Welcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.
If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.
Summary/Engagement
She crumpled into a heap on the floor, limp as a wet rag. Tears shook her body as she tried to comprehend the news she just heard. “Why, God?” was the constant question running through her mind. Yet, even in the shock she clung to the promises of God. She recited Romans 8:28 over and over through warm tears… “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Other verses flashed through her mind, life rafts in an ocean of pain. Genesis 50:20. Exodus 4:11. Job 31:4. Psalm 135:6. Psalm 139:13-16. Isaiah 45:7. Ephesians 1:11.
Slowly, painfully, she rose from the floor. A tentative resolve in herself, a rock solid resolve in God. “He can be trusted,” she whispers, “and I will trust him.”
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God’s providence is a comfort in time of trouble. A “great stay to our faith.” When times of trouble come, such as Psalm 42 in King David’s life, the soul casts about for a reason for the trouble. Some believers think they are under the wrath of God because they have lost something. Others think that God had no hand in whatever happened because they consider the outcome evil. The Bible doesn’t give a category for God not being involved.
“If God should not uphold things, they would presently fall to nothing, from whence they came. If God should not guide things, Satan’s malice, and man’s weakness, would soon bring all to a confusion. If God did not rule the great family of the world, all would break and fall to pieces.”
Sibbes holds divine providence forth as a sweet comfort to the soul and reason to both trust and hope in God. Far from being the divine watchmaker who creates and sets things in to motion, God is actively involved in his creation. However, he is not the divine puppeteer such that man is absolved of responsibility, either. God is sovereign, man is responsible. We are responsible for our actions and though we can mean it for evil, God will use it ultimately for his glory and the good of his saints. (Genesis 50:20)
After all, isn’t that the cross of Christ? God took what man meant for evil, the most evil action ever taken when man crucified his creator to a Roman cross, and through that act he superintended it for good. Through that action God made atonement for the sins of all who would believe. If God can use the tragedy of the murder of God for his good, can’t we trust him with our circumstances?
“God taketh liberty in using weak means to great purposes, and setting aside more likely and able means; yea, sometimes he altogether disableth the greatest means, and worketh often by no means at all.”
Application / Further Discussion
Human suffering is an absolute because sin is absolutely part of our nature. Cruelty, war, pain, disease, death. All have come because sin has entered the world. We are fallen creatures. In fact, without the restraining and sovereign influence of God we would descend in to such beastial behavior I think we might annihilate ourselves. Indeed, without the superintending providence of God, all would be lost.
Let it be a comfort to you that God is in control. The maker of all things has not left his post. He is not absentee and is not surprised by all that is happening. Even in the face of unspeakable evil, God will bring beauty for ashes. We see so dimly and on such short timespans that we can’t conceive all that he will do and is doing. Nor are we meant to. We are not God.
Just as we put our faith in Christ’s finished work on our behalf for our salvation so we must trust in God’s sovereignty in all things. The same God who used the murder of his own son for our salvation, can use the evil events of our lives to serve good purposes. We won’t necessarily know the reasons we suffered certain things in this life, though. If we can trust him and have faith in his promises for our salvation, can’t we trust him with the events of our life?
“God’s ways seem oft to us full of contradictions, because his course is to bring things to pass by contrary means. There is a mystery not only in God’s decree concerning man’s eternal estate, but likewise in his providence, as why he should deal unequally with men otherwise equal. His judgments are a great depth, which we cannot fathom, but they will swallow up our thoughts and understandings. Where we cannot trace him, we ought with St. Paul to admire and adore him. When we are in heaven, it will be one part of our happiness to see the harmony of those things that seem now confused unto us. All God’s dealings will appear beautiful in their due seasons, though we for the present see not the contiguity and linking together of one with another.”
We cannot fathom the depths of his work. If we try to understand God, his deeps will swallow whole our attempts. When you behold the depth and glory and beauty and majesty of God, do not immediately try to understand and turn it in to an intellectual exercise. Marvel at his glory. Worship in his majesty. Behold our God!
In those moments of despair and pain just the same as in those moments of joy and health; trust the God who providentially rules over them. Do not remember God only when things are bad and forget him when times are good. He presides over all times. If you have, it is by his hand. If you have not, it is by his hand. “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21) He works all things together for good, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Do you love him? If so, remember;
“Here we may take sanctuary, that we are in covenant with him who sits at the stern and rules all, and hath committed the government of all things to his Son, our brother, our Joseph, the second person in heaven.”
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Last week, we read chapters 14-20 of The Soul’s Conflict.
Next week, we’ll read chapters 21-27 of The Soul’s Conflict.
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