I received an invitation to speak on the Doctrine of Providence. I was told that I wouldn't be able to speak until noon, so I'll make it real quick. God's in charge, everything's gonna work out. Actually, how many of you are still classic dispensationalists? How many of you have ever been a classic dispensationalist? Raise your hand, don't be ashamed. Okay, I've been once. Okay, how many of you are still classic dispensationalists? How many of you knew that Doug was a closet dispensationalist? He told me over there getting coffee, he said, I'll give you a special dispensation to go to 130. And if you believe that, I have property in coastal Florida for you. The doctrine of divine providence. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we have heard good things today. We've heard of the sufficiency of scripture. We've heard of the great needs in India and the great needs in much of the world. We have great need today. We're not as smart as we think we are. We're not as spiritual as we think we are. We're far more depraved than we ever imagined. Have mercy on us during this time. Please send the Holy Spirit to be our teacher. Take glory for yourself. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. The doctrine of God's providence. We've already covered the first four chapters in our confession over the meetings here at RBFI. The Holy Scriptures, the basis for knowing God and knowing about God. What is our God like? We have to read the Holy Scriptures. The second chapter is on the very doctrine of God, God himself and the Holy Trinity. Next we had God's decree. As my daughter would put it when she was seven, is God the boss? I said, yes, ma'am. How is God's decree carried out? The doctrine of creation. How much of what happens is God's doing? The doctrine of divine providence. I wanted to begin by giving you the application first, and then you can fill in the blanks as we go on into the doctrine itself. The doctrine of providence brings glory to God. Ephesians 1, 11, and 12. In him, in Christ, also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory, who works all things according to the counsel of his will. The doctrine of providence is a revealed doctrine. We see it in scripture. And the doctrine of providence reveals God's glory to his people. Everything that happens, God's in control. Everything that happens, God's in control. Everything that happens, God's in control. You don't have to be a Christian very long before. Oh, I didn't know the roof was going to fall in. I thought everything would be really rosy and I'd just be walking with Jesus and whistling around the house, victory in Jesus. Well, I hate to break it to you guys, but that's not what life in a fallen world is like. In fact, if you don't understand the doctrine of depravity, you're going to be punched in the gut too many times to count. but God will glorify himself if you and your people, I'm speaking to pastors and elders here today, your people will glorify God if you teach them the doctrine of providence and teach it how it applies. The doctrine of providence brings sanity to God's people. the verse that you are told early in your Christian life, and then later you come running back to when you do get punched in the gut. Romans 8, 28 to 39, but especially verse 28. And we know, when Paul says, and we know, that means it's something that's a common knowledge, that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. All things work together for good, even this. Even this diagnosis, even this failure, even this misery, even this pain, even my cancer, even my heartache, even my disappointment, even life's tragedies. Yes. When I believe God's character and his promises and trust my God that he is working all things together for good, I will then honor him and glorify him in my faith. If we don't teach that to our people, how do we expect them to do it? It is one of the main duties of the pastor to equip God's people to glory in God and to trust him and bring their thoughts into captivity to Christ. We were told and we were reminded about the sufficiency of scripture. And we have a subsidiary document, the 1689 Second London Confession. But we also have the main source of all light, It's like the moon is secondary light. In fact, you want to get a great, this is a freebie. It just popped into my brain. And something strange popped into my brain, but this isn't one of them. Full Moon Rising. How many of you have read that book to your kids? Full Moon Rising. You go, wait, isn't that an old Creedence song from the 70s? That's Full Moon Rising. Different theology. Full moon rising is a story for kids about how the moon is Totally in love with itself because it thinks look at all this light emanating from me and needs to find out it only has reflected glory it has nothing intrinsic of its own and We need to teach that to our kids but It's one of the main duties that we have to teach our people to think biblically so that they can function in life and I'm gonna skip over part of my notes here. How many of you know what was the first book in English available in America in the 20th century on the Doctrine of Providence? What was the very first book on the Doctrine of Providence written in English in America in the 20th century? 