Practical Implications

Introduction: God's Comprehensive Sovereignty in Ephesians 1:11-12

0:03 I would ask you to turn with me again to the book of Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 1.

0:21 I shall read verses 11 and 12. Ephesians 1, verses 11 and 12. In whom also we were made a heritage, or we obtained an inheritance,

0:38 having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ. In working our way through this great hymn of praise to God for all of the blessings that he has conferred upon us in Christ, in studying the apostles' expansion of the theme announced in verse 3 of this very chapter, we have come to verses 11 and 12, in which the apostle mentions the third great blessing which is distinctively related to the work of Christ. The Father has the primary hand in election and in predestination to sonship, verses 4 and 5. And then beginning with verse 7, we have the spotlight of attention focused more individually. Essentially upon the Son.

1:47 And it is in him that we have redemption, the key blessing of which is the forgiveness of our sins. Then he goes on to say that in Christ we have this impartation of divine knowledge. He hath abounded to us in all wisdom and prudence. Then he goes on to say that in Christ we not only have redemption and wisdom, but we have obtained an inheritance, an inheritance, to which we have come and will come in its future aspects because God has foreordained us to the same.

2:24 And then having given the reason as to why we've obtained this inheritance, the reason being God's foreordination, the apostle says, as it were, that what he has done, what God has done in giving the blessing of the inheritance on the basis of his own free and sovereign life, and what God has done in giving the blessing of the inheritance on the basis of his own free and sovereign life, is but one application of the basis upon which he governs his universe. We were predestinated to this inheritance according to the purpose of the God who works not only the special blessings of grace according to the counsels of his will, but who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. So having gone through a detailed exposition of verses 11, and 12, we returned last week to this statement to break it down in more detail. The God whom we worship is the God declared in this text as the one who works all things after the counsel of his will. We saw in our study last week that there are two great facts asserted in this phrase.

3:37 First of all, this phrase asserts that God is the great designer, of the plan which governs the universe. We looked at the meaning of the words purpose, counsel, and will. We saw that these words mean nothing less than the free, wise, and all-encompassing plan of the living God who is sovereign of the universe. There is a plan, a plan which is framed by God himself.

4:11 And then the second great assertion of this phrase, And then the second great assertion of this phrase, And then the second great assertion of this phrase, is that God is the great executor of the plan which he has made. For he worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. He not only has a counsel and a purpose determined by his will, but he executes that plan. He works by his own present powerful might the full accomplishment of that plan.

4:41 And according to this text, And according to this text, And according to this text, it is any act of God's! But whatever the circumstances are, whether he works on some divine pestilence, whether he works in the Lord, whether he exists as God is a God and worketh in all things. And so are all these other matters. All things, including men and angels and devils and sin and virtue and heaven and hell, the stars within their places in the midst of the movement of the galassemz, down to the movements of the speck of dust.

5:13 Our God is the God who worketh all things in the restraining of evil in the very direction of evil to the accomplishment of his own purpose he's the god who orders and disposes the chance events of life the god spoken of in the prophecy of daniel as the one who has his way in the armies of heaven and of earth the god spoken of in romans 11 36 concerning which paul said concerning whom paul said of him through him and unto him are all things to whom be glory forever and ever well we spend so much time expounding the meaning of the words and these two principles that when i looked up at the clock to start applying it was 20 after 12 and i had to stop in the next five or seven minutes i had to wind down is what i should say well i want to wind down we will wind up again this morning picking up where we left off last week considering some of the practical implications of an understanding of and a belief in these two great facts of ephesians 111 if we have come to some understanding of the truth of these words god worketh all things after

Implication 1: Fuel for Intelligent, God-Honoring Worship

6:33 the counsel of his own will what will be the practical implications of the understanding standing of those words and a belief in them. Well, I suggested as we closed last week that the first and great implication will be this. This perspective will provide fuel for intelligent God-honoring worship. The Apostle Paul, in his hymn of praise to God, has, as it were, the fires of praise fed by the fuel of this concept. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he worships and whom he praises for the blessings of salvation, is the God who is at work in wider realms than the realm of salvation. And what he has done in the realm of salvation, in the conferral of blessings according to his sovereign purpose, is but one manifestation of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what he has done in the realm of salvation is but one manifestation of the basis of his operation in the entirety of his universe. And to the Apostle Paul, this was not an abstract theological concept. It was the reality of who

