking to even contemplate the possibility that God would be involved purposefully in that event. This is the price that some of you will pay as you follow Christ obediently to the
[00:04:26] unreached of the world. It's always been the case, it will always be the case till Jesus comes, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. What would you say? What did Jim Bowers say at his wife's memorial service? Here's what
[00:04:52] he closed with. Ronnie, that's his nickname for his wife Veronica, Ronnie and Charity were instantly killed by the same bullet. Would you say that's a stray bullet? And it didn't reach Kevin, the pilot, who was right in front of Charity.
[00:05:16] It stayed in charity. That was a sovereign bullet. Sovereign bullet. That's his phrase. Appointed bullet. Planned bullet. Now I suppose it's no accident that speaking at his invitation at his memorial service were Steve Saint and
[00:05:48] Elizabeth Elliot. Steve Saint is the son of Nate Saint, one of the five missionaries speared to death 70 years ago this week in Ecuador. And so Steve Saint is a son and he was the age of this little boy in the airplane when his
[00:06:13] father was killed in missionary faithfulness. I suppose that's not an accident because both Elizabeth Elliot and Steve Saint share a sovereign bullet theology, unashamedly at the memorial service. Steve Saint had done years of research on the death of his father in Ecuador and he wrote an article which I
[00:06:48] read and was stunned by in which he said this, as they described their recollections. So these are the people who were involved in that mission recalling what happened that afternoon as five young men were killed and shocked
[00:07:12] the whole world by the Warani Indians. As they described their recollections, it occurred to me how incredibly unlikely it was that the killing took place at at all. It is an anomaly, something inexplicable and strange. I cannot explain it outside of divine
[00:07:41] intervention." And when I read that sentence, I thought, either he miswrote or I misread, because doesn't everybody say, no, no, no, they died because God did not intervene.
[00:08:00] and here's his son the son of the man was killed saying I can't explain the death of my father except by divine intervention so I wrote to Steve saying I said did you mean that I wrote to him I found his address and I wrote to him
[00:08:23] and he wrote back and said yes I meant that so I invited him to a conference so we could hear more of his researches and his story and what's behind that. I could hardly believe
[00:08:38] that he would say that out loud, that without divine intervention, my father would not have been killed. And then I'll skip over Elizabeth Elliot. You go get the story. You can find it online. She
[00:08:56] She said, awesome things, but I've only got so much time.
[00:09:01] What did Jim Bowers say?
[00:09:03] The husband at that memorial service.
[00:09:07] He closed like this.
[00:09:09] For the world, the pain is fundamental and the joy is superficial because it won't last.
[00:09:19] For us, the pain is superficial and the joy is fundamental.
[00:09:26] It lasts forever.
[00:09:33] So I want to try to persuade you of God's meticulous providence from the Bible.
[00:09:45] I want to say four things about it, four things about God's providence.
[00:09:54] There's a slight difference between, in my vocabulary, and I think it's pretty normal, between the meaning of sovereignty of God providence of God. So sovereignty is God's ability to do anything he please.
[00:10:12] Nobody can frustrate him or thwart his purposes. He is sovereign. Providence is sovereignty plus an all-wise purpose. The word sovereignty doesn't carry anything about purposefulness. You just do what you want. Providence implies there's There's always a fatherly design for His people in all His sovereign acts.
[00:10:44] So I want to know four things about the providence of God, and I want you to see them in the Bible, and if God would be pleased, I would love Him to persuade you that this is so.
[00:11:01] Number one, I'll list them, then we'll take them one at a time and work our way through the Scriptures.
[00:11:06] One, the providence of God is meticulous. It is all-embracing.
[00:11:13] Nothing lies outside the providence of God.
[00:11:17] He is sovereign over everything.
[00:11:24] Good and evil, Satan and angels, electrons and galaxies, animal instincts and human-willing everything. Number two, we'll come back to these and give biblical foundations. Number two, because of this all-embracing, meticulous providence, there is an all-satisfying gospel. The gospel exists because providence is this way.