20th century was 1900 to 2000, okay. How many of you know what the first book in English on the Doctrine of Providence and what year was it published? Let's have some volunteers. Somebody has a guest? Jerry Bridges, Trusting God, 1988. So believers had to go for over 3 quarters of a century without any contemporary writings on the Doctrine of Providence. Now, there are some great older books on the Doctrine of Providence, but they were hard to find, too. And I can remember going through a church split in 1989. This is the Midwest. This is corn, and soybeans, and flat land, unless you're in southern Indiana. Well, anyway, I moved to California. And there's big waves on the Pacific coming ashore at Newport Beach. And I had a dream one night that I was on this giant wave coming ashore on a surfboard. Now, I did body surfing when I was young, but I never did any board surfing. And I'm coming in. Well, wait, there's a coral reef. There aren't coral reefs off of California. Well, there was in this dream. And we're going to hit that coral reef, and these are 12-foot waves, and I'm going to die. And yet suddenly, the surfboard comes in, and the sound of the crunch of the sand underneath it, and you step off. You didn't die. The waves didn't kill you. The coral reef didn't kill you. And that's the feeling my wife and I had when, in 1989, in the midst of all that was going on, we read Trusting God just as we were going through a church split. The one who goes to the grocery store really feels the pressure of those kind of situations. We were drinking heavily, but we weren't drinking from the bottle anymore. We were pouring it in a glass, so it wasn't as obvious. That was supposed to be a joke. That's not really true. We had this guy who used to be a drunk, and now he's a preacher. It saved our sanity. One of my reasons for beginning with the application and conclusion is that I've been a Calvinist since 1976, a Christian since 1969, a confessional since 1984. And one of the things that has bothered me increasingly over the years is there are many, I'll call them, reformed dilettante. A dilettante is someone who Maybe he smokes cigarettes, but he has a cigarette holder. Maybe he wears an ascot. Maybe he likes to sip wine while he reads his Bible. They like to work geometric puzzles and crossword puzzles for intellectual stimulation and satisfaction. But when it comes to the doctrines that we're talking about, they don't live them, they don't teach them to their families, and they don't teach them to their congregations. It's this part of my library from here to here. That's all the books in the Doctrine of Providence. I got that down. I know that. Well, good. I'm glad you know that. Do you practice it? Would anybody who knows you really well think, you know, this man trusts God because he's gone through life, he has the hurts we all do, but he trusts God in the midst of these things. It shows in his life and it shows in his family. He teaches them these things. They're not grumblers, they're not bitter. You know, when my wife was at a class, not a class, but a women's fellowship and seminary, they went around, what do you do for fun with your husband? And even though these are seminary students' wives, these aren't pastors' wives yet. And I got to this one woman, she goes, I don't know. I haven't seen my husband in three years. We don't do anything for fun. The bitterness was so bad already. How long do you think that marriage is gonna last in the ministry? If I had to quiz our wives, are any of them bitter? Are any of our children bitter? Because we've not helped them work through whatever is sticking in their craw. Years ago, there was a man I knew who had just gone through being fired from his church for being a Calvinist. And we were offered to have breakfast. Took him and his wife to breakfast. Asked how he was doing. He said, we're doing pretty good. And he talked a bit. I asked him, I said, I'd given him a copy of Trusting God. Asked him if he had read it. Yeah, he said, that's pretty good. And he put it up on a shelf. I said, have you given it to your wife to read? No, it's up on my shelf. I looked at her, I asked, how is she doing? And she burst out crying. And his expression was, he had no idea how bad she was hurting. I'm like, son, do you know what's going on? Do you know which end is up in this world? So I don't want any of you to be reformed dilettantes, people who, I have nice, tidy doctrine. But I have truncated experience. I don't live it. My family doesn't experience it. My church doesn't hear it. And God help us. Who would be attracted to a church like that? But in this culture, with all the problems we have, a church where you have a sovereign God, a loving God, a God who oversees the detail of people's lives and who the people know that love, they experience that love, they live in light of that love. What a difference that makes. They stand out like sore thumbs, so to speak. And in the darkening world, Paul says in Philippians, we shine as lights. And people who want to change the culture and make it full of light, well, good luck. I hope your reading of the Bible is better than mine. But I just want the church to stand out as lights. I just want the church to be different. I want the church, as Martin Lloyd-Jones would say, to be the church. So after I've hit you with some of the application, let's look at the first paragraph of the Doctrine of Providence. The first paragraph of most of the chapters in the Confession gives you the summary of the chapter itself. I'll read to you this first paragraph. God the good creator of all things. Reagan talked about how the 1689 changed Savoy or Westminster in certain