Implication 2: Perspective for Intelligent Bible Study

7:47 God was, which could not help but impinge upon his acts of worship and provide fuel for intelligent God-honoring worship. Well, then, I want to pick up at that point and draw out the first and great implication of this concept. The Apostle Paul, in his hymn of praise to God, at least three or four, as time permits, practical implications which flow from an understanding of and a belief in the truths of this phrase in Ephesians 1.11. And the second is this. Not only do they provide fuel for intelligent God-honoring worship, but the understanding and belief in these facts will provide a perspective for intelligent God-honoring Bible study. Not only provide fuel for God-honoring worship, but the truths of Ephesians 1.11 understood and believed will provide a perspective for intelligent God-honoring Bible study. Now, I'm speaking to a group of people this morning, 95% of which is engaged

9:05 in some kind of regular Bible study, on your own. Whether you read through the scriptures once a year, once every three years, or whether you dip in and dip out, I'm speaking by and large to a group of people to whom Bible study, study of the scriptures of the Old and the New Testament, is an integral part of your, I trust, daily life pattern. In your own personal devotional exercises, in your own family devotional exercises, as well as in the formal exposition of the word in this place, you and I are Bible students. Now, much Bible study degenerates into mere religious sentimentalism because the overall plan and unity of the scriptures is never grasped, is never perceived. And it's sort of like a person who has no idea, of what the ends of a football game are, and I don't mean the guys that are on the side, but the ultimate design of a football game, trying to make sense out of all that activity on the field. You see these guys bumping into one another and knocking one another around, and just when you

10:23 think you've got the idea that this group over here is trying to get the ball there, the foolish guy runs back and throws the ball away for 30 yards. You say, well, what in the world is he doing that for? He's making some money. He's making some money. He's making some money. He's making some progress. And now he goes back and he just lets, he can't understand the forward pass. He can't understand a punt. None of this will make sense. Now he can see what's going on. This man's hitting this one, and this one's blocking that one, and this one is winging up and throwing the ball at him. But you see, unless he has some understanding of the structure of what the game is all about, he can make no real sense out of any given activity on the playing field. And so it is with a lot of people. And they come to study the scriptures. They see Joseph running around end on the first down. And

11:10 they see Abraham going up the middle on the second down. And they see Isaiah throwing a pass on fourth down. You see? And they see no overall structure to the whole thing. They read something about Isaiah, something about Abraham, something about Isaac, something about Jacob. But they've never seen what the game is all about, what the overall perspective is. And they see no overall perspective is. May I suggest that Ephesians 1.11 provides the perspective within which the scriptures in all of their many details will begin to make real sense. And at this point, I want to quote from Dr. Packer's very helpful little book, The Plan of God. If you don't have one, and if you haven't read it, and if you haven't re-read it in a while, I urge upon you, anyone who has read it, to honor all of those directives. Get one if you don't have one. If you have one and haven't read

12:10 it, read it. And if you have one and have read it, re-read it. I think it'll come home with new freshness in the light of our studies together. But speaking to this very point, Mr. Packer says, and I'm going to read a couple of pages, something I don't normally do here on a Sunday morning, but he has said it so much better than I could say it, that I want to pass on the benefit of it to you. Let us read the Bible then. If we can. But can we? The truth is that many of us have lost the ability to read the Bible.

12:42 When we open our Bibles, we do so in a frame of mind which forms an insuperable barrier. For you kids, that means a high barrier, too big to climb over. An insuperable barrier to our ever reading it at all. This may sound startling, but it is not hard to show that the statement is true.

13:01 When you sit down to read any other book, you treat it as a unit. You look for the plot or the main thread of the argument and you follow it right through to the end. You let the author's mind lead your mind. Whether or not you allow yourself to dip in at any given point before settling down to the book properly, you know that you will not have understood the book till you've read it through from start to finish.

