What are your plans for today? I am sure those are fine plans, but you do realize though that God is in control of what really happens today, right? Not just today but tomorrow as well… and the next, and the next, ad infinitum into eternity.
It is really easy for us to get caught up in the daily grind of our lives and forget that “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). We also forget Psalm 2:1-4 where the LORD laughs at people who rage and plot against Him thinking they can actually thwart God’s plans. God is sovereign over this world, his creation mind you. Nothing happens apart from his permission or his active decree.
There is a heresy that is gaining traction among many who would call themselves evangelicals today. This heresy is called open theism. It has actually been around for a while. Open theism basically states that the future is open to God or that He does not know with certainty what exactly WILL happen. He knows all the myriad possibilities but that the actual unfolding of the future is as unknown to Him as it is to us.
The rationale behind this heresy is that in order for us to truly have free will to make any decisions with the power of contrary choice (in other words our decisions are not acted on by any outside influence), then God CANNOT know the future because that would mean our choices were already set in stone.
So an open theist would say that God does not know what will happen tomorrow because I could decide to faithfully love my wife or I could decide to leave her and go to Antarctica, which is where I would have to go to escape her fury : ) The point is that God can’t know what I will decide because that would mean that I really didn’t have the ability to choose something different. If God knows that I will choose to leave my wife, then I really don’t have a choice in the matter and staying with her is not an option.
The problem with open theism is that it is foolish. It is foolish because it sets humanity up as having supreme importance and worth. In other words it makes man “Lord” instead of God.
Instead of starting with the Bible and searching it exhaustively to discover how God has revealed Himself and taking that revelation of God as absolute fact, open theism starts with a metaphysical presupposition, “I chose what I am wearing today, therefore I have free will” and concludes then that God cannot possibly be what He says He is, the sovereignly ruler over his creation because that kind of sovereignty would ruin my idea of my free will. God’s true character is subordinated to man’s nature.
This is a common error when trying to arrive at what theology we will adhere to. Starting with man and then working to understand God is getting it backwards. We start with God, seeking to know Him in his fullness from Scripture, THEN we can rightly understand who we are, created in his image, yet completely subservient to Him and his plans since He is LORD of all.
Now, back to divine providence.
God’s word is clear that God is sovereign over his creation and that He determines what is going to happen. There is no such thing as luck, fortune, chance or fate. There is God wisely governing and implementing his plan for his creation.
Isaiah 46:9-10
Remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, 'My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,'
There are three very obvious things here that should shape our understanding of God’s sovereign providence.
1. God is God, and there is none like Him. In some ways this sounds a little too obvious to us Christians. But this is very important to remember every day! Let me state this another way: You are NOT God. You are not omniscient, omnipotent, omni-anything!! We are to submit completely and happily to the LORDship of Jesus Christ. We trust Him for all things, even our decisions and plans. He is central, not us. We are to live so that He gets all the glory, not us. We need to stop trying to relate to God as if it is OUR will, OUR lives that are most important.
2. He has already declared the end from the beginning… deal with it. He knows exactly what is going to happen tomorrow in my life. Not because He is some kind of medium looking into his crystal ball or reading our palms or looking at tea leaves. He knows the future because He DECLARED it! This is his creation and He does with it exactly what He wants. He is not like some amazing supercomputer who is forced to calculate a bazillion computations on the fly based on our decisions just so He can know what He is supposed to do next. Before the foundation of the world He declared exactly what the “end” would be. Sin did not surprise Him. The death of his Son did not surprise Him.
3. God will win the day. “I will accomplish ALL my purpose.” This is a powerful statement of God’s providence intersecting his omnipotence. He has the authority to declare the end from the beginning, AND He has the power to make it happen. Whoa. That is a whole lotta theology in that one verse! God says that He WILL make sure that his plans succeed. There is nothing we can do to ultimately derail his plans.
So, what does all this mean for us? Well, this means that whatever our understanding of free will is, it does NOT mean that we determine our own future. God has made it very clear that declaring the end is his job and He will make it come to pass.
That means that there is still a paradox of sorts for us in regard to our responsibility over our own sin. If God declared the end from the beginning, did God author sin? The short answer is NO. God did not author sin and we are still responsible for our sin. This is a topic for another day.
But the bottom line for us today is that we must live our lives submissive to the sovereign providence of God.
How do we make our plans? According to his revealed will in Scripture and under the guidance of his his Holy Spirit.
How do we face life’s tragedies? Fully acknowledging that God is providentially guiding those events for our good and his glory.
How do fully reconcile God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility? By submitting to the truth of Scripture and trusting that God is a big God that we will never fully comprehend because He is God.
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