places. They both had the great creator. And he is great. We've already looked at the chapter on God's decree earlier. But this emphasizes, yes, and he's in charge of all things, and he's good. What comes to mind? The lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. What? The guy in charge here is a lion? Man, that's scary. Is he safe? No child, I told you he's a lion. He's not safe, but he's good. That's worth stopping and teaching your children what that means. He's not safe, he's a lion. Our God is God, but he's good. God, the good creator of all things, in his infinite power and wisdom, does uphold, direct, dispose, and govern. Well, what? All creatures and things, animate and inanimate things, from the greatest even to the least, to a molecule floating above the Arctic, to a banana slug in the Oregon rainforest, to you and me sitting here today. By his most wise and holy providence, If there had been a better path for your life or mine, God would have had us on that path. Despite what you and I have gone through, despite what we yet might go through. If there had been a better path for us, God would have had us on that path. By his most wise and holy providence. You need to read, how many of you have read Trusting God by Jerry Bridges? Just raise your hand. One note, just keep it up high, one, two, three, four, five, six, six. I could be really snide and say the rest of you, shame on you, but I won't do that. I'll be reserve snide. You really need to read that and you really need to teach it to your people. It's the best book for the average person of the Doctrine of Providence. God knows what he's doing, he's infinitely wise, he's infinitely loving, he's infinitely holy, and he's absolutely sovereign. Don't you wanna trust him? Don't you see he knows what he's doing? To the end for which they were created. What's he doing with all these things? He's helping it reach the end for which it was created. according to his infallible knowledge and the free and immutable counsel of his own will. To what end? To the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, infinite goodness. Again, come back to goodness and mercy. Who is the author of Providence? God, the good creator. Do you believe that? Do you believe that everything that happens to you comes out of the hand of God's good hand? Not that he has a bad hand, but that whatever he wills for you is good? What's the foundation of providence? His infinite power and wisdom. What is the substance of providence? To uphold, direct, dispose and govern. Who and what are the objects of providence? All creatures and things from the smallest to the greatest. When I lived in Georgia, I would use the illustration, if you drive on Interstate 75 south of Atlanta and south of Macon, turn off on State Road 16 and go east about eight miles, and there's a gravel road, take it and drive back in the woods, and there's a pine tree. There's lots of pine trees in Georgia. There's a pine tree, and one particular pine needle fell. God superintended that, God ordained that. This is God's planet. How does God's providence work? By his most wise. how does God's superintendents work, excuse me, by his most wise and holy providence. My first big hit was the time I was hoping to get engaged to this girl and we went through a summer together of training for a parish church ministry and at Christmas I was at a conference with someone from her campus and we're standing in line to Here, a proto-Christian rock group. Doesn't that sound like 1970? So what did you think about so-and-so getting engaged? Now, we had been dating, and things had become kind of distant and not so much going on. And it was like someone comes up to you and punches you in the solar plexus and the wind's being knocked out of your gut. She goes, oh, you didn't know. And so she walked away, left me in my shock. And so I had to process that, because after the concert, we're supposed to go up to our rooms. And I had six high school guys who were going to want me to tell them about whatever the lesson for the day was. And I got up there a couple minutes early, having processed it a bit during the concert. And, well, Lord, I don't know what you're doing, but Romans 8, 28 is true, and I believe this is for my good and your glory, so I thank you. Did I feel victorious? Was I start whistling victory in Jesus? No. I still felt like I'd been punched in the gut, but from the neck up, I understood what was happening. And a year later, I was driving back from the West Coast in Texas, and she heard I was in town and called and said, could she come by and see me, meet me out by the street in her car? And she got out of her VW Bug and told me that, she said, pray for me. I've been engaged. We're going to be married in a couple of months. When you're really immature as a Christian, it's like, well, what's this girl like? Well, she's really pretty and she has a cross necklace and she's really pretty and she goes to church and she's really pretty and she has a Bible. And but like many pretty people, they decide to get by on their looks and not really walk with God. And so she said she would take off her ring on the weekends and people would fly into her city and then they go to Mexico for the weekend. She goes, I don't know what happened to me. I don't know what I've done with my life. I've got to tell my fiance, please pray for me. And I told her I would certainly pray for her. I was kind of in shock hearing her story. And then