13:30 And if it is a book that you want to understand, decide time to read it in full. But when we come to the scriptures, our behavior is different. In the first place, we're not in the habit of treating it as a book, a unit, but simply a collection of separate stories and sayings. We take it for granted before we look at the text that the burden of them, or at least many of them, as affect us is either moral advice or comfort for those in trouble. So we read the scriptures when we do in small doses, a few verses at a time. We do not go right through individual books, let alone the two complete testaments as a single whole. We browse through the rich old Jacobean periods of the authorized version, waiting for something to strike us. And when the words bring to our minds a soothing thought or a pleasant picture, we feel that the Bible has done its job for the time being. It seems that the Bible is

14:30 for us not a book, but a collection of beautiful and suggestive, snippets. And it is as such that we use it. The result is that we are never really reading the Bible at all. And he goes on to say this is more really superstition to use the Bible in this way.

14:49 So he says, if we're to read the Bible intelligently, we've got to capture the thread of its main structural argument, the main point. We've got to understand what's going on out there on that piece of real estate bounded by the end zones. And the sidelines. What then do we find when we try to read the Bible as a single unified whole?

15:12 Our minds alert to observe what it's really about. Well, the first thing we find is that this book is not primarily about man at all. Its subject is God. He, if the phrase may be allowed, is the chief actor in the drama, the hero of the story.

15:35 The Bible proves on inspection to be a factual survey of God's work in this world. Past, present, and to come with explanatory comments from prophets, psalmists, wise men, and apostles. Its main theme is not human salvation. Does that jangle your ear? Its main theme is not human salvation, but it's not human salvation. It's not human salvation. It's not human salvation. It's not human salvation. It's not human salvation. Its need is human salvation. Here is the removed word. подготов everyone to this new age. It's not the work of God vindicating his purposes and glorifying himself in a sinful and disordered cosmos by establishing his kingdom and exalting his Son by creating a people to worship and serve him, and ultimately by dismantling and reassembling the order of things, so rooting out sin out of this world intimately. But God says then, let us be Ryan, all cities, 70,000 faces under no limit, и vanished every other in the world, NIST, nothing beyond, n a phholepYA Vamos бер ihre швынки к rowan and burn la vida a body-choir в It is into this larger perspective that the Bible fits God's work in saving man.

16:46 See what he's saying? The Bible is the record of God's work in exalting himself. And it is into that perspective that even the work of human salvation is brought. And then Mr. Packer goes on to say that it is this plan of God, says the Bible, that cannot be thwarted even by human sin because human sin is taken up into it and defiance of God's revealed will is used by God for the furtherance of his own eternal purpose. This then is the God of the Bible, the God with whom we have to do, a God who reigns, who is master of events, and who works out through the stumbling service of his people and the folly of his foes alike his own eternal purpose for his world. So I suggest that an understanding of Ephesians 1.11, that God worketh all things after the counsel of his own will,

Caution on Bible Study Application

17:52 will provide a perspective for intelligent, God-honoring Bible study. Now let me give a word of caution. I am not asserting that each time you sit down to read any part of the Bible, you must consciously think of the whole framework of the Bible. This would be to impose a vicious legalism upon your conscience.

18:16 I'm not saying that. I'm thinking of some of you mothers who are doing well if you can snatch 10 or 15 minutes to just read a psalm and somehow get your head and mind and heart off the mundane and into the realm of the evil. I'm conscious of that. I'm conscious of some of you who've got to get up at 5.30 in the morning and don't come home until 6.30 or 7 o'clock. I'm very conscious of the group to whom I'm speaking. And it would be unrealistic to strap your conscience with any idea that unless you consciously and deliberately think of the whole spectrum of God's purposes revealed in Scripture, you cannot rightly evaluate any one portion of it.

18:58 I'm not saying that. But I am saying this. That if this perspective has not become a real thing to you, and if you do not relate the individual occurrences in the historical parts and the most intimate dealings of your own heart with God as reflected in the psalmists and their dealings with God in the psalms, unless that is related to this overall perspective, it will degenerate into a form of mere superstitious treatment of the Scriptures and into...