[00:11:56] If providence were not this way, there would be no gospel, no salvation, no missions, no everlasting joy. Number three, because of the providence of God and its meticulous, all-embracing character, God's missionary purpose cannot fail. It will succeed. Nothing
[00:12:24] can stop it. He's God. And number four, because of this all-embracing providence, your life in his service has eternal and I would say infinite significance.
[00:12:47] Your life won't be wasted. He won't let it be wasted. He's God. He's sovereign. His providence is meticulous down to the hairs on your head. He will not let you waste your life as you give your
[00:13:01] life to him and his service. So let's take those four one at a time and see if they are in the Bible. So you be good Bereans. It doesn't really matter what John Piper thinks at
[00:13:13] all. It matters infinitely what this book says. The only authority any preacher at this conference has is whether they can show you from the book that what they're saying is so. So you judge now. Number one, the providence of God is all-embracing.
[00:13:36] It's meticulous. Nothing is outside the providence of God. He governs over good and evil, Satan and angels, electrons and galaxies, animal impulses, and human willing. And I invite you to open your Bible to James chapter 4. We're gonna
[00:13:54] start in James 4, we're gonna end in James 4, and look at other texts in between. We'll read verses 13 to 16 and focus on verse 15. James 4 verse 13, Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow, we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.
[00:14:29] Or we'll drive to Louisville and go to the cross conference.
[00:14:35] Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.
[00:14:39] What is your life?
[00:14:41] You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
[00:14:46] Instead, here's what you ought to say.
[00:14:48] if the Lord wills we will live and do this or that as it is you boast in your arrogance all such boasting is evil so focus with me on verse 15 you ought to say if the Lord wills we will live and do this or that so there's an if clause
[00:15:21] and a result clause with two parts the if clause is if the Lord wills and the two results are we will live and we'll look at that in about 20 minutes at the end and the second one is we will do this or that what does that mean if the
[00:15:51] Lord wills we will do this or that what does that mean it means he decides if you do this and he decides if you do that and it's always wrong therefore to say if I do this it is in God's sovereign will and if I do that it is
[00:16:24] outside God's sovereign will that's never true this or that only happens if he wills. Let me stick in a parenthesis here. This would be another message, crucial message, but I'll give it one minute. Make the distinction in your head
[00:16:44] because it's in the Bible between the sovereign will of God and the revealed will of God. The sovereign will of God, this text I'm arguing teaches, is everything that happens. Nothing happens except by God's sovereign will. The
[00:17:07] revealed will is thou shalt not murder and the rest of the Ten Commandments and the commands of Scripture. And they're not always the same as we will see in just a moment because God wills the murder of his son. Close that parenthesis.
[00:17:32] Study that. Get that fixed. You cannot make sense out of the Bible unless you distinguish the moral or the revealed will of God from the sovereign will of God. So I conclude from verse 15, second half of the verse, that God's sovereign
[00:17:54] will is all-encompassing. I think this or that is designed to say every little thing. If you leave here at midnight or leave here at 10, God decides. If you make it across the street or don't, God decides. That's the sovereign will of God
[00:18:15] in the teaching of verse 15. Also the teaching of Hebrews, I mean Ephesians 1 11, God works all things together according to the counsel of His will. All all things. Or, Proverbs 16, the lot is cast in the lap, every decision is from the Lord,
[00:18:37] which means the dice are rolled on the table in Reno or Las Vegas, the dice are rolled on the table, and every number is decided by God on the top of the dice. That's meticulous providence.
[00:18:55] Matthew 10, not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from your father. Millions of sparrows are falling to the ground, I presume, every day in this world. Dead because of old age. God decides when every one of them falls to the ground.
[00:19:24] That's meticulous providence. It's what Matthew 10 29 says. The king's heart is a a stream in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he will. Trump, you think you're in charge? You're not in charge. Putin, you're not in charge. Mamdani, you're not in charge.
[00:19:48] God's in charge. Job 42.2, no purpose of yours can be thwarted. None. So, the first thing I want you to see is that the providence of God in the Bible is meticulous and all-embracing.