as she left, I watched the taillights of the VW go off into the night. I said, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, that she's not my fiance and that I don't have to work through this. by his most wise and holy providence. I really wanted that bad. I really wanted that bad. I had wept when I got an initial news and here I am thanking the Lord that he wouldn't let me have what I wanted. How is God's providence compatible with his creation? I mean, the previous chapters on the doctrine of creation, The decree says everything outside of God, God made. Creation goes into some detail, and then here in the Doctrine of Providence, what? To the end for which they were created, you were created for a purpose. You're not a chance configuration of atoms. Or as R.C. Sproul said, you're not a cosmic germ, an accident. God created you for a purpose, and Providence will see to it that the purpose of which God created you is worked out in your lifetime. What are the determining causes of God's providence? Well, the chapter says two things. His infallible knowledge. It's perfect knowledge. There's been a heresy the last few years about so-called middle knowledge and the open view of God and certain things. There is no possible contingency that God's not sovereign over, that God doesn't know about. He has infallible knowledge. You and I, you know, God didn't say, you know, I'm glad you reminded me about that. Have you ever told God what he messed up with something? You know, God, you didn't, let me tell you what you should have done here. Reading Jerry Bridges' book, Trusting God, really caused me to shut up on a lot of things. For example, I know you wouldn't do this, but if you know people who second guess God on the weather, grouse and complain about the weather, like the last couple of days. But everybody complains about the weather, not just the weather man. What other job could you be wrong most of the time and still have a job? But we complain about the weather, and is God not in control of the weather? I shut up about that. His infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable, unchanging counsel of his own will. God doesn't have plan B. The idea of classic dispensationalism that the church was an afterthought because Israel rejected the kingdom is really bad theology. That's the gist of paragraph one. Paragraph two and three are the relation of providence to the use of means. This is a helpful section of the confession, because one of the things you'll meet or maybe you struggle with earlier is, OK, I've talked to hyper-Calvinists. I'm sure that none of you are hyper-Calvinists, but you may have looked at one in the mirror at one time. There are hyper-Calvinists and there are Minions. And Martin Lloyd-Jones had the best comment. He says, well, they're mirror images of each other. Hyper-Calvinism is actually a Minion way of thinking. You have to meet certain criteria before you can be saved. Ooh, true. But what is the use of means in God's sovereignty? Doug Kelly has a great little book, If God Already Knows, Why Pray? There's a man in our church who doesn't pray very much. He does pray, but he doesn't pray for anything. He thanks God for everything. God's going to work out everything anyway, so I don't need to make any decisions. He's just a big blob, and he's ending his life. He's my age, in his late 30s. Anyways, he's ending his life at 76 years old, and he has no meaning or purpose in life, because he's lived as a functional hyper-Calvinist. Because God's going to do what he's going to do. And so I just thank him. Well, I said, that's not what scripture says. But because he's losing his memory, he doesn't remember what you told him. So next day, he'll have the same question. God is the first cause. Well, this is, I know, an advanced group here in the state of Indiana, the RBFI. What's the subject of Romans 9? Just briefly, it's the sovereignty of God in election, in salvation. What's chapter 11 about? The sovereignty of God, election, and his unchanging purposes, and Israel's not an afterthought. OK. Because this is the advanced group, I know you know this. What comes between chapter 9 and chapter 11? Chapter 10. Bingo. OK. This man should get a free book. OK. And there's a bunch of them over there, actually. OK. And what's the subject of chapter, what's a big chunk of the chapter 10 about? Evangelism. How are they gonna hear if nobody tells them? Right, right. Who are they going to believe in if they don't know Christ exists? Why do we want to do missions? Why do we want to do evangelism? Because God commands them. The sovereign God has sovereignly ordained the means by which we do his work. And we're secondary causes. He's the primary cause. When you witness that person sitting next to you in the plane, is that because you're a spiritual giant and you just look for opportunities all the time and God's just lucky to have you on his team? Or did God work in your heart to wake you up from your spiritual doldrums and go, This person next to me, I think I'll talk to them about the Lord. And God uses secondary means. God's the first cause. Does he use secondary causes? Yes, he does. Does he always use secondary causes? He can work with them, he can work without them, or he can work against them. I butchered some evangelistic presentations that God saved anyway. And I've had flawless gospel presentations that people acted like I might've been from Neptune, as far as they were concerned. They