19:31 into a form of mere subjectivism with no real solid biblical basis for the so-called comfort and direction you receive. So I suggest to you that an understanding, then, of this concept that God works all things after the counsel of His will will provide that perspective in which many aspects of scriptural truth will take on new and very precious relevance to the world. To your own thinking. You see, this is why a generation that has lost this perspective cannot understand such concepts as the judgment of God.

20:12 Such concepts as the wrath of God. If you've got man's goodness and man's well-being at the center, how does hell relate to man's well-being? How does the opening up of the heavens and the opening up of the fountains of the deep and the inundation of the angels, and the ancient world in that terrible flood until the corpses of man and beast floated on the face of the waters and only one family was preserved? If the well-being of man is central,

20:46 you can't understand the flood.

20:50 You can't understand judgment. You can't understand God ordering His people into a land already established by other nations and telling them in His name to wet their swords with the blood of Canaan. And drive them from that place. None of this makes sense unless, unless, you grasp this overall perspective.

Implication 3: Stability and Peace Amidst Life's Uncertainties

21:13 This is God's world. And God is working out His own eternal purposes ultimately to bring to Himself honor and praise and glory from that world and from that universe. Then in the third place, perspective of Ephesians 1.11, wilderness.

21:35 provide a solid basis for stability and peace in the face of life's uncertainties. Not only will it provide fuel for worship, a perspective for intelligent Bible study, when we understand that perspective, it provides a solid basis for stability and peace in the face of life's uncertainties. Now, if your eyes are open to anything more than food, work, the TV, sleep, good car, nice girl, sweet kids, in other words, if you're sensitive at all to all of the various forces which can and do impinge upon your life from day to day, such potentially destructive, disrupting forces, you would have every ground, humanly speaking, to be the epitome of a nervous nervous system. If you get into your car in the morning, especially around this area, and realize what you're exposing yourself to when you drive on Route 46 and Route 22 and through the Lincoln Tunnel, if you realize that right now, this morning, there are buttons both in Washington and somewhere probably in

22:54 Moscow which, if pushed, could mean that our country and many countries would be nothing but smoke and rubble. Right now, this morning, there are radicals burning the midnight oil to plot the violent overthrow of our own structure of society as we know it, who are giving themselves with religious zeal and enthusiasm to the, not only the propagation of their radical views, but to equipping people to carry them out at the grassroots, which means your neck and mine.

23:32 Criminals using all of their perverted genius. To break in and to possess what is not rightfully theirs.

23:44 And added to this is everything the scripture teaches about the people of God being the peculiar object of the machinations of the devil and of wicked men. Now, if your eyes are open to these things, I mean, you take them seriously, I say, humanly speaking, you would have every reason to be a nervous Nelly, to be on the borderline of a nervous breakdown. Well, how? How can the people of God have any semblance of stability and peace without just sticking their head in the sand and saying, oh, there are no radicals.

24:19 There are no missiles aimed to New York and Chicago and Los Angeles. There are no radicals. There is none of this. And just enter some kind of a fool's paradise of wishful thinking.

24:30 If the child of God is not going to do that and God never calls him to that, how can he have stability? How can he have any semblance of solid peace in the face of life's uncertainty? Well, I suggest that an understanding of Ephesians 1.11 is what gives him the grounds of such stability and such peace.

24:49 When he comes to understand and to believe that God worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, even in the day when there are poised missiles with nuclear warheads and when there are gatherings of vicious radicals. And when there are all of these other forces that would impinge upon the life of the child of God, seeking humbly to honor God in the sphere of his God-appointed calling, it is this perspective that forms the basis of peace and of confidence. For when we read through the scriptures, we see that God has the radical in his hand. He has his hand over the hand. The hand that would push the red buttons. And he is the God who puts down kings and raises up others, disposes the minds and judgments of kings and rulers to bring to pass his own eternal purpose.

25:56 And so we can with our Lord afford to sleep, the sleep of peace, in the midst of the raging storms of all of life's uncertainties. That was going back with me. We find it in Matthew 8 and again in Mark 4, and I'm not sure just where it is in Luke, in which our Lord is out in the midst of the sea, fast asleep in the stern of the ship. And the sea is raging and dashing upon the ship until one gospel writer says it was full of water.

