“My Times Are in Your Hand” (Biola) (Part 2 of 2) — 09/10/2021

foreign [Music] if god is sovereign over everyone and everything does that mean we're excused from any personal responsibility this is truth for life and today we'll hear part two of a message that began yesterday titled my times are in your hand let's join aleister begg as he studies exodus chapter 3. [Music] our phrase we pick up again today my times are in your hands the declaration of the psalmist not on a particularly joyful and cheery day in his life but in the experience of clouds and deep darkness and it is this declaration of the providence of god that gives him equilibrium because my times are in god's hands i'm not trapped in the grip of some blind force i am not being tossed around on an ocean of chance but i am actually being trained in the school of god's providence that covers the what and now we move to the so what and let me give you three so what's and if we have time a couple of now what's first of all since this is true since god is providentially overruling everything for his glory and for our good number one prosperity should never be the occasion of pride uh you will not have attended as many funerals as i have done over these last 36 or seven years in pastoral ministry and here in america i've been staggered to discover that the favorite song that is played either sung or in the background for pagan funerals for people who have no knowledge of god or of his grace and goodness they go out to the song made famous by old blue eyes himself i did it my way it's a quite sobering and solitary thing to stand there and watch a coffin being loaded into the back of a car with the refrain ringing out to think i did all that and may i say not in a shy way oh no oh no not me i did it my way the christian never says that it is an absurd folly that we as mere men should choose to act as if we were in charge of things and it just isn't true so if you're a farmer and you have a wonderful crop then you can thank god because he makes things grow as i was stumbling around the campus early this morning i was picking up little bits and pieces of the wonderful fragrances that are there i don't know what flowers are called it might be called a gardenia i don't know what it is but it is a wonderful fragrance and as i picked a piece and carried it with me as i continued to stumble out into the into uh whatever avenue i was on imperial avenue or somewhere i i was remarking on the fighter god is a great god isn't he a wonderful creator and if you've been very successful in business or you find out that one day you will be just remember this you didn't do it it is god who gives you the ability to get wealth and when you find that even your enemies begin to live at peace with you it's not because you're so wonderful at conciliation and reconciliation but it is because according to proverbs 16 7 that god is a god who is able to make even our enemies live at peace with us my times are in your hands oh god therefore prosperity should not be the occasion of self-congratulation or pride secondly uncertainty should not be the occasion of panic providence is a soft pillow on which to put your head in the evening calvin described it as an anodyne for pain as a grave in which to bury our despair you know the bible knows god knows the author of the bible knows that we are prone to fearfulness and we're prone to anxiety we know that because of how many times in the bible we're told not to be afraid whether it is jesus with his disciples whether it is the psalmist speaking to his own soul and the reason that these things ring so true is because we know each of us are prone to worry and to anxiety and in every case ultimately i put it to you our fearfulness and the sense of being overwhelmed is always due to a loss of confidence in this one essential fact my times are in your hands listen to how one of my friends put it an older scotsman the lord sits enthroned over all the military political social and economic forces of our generation nothing has got out of hand nor will it we can therefore live day by day knowing that the hands which hold our lives are the same hands which hold all things you see without that awareness without a certainty concerning the providence of god life is ultimately unbearable and and people then need to go and find some other way to answer gogan's three questions where did i come from what am i and where am i going and that is then uh followed through in the various things that people embrace whether it is atheism or skepticism or humanism or modernism or post-modernism or nihilism or consumerism i think i'll just go to the mall and run up my credit card again i try and eat myself into satisfaction i'll try and exercise myself into significance walk out off this campus no stay on the campus gaze into the faces of your friends and your fellow students and your faculty members see the furrows on their brows pick up the hints from their responses and i guarantee you without a deep seated conviction that our times are in god's hands this is one fragile existence if you like to read calvin and his institutes i have a wonderful section for you there that i was going to quote from but i don't have a lot of time and so i it wouldn't be good to do what he does is he says you know if you think you've got reason for being worried then you know i can give you a few more he refers to our body as the receptacle of a thousand diseases you know so for those of you who are who are paranoid and always going for blood tests and whatnot you don't want to read this section in calvin it's it's actually it's actually quite good well i'll give you a little bit of it who cares i'm not coming back again in any case so um listen to what he says embark upon a ship you are one step away from death mount a horse if one foot slips your life is imperiled go through the city streets you're subject to as many dangers as there are tiles on the roofs if there is a weapon in your hand or a friend's harm awaits all the fierce animals you see are armed for your destruction but if you try to shut yourself up in a walled garden seemingly delightful there a serpent sometimes lies hidden your house continually in danger of fire threatens in the daytime to impoverish you at night even to collapse on you your field it is exposed to hail frost drought and other calamities threaten you with barrenness and famine