didn't get it. But as I think it was, Sam Waldron had a good point that was copied by another man. These two paragraphs keep us from crippling anxiety, paralyzing fatalism, Ruinous presumption, things that we can fall into if you misunderstand providence and fall into a hole. Like my friend, he had a paralyzing fatalism. Paragraph four to six, the relation of providence to the reality of sin. How does God work around with or through, however, with your and my sin or the sin of unbelievers? Paragraph four says God's sovereign over sin. He deals with sin in general here. Paragraph five, God often disciplines or test his children. Okay, why did you fall into that sin? He was disciplining you. He was testing you. God sometimes hardens the wicked. Sin, excuse me, God deals with sin and the ungodly. Do you know what hardening is, a simple definition of hardening? How many of you when you were a child ever had clay or Play-Doh? Don't be ashamed, guys. Raise your hand. What smell did your Play-Doh have? Anyway. OK, I'm old enough to remember modeling clay. And then you go, no, you need to get Play-Doh. It's cheaper. And it doesn't get hard like clay does. What happens if you leave your little bunch of clay in a shoebox up on the shelf in your closet? Come back two months later, hey, who put the rocks in the shoebox? Well, clay turns to rock by just interacting with the air. You don't have to do anything to clay. In and of itself, left in the environment, it will harden. I lived in Texas. You dig it out of the ground, it's wet and gooey and leave it there for a couple of weeks and it's a piece of rock. Now, what's the point? Scripture says that God is the potter and we're the spiritual giant. No, he says we're the clay. What does God have to do to harden us? And here's a guy walking down the streets in Bombay. What's it called? Mumbai, sorry. I'm old. So does God have this ray, comes down, and this guy starts snarling. But wait, farther down, he's dragged into an alley where something mysteriously happens and he comes out singing Victory in Jesus. That's my hymn of the day. Anyway, what's the point? You go, what is the point? Do you know what the point of this is? Hardening, God doesn't have to do anything to harden you. In fact, if he just, so to speak, puts his hands in his pockets and steps back and says, have at it, you will go to hell. You'll become hardened as a rock. You'll be like the man in the iron cage, so to speak. God doesn't have to do anything to harden a sinner. Living with a sinful heart on a sinful planet, you will screw up your life for eternity. I don't say that to be mean. I say that to warn you. And if you ever think, well, I'll become a Christian later after I have my fun and then I'll get my fire insurance and I'll be good. No, you won't. The last chapter of this, excuse me, the last paragraph of this chapter is God's providence cares especially for his church. You know, of all the things that God does, and you study the Doctrine of Providence, you look up the verses, and the Scripture text and the Confession are not proof texts. They're general theology texts. The more you study the Confession, the more you realize it has a big picture, and not just, who wept? John 11, 30. Jesus wept, okay. It's not that kind of fill in the blank. God's providence especially cares for his church. Sam Waldron said in his Sunday school, covering his exposition of the 1689 was originally a Sunday school class. So some chapters are a little bit thinner than others, and it's the best place for your people to start. He says, it is for the sake of the church that everything happens. Everything on this planet is ultimately working for the church, or as J.C. Raw put it even better, every molecule on this planet is working to get you to heaven and to get the church to heaven. Every molecule in existence is working to accomplish God's purposes for the church. Let me read to you Ephesians chapter one, verse 22. Ephesians is met by many called a church book. He says in verse 22, and he put all things under his feet. He, the father, put all things under his Christ feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Christ is head over everything for the church. So there's a special, I could go on. It's not 1.30 yet, but. I wanted to look at a couple of verses today to help you struggle and wrestle with these issues of the providence of God and how it works out in our lives. John chapter 15, verse 16. You did not choose me, but I chose you. Okay, the context is not exactly election, but it is certainly election, choosing for service. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go Gotta go, not that you would sit, but that you would go and bear fruit. That your fruit would remain, abide, endure, okay. That, introduction of a purpose clause, whatever you ask the father in my name, he'll give it to you. I moved back from California to Indiana in 1972, got married, began to work with high school students on the north side of Indianapolis and the east side, Broad Ripple, North Central, Arlington, Lawrence, Carmel. And we worked with several other people. And I knew that I needed to learn to work diligently. I mean, bear the oak while you're young. I'm starting out. I need to work hard. And right, so I've been working hard for September, October, November, December, January, February, March, eight months. Not a lot of fruit. But as a good parachurch worker, I had my devotional every morning and reading in John's gospel, John 