26:33 And the disciples, full of fear, come and awake their Lord, who is sound asleep in the midst of all of this. And the disciples, full of fear, come and awake their Lord, who is sound asleep in the midst of all of this. And they say, Don't you care, we're perishing! And he rebukes first of all the wind and the sea.

26:48 Many rebukes them and he says, Oh ye of little faith. I don't understand all that's there, but I think this is part of it. Our Lord is saying in essence, if you believed as I do that these things about you, the waves, the winds and the storms, they're not just circumstances of life. They're not long, dead based on the fact that their Lord was succumbed to it.

27:12 They walking and praying. They dancing and laughing. nature, but they are the expression of the will of my own heavenly Father, who has given me a task to do, and I am, as it were, absolutely invincible until that task is done. His hour was not yet come. That's a phrase you find in the Gospels. They sought to take him. His hour was not yet come. Our Lord, in the full confidence of that, can sleep in the midst of a storm, not because he's insensitive to the reality of what storms can do, but because he's confident that the storm can do nothing that would in any way frustrate or thwart the purpose of his Father for him as the Savior of sinners. And he says, O ye of little faith, my Father is your Father, and his plan and purpose for your life is as certain as his is for mine.

28:10 I can afford to sleep in the midst of the storm, not the sleep of escape from reality, not the sleep of indifference to reality, but the sleep of confidence in the control of the reality of the storm. So we don't say this morning, there are no radicals plotting the overthrow of our government. We don't say there are no wicked, vicious men in Moscow who still want to blot us out and still want world dominion, we're not so foolish as to think that visits to Red China to knock around a little plastic ball mean that the aims of that government and that regime are anything other than world domination. No, no, no. We're not so foolish as to talk ourselves into some paradise of ethereal dreams. No. But listen to me. Neither are we so foolish

29:07 as to give ourselves to some effort to flush out the radicals and leave the main task of building the Church of Christ. Neither are we so foolish as to think that it is by political manipulation that we shall bring about a preservation of our society. No. We can, as it were, sleep in the sleep of commitment to the centrality of the purpose of God in any generation.

29:38 Ц internacional is to build his church, build up his church, preach the gospel,

29:46 exercise responsibly our place as Christian citizens, yes,

29:52 but never allowing any of these things to become the dominant concern of life. Why? Why can we do this? Because we know who's at the helm of the storm.

30:04 We know who controls those storms, social and political storms. And as God's people, we are confident that he works all things after the counsel of his own will. And if God is pleased to allow the so-called American way of life to crumble, the church of Christ will not crumble. God is not committed in any way to preserve any human institution, but the institution of his own church, and the gospel of his own.

30:40 His own dear son.

God's Tender Concern and Invincibility

30:44 I took great comfort again in looking at Matthew chapter 10 along these lines.

30:51 The text that is often quoted with regard to the Lord's tender concern for his children.

31:00 Notice the context, Matthew 10 and verse 30, but all the hairs of your head are numbered.

31:08 It's the context of the people of God in an unsympathetic environment. Our Lord is charging the twelve. He's sending them forth to minister. He tells them that they shall minister in an atmosphere in which there'll be hostility.

31:23 Hostility perhaps even unto death and the threat of physical harm. So he tells them, don't be afraid, verse 21, of those that kill the body and are not able to kill the soul, but fear him who's able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your father? If the disposing of a sparrow, so inconsequential in the eyes of men as to worth that it's sold for pennies, if something so inconsequential in the eyes of men has its destiny governed and hedged in by the living God, not one falls to the ground without your father, without his disposition,

32:15 are not ye? Are not ye? We are not therefore, for ye are of more value than many sparrows. The very hairs of your head are numbered.

32:27 God's concern expressed in his disposition of this little creature, very worthless in the eyes even of men. If it is that for such a creature, our Lord says, how much more? Because you are of more value, not only as a creature, but as a redeemed creature. We are the apple of his eye.

32:49 Fear not, therefore. In other words, the absence of fear is rooted in the sense of the confidence of God's directive and God's unchanging purpose for the lives of his people. Psalm 27 is the Old Testament commentary on this. I will not be afraid.