and then he says as if he's he there's no end to this he says i pass over poisonings ambushes robberies open violence which in part besieges at home in part dog as abroad amid these tribulations must not man be most miserable sins but half alive in life he meekly draws his anxious and languid breath as if he had a sword perpetually hanging over his head hey thanks calvin that's good i'm feeling so much better that's good and i i thought i had reason to be worried i didn't realize i had so many reasons to reward rewarded what is the antidote what is the antidote my times are in your hands are they are we just cast about on a sea of chance are we held in the grip of blind deterministic forces so prosperity should not be the occasion of pride anxiety should not be the basis for despair and thirdly adversity should not be the occasion of self-pity when we indulge ourselves in self-pity it is almost inevitably traceable to the fact that we are unprepared to acknowledge that god is sovereign over all these things so for example if you consider the life of joseph if joseph had merely focused on all of the treachery that had led up to his position in egypt he would have been one miserable character with him to spend time wouldn't he he would have had reason to curse his father for getting in the jolly coat in the first place i didn't ask for the coat what in the world was he giving me that dumb coat for he could have said all of his light the coat is the problem my father's the problem the father the coat the coat the father everything that messed my entire life up who would have thought that a coat could destroy your life and my brothers yeah sure i had a few dreams i said you know they were going to bow down to me but they were yeah and then what and why would they put me in that pit miserable rascals that they are every last one of them i hate my brothers i hate everything about them i hope i never see them again in my life oh look here come my brothers do you remember what he says to his brothers because they weep at his self-disclosure when he comes out from underneath his egyptian mask as it were and he says ego i me i'm joseph and they began to weep and he says to them do not be distressed or angry with yourselves do not be distressed or angry with yourselves why not my times are in god's hands for god sent me before you to preserve your life do you get that you malevolently determined to take my life on account of your jealousy on account of the intervention of one of you my life was spared and i have lived separate from you and separate from my father for all these years but i want you to know that i don't harbor any bitterness against you i don't harbor any bitterness against you for the time i spent in jail don't be distressed don't be angry with yourselves god sent me before you to preserve your lives god sent me before you to preserve a remnant and then he says so it wasn't you who sent me here but god but it was them that sent him there they sold them into slavery yeah but god overruled all of their individual actions without ever once violating their freedom their jealousy was a real jealousy they weren't programmed to be jealous their animosity was a real animosity and in the vastness of the purposes of god he was orchestrating things so as to preserve a remnant for himself and a people who would be there in egypt it's amazing isn't it you see there's a lesson in this as well and it is this that the providences of god are seldom self-interpreting so when you and i are going through things if we are constantly immediately saying how does this affect me what does this mean to me how can i explain this in terms of the immediate and the here and now we will seldom get it right joseph could never have got it right when he was in that pit if he started to try and explain the providence of god to himself in the midst of all of that animosity when he was stripped naked and put up in front of the people before he was taken into the home of potiphar when he was on the receiving end of the seducing glances and insinuations of potiphar's wife when he ended up in the jail maligned and accused and innocent what is it allows somebody who lives a life like that to stand up and greet his brothers and say don't be distressed don't be angry with yourselves why does it allow somebody to do that he understands my times are in your hands as i have lived my own life and faced some of my own challenges and continue to do as well i have to remind myself on a regular basis that the god who is involved in the life cycle of a sparrow is actually committed to my life as well and that he will sustain me and watch over me in the face of everything there are a few funerals i've done that have stood out for me so much as the funeral that i did of a lady probably 20 years ago or more she was a young lady she died before she was 40. she had a disease that those of you who are going to be medics will understand that i don't understand but it essentially was some kind of um epidermal disease that began to close down her existence her hands her face everything was finally turned in and it essentially in her 30s squeezed the life out of her she was from a roman catholic family a big family she had come to trust in jesus she discovered that religion hasn't didn't have the answer but that jesus set her free and she left a letter that she wanted me to have so that on the occasion of her funeral i would be able to tell her family how she had viewed the way in which her life had unfolded and the way in which it had been taken away from her and this is a verse that she wanted me to read job chapter 10 verse 12. you gave me life and showed kindness and in your providence watched over my spirit how did you get there my times are in your hands what my times are in your hands therefore i'm not cast around on the sea of chance i'm not held in the grip of blind deterministic forces on being trained in the school of god's providence that's the what so what prosperity should not be the occasion of pride anxiety should not be the occasion of despair and adversity should not be allowed to overturn us now what here we go one there is a responsibility that we have to face up to because some of you are beginning already to say to yourself well in that case i've got nothing to do with anything at all somehow or another this notion of god's sovereignty has exempted me from everything as if