[00:20:14] If the Lord wills, we will do this or that. Number two, because of this all-embracing providence, there is an all-satisfying gospel. There will be no gospel, no salvation, no No everlasting joy, no missions, no Christianity, no cross-conference without such meticulous
[00:20:49] providence.
[00:20:53] Before we look at the most important verse that I'll show you tonight, here's the question you should be asking, and some of you are.
[00:21:05] Is it possible for God to will that sin happen without sinning?
[00:21:19] Is it possible for God to ordain that evil come to pass without himself being evil or doing evil?
[00:21:32] Here's the striking thing about the answer to that question in the Bible.
[00:21:38] The clearest answer to those two questions, which are the same question, the clearest answer in the Bible to that question comes at the point of the greatest evil in the history of the world and God's entrance into it to deliver you from it.
[00:22:04] Now let's look at the text.
[00:22:06] This is Acts chapter 4, verses 27 and 28.
[00:22:16] Acts chapter 4, verse 27 and 28, Christians are praying about God's sovereignty over the death of Jesus and what's happening in Jerusalem at those times.
[00:22:33] And here's what they say, verse 27 of Acts 4, truly in this city, there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your
[00:23:00] plan had predestined to take place." That's breathtaking.
[00:23:13] There are four centers of sin in this verse.
[00:23:17] Number one, Herod's sin of mocking Jesus, Luke 23.
[00:23:23] Number two, Pilate's sin of cowardice and expediency, delivering Jesus over to be crucified.
[00:23:30] Number three, the Gentile soldier's sin of cruelty and brutality, pressing a thorn crown down on Jesus' head and spitting in his face.
[00:23:42] fourth the center of sinning in the mob of Israel crying crucify him crucify him and the end of verse 28 says about that greatest of all evil in the history of the world the murder of the Son of God whatever God's hand and God's plan had
[00:24:09] predestined to take place. So I say with no shame, no hesitancy of being contradicted, God planned and he predestined the most evil act in the history of the world without being evil. In fact, at that moment he was the most
[00:24:33] loving person in the universe because at the death of his son he was bearing our evil our sin in order that we might escape from all the evil we have done by trusting Jesus at that moment he not only saved millions of people who would
[00:25:01] put their trust in him he put missions in motion because revelation 5 9 says The Lamb of God was slain, which by the way is such a crisp, clean, inoffensive word for the Greek words for gizomai, slain. The word is slaughtered. It's what
[00:25:36] you do to a lamb by slicing its neck open. I've seen videos of it in the streets of Arab countries as they hold the goat or the lamb down and just slit the throat. It is
[00:25:50] horrible to watch an animal. I said to my wife the other day as I was rereading the story, his mother was there. His mother was there as they slit his throat, so to speak. It was horrible.
[00:26:16] The Lamb of God was slain, was slaughtered, and by his blood he ransomed people for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. That's what happened at the cross. Cross-conference was brought into being at Golgotha.
[00:26:41] There would be no cross-conference at all, no missions, no gospel, no everlasting joy.
[00:26:47] if God had not ordained the worst evil in the history of the world in order that the greatest good might be done through the death of his son which you are being drawn into at this conference we pray here's a warning suppose you go
[00:27:10] home now to your church or your campus and you get drawn into an argument about about the sovereignty of God, which is almost unavoidable, sooner or later.
[00:27:24] When I was teaching college classes, every class went there, whether I wanted them to or not.
[00:27:31] It is an unavoidable question if God is God.
[00:27:38] And they get into an argument with you about the providence of God, the sovereignty of God.
[00:27:46] May I suggest, don't play games.
[00:27:53] I don't like theological gamesmanship.
[00:27:56] So many people just babble away as though somebody might win this argument.
[00:28:04] It's not about winning an argument, it's about did Christ die by God's design for lost sinners?
[00:28:15] And was it murder?
[00:28:20] Just keep in mind what's at stake.
[00:28:25] What's at stake is the gospel and God's intentionality to send his son to be killed by sinners, Herod, Pilate, Gentile soldiers, mobs crying out, all of it according to his plan and his predestined design.