33:13 What can man do unto me? The Lord is my light and my salvation. Psalm 48, I will both lay me down and sleep. Why?

33:23 For thou, Lord, alone makest me to dwell in safety. Psalm 91, this is the perspective again and again in the Psalms. Now, I am not advocating indifference. I am not saying that God may not call some Christians as Christians to labor in specific spheres in which they will seek to implement biblical principles.

33:48 Perspectives at the level of politics, the level of economics, any other level. What I am saying is this. As the people of God and as the church of Christ, we can afford to be asleep, as it were, to these other concerns as the church and give ourselves to the thing God has called us to do because we believe he works all things after the counsel, of his own will. John Ryland wrote a very simple and yet, I think, touching couplet.

34:25 And he said this. Plagues and death around me fly till he bids I cannot die. Not a single shaft can hit till the God of love sees fit. That's the solid basis of confidence and stability in the face of the uncertainties of life.

Implication 4: Comfort and Resignation in Sorrow and Perplexing Providences

34:49 Do you have? Do you have that confidence?

34:53 You get hold of Ephesians 1.11 and you will. And then we come to another area that is most necessary for the people of God.

35:02 An understanding of and a belief in Ephesians 1.11 will provide us with a sure source of comfort and resignation in the face of sorrow and perplexing providences. You see, the child of God not only looks out at the uncertainties of life, but also at the foreboding possibilities. But he's not long a Christian until he is brought through situations in which there are actual circumstances which press upon him, wrench his heart, and seem to dash all appearances of sense and purpose into fragments, and nothing seems to make sense.

35:47 A circumstance that I read about in Dave Cliff's letter. A handsome young man who could be a, a veritable lecher at that age, greatly talented in music. He gives up a summer to go down to Ecuador to expose himself to the possible call to a life's work as a missionary. And in a little innocent diversion, as he's swimming in the lake, he drowns.

36:15 Say, that makes sense. Other men his age giving themselves to a life of lechery and sin and debauchery, and they'll live to be 99. Now, we can all look at that and say, yeah, that's so, but suppose that were your son. Now you see, this providence impinges upon you where you live.

36:37 It's all well and good for us to talk about Romans 8, 28, but when you're Roz and Irv Millett, and you've wrestled through a decision to have your 12-year-old daughter have an operation which might take her life, and you're convinced she ought to have it, and then she dies in your arm the day she comes home from the hospital, now what do you do? You know, all this theorizing. Suddenly, there's an impingement upon your own life. Now, child of God, what do you do?

37:06 What will you do? What do I do? What will I do in the face of sorrow and perplexing providences? Well, we know that scripture calls us to comfort and resignation.

37:19 Comfort, consolation, and embracing from the heart the dispositions of providence. Well, how do we do it? Well, most people would say, well, because Romans 8, 28 says, all things work together for good. And therefore, if God says everything is working together for good, it must be working together for good.

37:39 Yes, but what is that good? In the context, the good is the accomplishment of the divine purpose to make us like Christ. For whom He did foreknow, He did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son. And God's good is that in bringing many sons into glory, He might perfect the image of His Son.

38:01 What is His own Son in them? And what is His method? Ofttimes suffering is His method. It is suffering bringing us into the crucible of agony in which we learn something of sweet resignation to the purpose of God.

38:18 And you see, Romans 8, 21, 8, 28 can never be a source of comfort and resignation unless Ephesians 1, 11 is true. How can you come to the child of God who's just been blasted and broken and crushed with what seems to be a frowning providence? How can you come and say, look, dear child of God, no matter what we cannot understand, this we know, all things are working together for good. How can you say that unless Ephesians 1, 11 is true?

38:50 God is working all things after the counsel of His will. If God's working a third of things and the devil's working a third and the other third is just up for grabs, what third is brought about these circumstances? The child of God says, I don't know. It sure looks like this must be the devil's third.

39:10 Someone else says, well, no, I don't think it's the devil's. I don't think it's God's. It just must be chance. Well, now you're talking like a pagan, not a Christian.