somehow or another it relieves me of all responsibility no no that's wrong although the lord overrules all things according to his purpose we are still responsible to him for all that we are and all that we do therefore we are responsible to make sensible decisions we are responsible to be righteous in our planning we are responsible to be involved in the problems of our world a man's heart devises his way but the lord directs his steps therefore we are to look ahead we're to make plans we're to put our affairs in order and we are always to be in submission to his will you have this juxtaposition classically in the story of nehemiah you remember where he is confronted by enemies in the work of reconstruction in jerusalem and wonderful verse nehemiah 4 9 we prayed to our god and we posted a guard somebody would have said all you have to do is pray that's all you do you just pray sounds very pious doesn't it i just pray i leave my car open i leave my keys there i leave my briefcase in the car i just pray i just pray and just walk away idiot when joab encourages the troops under his care he says be strong and let us fight bravely for our people and the cities of our god you know the next sentence says the lord will do what is good in his sight so there is a responsibility that we cannot avoid there is a humility uh that ought to be fostered in us you see this is the other side of the coin isn't it from the idea that uh prosperity would produce pride in us no the providence of god actually humbles us so for example joseph responds to pharaoh when he asks for an interpretation of the dream joseph does not say oh i'm glad you asked i'm your man dreams i'm big on i'm good on dreams yeah if i had never been here i wouldn't be here if it weren't for dreams i had a couple of dailies uh i'll tell you about that maybe later but uh yeah what is it what is it you've got for me he doesn't say that at all he says i can't i can't interpret dreams but god can didn't make him proud made him wonder at every level listen at every level our lives are utterly dependent upon god so don't draw attention to yourself don't go out as a proud arrogant person don't trumpet your own achievements acknowledge that you cannot even open your eyelids in the morning apart from the providence of god and finally since our times are in god's hands not only is there a responsibility that we need to face and a humility that we need to foster but there is a security that we find in this truth says calvin ignorance of providence is the ultimate of all miseries the highest blessedness lies in the knowledge of it so instead of living in the fearfulness of what fate might bring instead of viewing our lives in the world as a kind of tumbleweed now as humble believers we just fearlessly again commit ourselves to god the believer solace says calvin is to know that his heavenly father so holds all things in his power so rules everything by his authority and will so governs by all his wisdom that nothing can be fall except he determine it listen young folks we are not at the mercy of arbitrary and impersonal forces we are in the hands of a heavenly father who loves us with an everlasting love does this answer all our questions clearly not but it is in this central fact that i am then set free from the regrets of yesterday and i'm strengthened for the challenges of tomorrow so do your best try your hardest love passionately live joyously engage imaginatively investigate unrelentingly but every night when you put your head on the pillow remember my times are in your hands you don't know all about my mom and dad you know all about the divorce you know all about my fears you know all about my cancer you know all about these things and god you are my god and i will trust you let me quote from a hymn and we'll use this as um kind of like our benediction all the way my savior leads me cheers each winding path i tread gives me grace for every trial feeds me with the living bread though my weary steps may falter and my soul a thirst may be gushing from the rock before me there's a spring of joy i see all the way my savior leads me all the fullness of his love perfect rest to me is promised in my father's house above when my spirit clothed immortal wings its flight through realms of day this my song through endless ages jesus led me all the way [Music] that is a comforting reminder that the hands that hold our lives are the same hands that hold all things that's aleister begg with the final message in a series titled lessons for life at truth for life our desire is to provide you with clear relevant bible teaching to make it available for everyone without the barrier of cost and the reason we're able to do that is because of the generosity of a group we refer to as truth partners monthly givers who support the work of truth for life if you are one of our truth partners we want to thank you for your partnership if you're not yet a truth partner i'd love to invite you to join the team today when you become a truth partner both of the books we offer each month are yours simply by request with no additional donation you can find out more about the benefits when you sign up to become a truth partner at truthforlife.org truthpartner and to show our appreciation for your support today we want to invite you to request our current book offer it's titled surviving religion 101 letters to a christian student on keeping the faith in college this is an essential book to help every young adult with their first steps of independence whether they're headed off to college or a job or the mission field you can request surviving religion 101 with a one-time donation when you visit truthforlife.org donate or call 888-588-7884 i'm bob lepine hope you enjoy your weekend and are able to worship with your local church monday we begin a new series on the practical and challenging book of james the series is called faith that works we're going to find out how to be a joyful doer of the word even in the middle of hard times the bible teaching of aleister begg is furnished by truth for life where the learning is for living [Music]

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 5,649

Rating: 4.9860139 out of 5

Keywords: Christian Thinking, Dependence on God, Faith, Fear, Love of God, Pride, Sovereignty of God, Suffering

Id: 964oLQZa9-M

Length: 25min 0sec (1500 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021