[00:28:48] That's what's at stake.
[00:28:50] We're just not playing games here.
[00:28:52] We're not into argument.
[00:28:58] Number one, God's providence is all-embracing.
[00:29:03] Number two, without it, there would be no gospel.
[00:29:06] Number three, without it, without the providence of God in its meticulous, all-embracing nature, there would be no successful missionary purpose, but with it, missions cannot fail.
[00:29:27] Don't you want to give yourself to something that cannot fail.
[00:29:32] I sure do.
[00:29:34] I mean, I'm old and I still do.
[00:29:37] I don't want to spend the next weeks that I have left or months or whatever it is to investing in anything except what lasts, right?
[00:29:48] Forever, because that's where I'm going.
[00:29:53] Matthew 24, 14, this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed, will be, not may be, This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.
[00:30:12] He's got it all planned out.
[00:30:16] Missions is going to succeed, then the end will come.
[00:30:20] And you know the mission isn't done because he's not here yet.
[00:30:26] When he's done, he'll come.
[00:30:28] Till then we got a mandate.
[00:30:31] Go be a witness to the nations, all of them, especially the ones that don't have any access to the gospel at all I heard myself reading this in the introductory introductory introductory video here I'll read again this is John 16 I lay down my life for the sheep Jesus says I
[00:30:54] lay down my life for the sheep and I have other sheep that are not of this fold this Jewish fold talking to Jews I have other people Jews my Jewish disciples I have other people besides you outside this fold outside this
[00:31:13] Jewish fold they will let me back up I must bring them also must they will listen to my voice not may will I will be there will be one flock and one shepherd. That's John 10, 15, and 16. That's John's promise of a successful mission
[00:31:42] among Gentiles. I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Do you see the connection between the meticulous sovereignty, providence of God, and the success of the mission we're calling you to be a part
[00:32:02] It can't fail. The doctrine of God's sovereignty, the reality of God's sovereignty, and the reality of the success of missions stand or fall together. I will build my church. So number one, God's providence is all-embracing. Number two, there's no gospel without that providence. And number three,
[00:32:29] the missionary purpose of God cannot fail because of that providence. And finally, number four, to bring it home to you. If you are in God's purpose, if you are in Christ and in his service,
[00:32:44] whatever that manifold different calling is for each of you, you can't fail. Seriously, you cannot fail in him. His all-embracing providence is going to give you a meaningful, infinitely significant life. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the
[00:33:12] day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1.6. Your steps are established by the Lord. Psalm 37. He will work everything together for your good. Romans 8. He will rejoice in doing good to you. Jeremiah 32.
[00:33:31] He is for you. And if He is for you, who can be against you? Meaning, nobody can succeed against you. I mean, just do the math, right? He is infinitely powerful. He is meticulously sovereign
[00:33:44] over everything in your life. You cannot be defeated by any of His adversaries. You can't.
[00:33:52] If you're in His hands, you cannot fail. No words that come out of your mouth, no love that comes out of your hand will return to you empty he will prosper in the thing for which
[00:34:07] he sent it you will say with the apostle paul to live as christ and to die as gain so make my day let me live or take my life you cannot stop me who shall separate us from the
[00:34:27] love of christ shall tribulation or distress persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written, we are being killed all day long. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. So how does that work? We are being killed all day
[00:34:53] long. We are more than conquerors. Here's the way Jesus said that, I think. Jesus said in Luke 21, 116. Some of you they will put to death, but not a hair of your head will perish. The Bible talks
[00:35:22] that way, doesn't it? That's strange. Some of you they will put to death. That's true of those in this room. And not a hair of your head will perish. Doesn't that mean at least in God's
[00:35:44] meticulous providence over your life.
[00:35:48] He is so attentive and so mightily and particularly careful with your life.
[00:35:55] No matter what happens to you, he's watching so closely as the hairs of your head are numbered that nothing can happen to you apart from his sovereign good purposes for your life because to live is Christ and to die is gain.
[00:36:12] You can't be defeated if God is meticulously sovereign.