39:19 How can one derive comfort from Romans 8, 28 unless Ephesians 1, 11 is true? And it is Ephesians 1, 11 which buttresses and undergirds Romans 8, 28. We know, Paul says, that all things are working together for good, that good being the accomplishment of God's purpose to make us like His Son. Why?

Embracing God's Will in Suffering

39:41 Because the God whom we worship is the God who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. This forms the source of our comfort and the basis of our being able to embrace the dispositions of providence to us. There was a saint of God who was shut up for ten years in a dungeon. The only light this saint saw during those ten years was the light of the candle which was given when the meals were served.

40:19 Now what do you do? What would you do as a child of God if such providences impinged upon your life? Listen to the comfort and the consolation this saint received as these lines were penned by that same saint after ten years in a dungeon. A little bird, bird I am, shut from the fields of air, yet in my cage I sit and sing to him who placed me there. Who placed her there? She says, my father did. Not these wicked people, not these people who hate Christ and hate what they see of Christ in me, but my father who placed me here. Well pleased a prisoner to be, because, my God, it pleaseth thee. Not have I else to do. I sing the whole day long, and he to whom most I love to please doth listen to my song. He caught and bound my wandering wing, but still he bends to hear

41:27 me sing. My cage confines me round. Abroad I cannot fly. Though my wing is closely bound, my heart's at liberty. My prison walls cannot control the flight, the freedom of my soul. Ah, it is good to soar these bolts and bars above, to him whose purpose I adore, whose providence I love. And in thy mighty will to find the joy, the freedom. The freedom of the mind. That's it. To him whose purpose I adore. See, Romans 8.28 was

42:13 conveying comfort, because this saint understood Ephesians 1.11, and saw behind all of the dispositions that brought about that circumstance of a dungeon, the hand and purpose of the living God. I'm speaking to some of you who, as parents, have seen the hand and purpose of the living God. I'm speaking to some of you who, as parents, have seen the hand and purpose of the living God. I'm speaking to those of us who have shown the hand and purpose of the living God. Let me pose another example of Significance of the Lord to share my creo. hello little he is home experience. Does this say anything to you? I believe it does. I believe it says much

43:14 to you. You see, it's one thing to grin and bear it. It's another thing to grin because I've embraced it. It's all the difference in the world. You see, this saint of God was not grinning and bearing her circumstances. She was grinning because she had embraced them. May I say that's easy for you to say. I hope I don't say it unfeelingly. I hope I say it with all the tenderness of a shepherd's heart. But I believe this speaks to the situation of the frustration that some of you feel in your singleness. Others of you, not single, but one of the great joys that led you together was the anticipation of bearing children in your childless or you could not or have not been able to bear as many children as you would like to have borne. And these seemingly joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous, senseless providences, wicked, profligate people with no regard for the sanctity of marriage, having babies like rabbits. You say, Lord, I only want children. Rear them

44:21 to your praise. And God doesn't open the womb. He worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. And so into that perspective we put these apparent frowning providences and these circumstances that wrench our hearts.

44:41 And are the cause of grief. And we say, O God, I embrace them. I not bear them. I embrace them. I embrace them. Because the counsels of your will are the counsels of a wise, a loving, and a gracious Heavenly Father. They are not the arbitrary counsels of an unfeeling despot. No, no. They are the wise and loving counsels. And they are the counsels of a man who acts wisely in the purposes that he lays for us. Well, there are many other implications that could be drawn out, but time is gone. I had one more that I'd hoped to. But I trust that God will be pleased to take these thoughts from his own word, these applications of the great statement of Ephesians 1.11. God has

45:38 a plan. God is accomplishing that plan. And bring home to us a plan. And bring home to our own hearts new fuel for intelligent worship. The sharpening of the perspective for our own study of the word of God. God will use these things as the basis of stability and peace in the face of all of the uncertainties of life. That God will fortify us with a sure source of comfort and resignation in the face of sorrow and of perplexing providences. He is the God who works all things after the counsel of his own will. May we praise him as such. May we serve him. May we proclaim to our generation that staggers about in the drunkenness of its own folly that the world has meaning and history has meaning and has direction. And our God is the God who reigns even now.

46:43 This day, October 24, 1971. Let us bow together in prayer.