[00:36:22] Let's go back to James 4 and land this plane, okay?
[00:36:25] James 4, back to verse 15.
[00:36:33] If God wills, we will live.
[00:36:38] We skipped over we will live and went straight to and do this or that.
[00:36:42] So now we're focusing on we will live.
[00:36:47] If the Lord wills, we will live.
[00:36:50] Henry Martin was a missionary who died at age 31 to Persia, India.
[00:36:59] Here's what he wrote the month that he died, 1831, I mean 1812.
[00:37:10] Whether life or death be mine, may Christ be magnified in me.
[00:37:17] If he has work for me to do, I cannot die.
[00:37:30] Is it not wonderful, young people?
[00:37:33] I feel this at age almost 80 is it not wonderful at your age or my age that you can walk out of here we can walk out of here and know beyond the shadow of a
[00:37:48] doubt because of all these truths that we are immortal until our work for Jesus is done nobody can take your life apart from God's design for your good and for good of the peoples and for the glory of God. You are immortal. You should be the freest, most
[00:38:11] courageous, most risk-taking, most loving, most humble people in the history of the world because of these truths. You can't die until His work for you is done because He is meticulously providential over your life i did a funeral on august 9 for a young girl 20 12 years old who died
[00:38:42] in a country in africa where her parents had spent 15 years at least among unreached peoples totally unreached no believers at all far from medical facilities got malaria complications dead at age 12 they brought her home and we did the service they're part of our church this is
[00:39:07] going to happen in your life that's what it costs it's always cost this it will always cost this what would you say to the to the family we sang at their request it is well with my soul when peace
[00:39:36] like a river tendeth my way and sorrows like sea billows roll whatever my lot he has taught me to say it is well it is well with my soul and i stood up after that song and i looked at these hundreds
[00:39:51] of people i said are you kidding me all you people you're singing it is well here's this family you think it is well with my soul you you family are singing it is well with my soul she's dead
[00:40:08] that's what i said i said those very words because you just got to take this seriously we are not playing games this little girl is dead and she's lying right there and those are her parents and her seven brothers and sisters and here's what happened a first week of december
[00:40:33] they go back their visa is going to run out it has run out now january 1 but they went back because they had a six-week window and they wanted to have the opportunity to testify to the gospel
[00:40:51] to the hundreds of muslims who would come culturally appropriately expressing condolences so from december 18 to 21 they told me when it would happen my wife and i were praying they sat on a green mat he sent me pictures with peanuts and dates and water and a bible
[00:41:15] and for 10 hours a day they found the wherewithal to tell unreached people about christ and the hope that their daughter has and they have for everlasting life and i just stood back in absolute awe at the spiritual resources that they found.
[00:41:37] And if you were to ask them, and I emailed about this just a week and a half ago to make sure I could say all this, they would say the reason we could find the resources
[00:41:51] is because of God's meticulous, all-embracing providence that ordained the murder of His Son for the salvation of people among all the nations, including this people group, and they have led many to Jesus and had unleashed by that death
[00:42:13] a mission that we still want to be a part of.
[00:42:18] I tell you, I've got heroes in this world, and that's the kind of people that they are.
[00:42:25] So we sang it as well, we're gonna sing it now, and I invite you to mean it and to give your life up for the truth of it.
[00:42:34] Young people, get a Christ-exalting, mission-advancing, Bible-saturated, theologically true vision for your life, and then go for it.
[00:42:48] Give everything you've got for this vision.
[00:42:50] You've got one life to live.
[00:42:53] Don't waste it.
[00:42:55] And you can't waste it if your life is lived under the meticulous providence of God.
[00:43:03] Father, please don't let this word fall on hard soil.
[00:43:08] Don't let Satan pluck it away.
[00:43:10] Don't let it be strangled by the cares and riches of this world.
[00:43:17] Don't let it be burned up by any hard times.
[00:43:20] Make the soil good in this room right now.
[00:43:23] And so summon hundreds of these people to be goers to the nations and everybody else to be a radical sender.
[00:43:32] I pray in Jesus' name, amen.