15, 16. You did not choose me. I'm a slow learner. So even coming to the doctrines of grace is kind of like dealing with some of these things. OK, I knew that I didn't call myself into the ministry. You didn't choose me, but I chose you and appointed you. You should go and bear fruit. OK, his purpose in calling me to do what I was doing was to bear fruit. Okay, I could get that. And I was learning to work hard, human responsibility. That whatever you ask the Father in my name, I wonder what he'd want me to ask about. Duh, it's right here. Bear abiding fruit, fruit that would endure. God says, I'm not calling you to make decisions. I'm calling you to make disciples. The people that you minister to, the ultimate goal is not to get them to pray a prayer, sign, check a box. It's to have them become lifelong followers of Christ. So I began to pray that way, duh. that whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he'll give it to you. And I can remember the day I prayed it in March of 73. And the next week, I had three young men trust Christ, who went on to become leaders in my ministry, went on to college, went on, some of them went to seminaries, some of them went and became elders in their churches. Some of them are now retired, that's how old I am. And They were people that the Lord made into enduring fruit. Not because I did anything really great, but because the Lord opened my eyes to see a verse that says, I need to be responsible. Go, work, do stuff, but pray. Am I a part believer in verses, you know, like half of it, but not the whole thing? Well, no, I should believe the whole verse. I need to work and I need to pray diligently. And the times when I've prayed diligently, I've seen fruit. And the time when I get off on the side of I just need to work my fanny off. Well, not a lot happens. I learned one time when I was a kid that when you throw sand in the air in the sandbox, you know what? It comes down, and you have an itchy scalp. And a lot of Christian labor is just throwing sand up in the air in a sandbox. It doesn't make a hell of a means difference, because it's just human work. I'm going to quit here because we do have certain time constraints. And if you want to ask questions or ask questions about the books next door, Banner of Truth, Crossway, Presbyterian and Reformed, and Founders Press gave us a bunch of free books. And if you'd like to go over them, pastors and elders get first pick. And after that, it's every man or woman for themselves. We'll open it up for questions. If anybody has any questions, I'd like to just maybe start off and ask. Pastor Steve, there's a lot of, right now we're in a political season here in the States, and there's just a lot of legitimate concerns that surround us as the people of God, you know, in this country. And the top of the problem is it's uniquely situated to be very practical for a pastor. who has legitimately concerned fellow citizens of the country. So, you know, maybe offer a little bit of counsel how that, with God's providence, and then the means by which he uses to bring about his providence, and our agency in that would be, I guess you could say, some practical application to give someone to not lose despairs, but yet not become apathetic. You kind of were circling around that, but specifically talking about the current cultural context, current political landscape, the doctrine of Providence that you kind of alluded to there. What kind of optimistic outlook could you give us on that? I used to tell this joke about the NASA scientist who was doing a tour of universities speaking on jet propulsion. And he had a motor pool driver from the government who drove him to each of the 10 places in the Midwest he had to teach. And about the ninth place, the motor pool driver says, you know, I have driven you to all these places. I've listened to you give the same lecture every time. I could give the lecture myself. And the scientist goes, hey, that'd be fun. OK, at the next place, they don't know me. You give the lecture, and I'll pretend to be your driver. OK, so he pulls it off. He gives the lecture flawlessly. Word perfect. But he didn't know there was a Q&A afterwards. It's Providence. I didn't know there was a Q&A afterwards. And of course, the graduate student had to stand up and ask a question that's 15 minutes long to show how much he knew. And so the guy just stood up at the front, listened to him, and said, that is such an elementary question. I'm going to ask my chauffeur here to answer it. So, so. During World War I, there were many professing Christians on both sides of World War I, sadly. But among the British, there was a phrase they used to use, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. So how do I teach my people? How do I practice trusting the Lord and voting and then trusting the results to God? I'll show my colors. I don't think God called me to save America when I was in the South and became a Calvinist. People said, don't you want to join the local chapter of the SBC and you can help impact the SBC? And I look at all the trouble that would involve, because in the state of Georgia when I was there, none of the local associations would allow a Calvinistic church or pastor to join. You could join the state association for 100 bucks. That'll take your money. But you can't actually fellowship with any of the local associations. So I said, I don't want to pay that kind of money for the privilege of fighting. We'll just be a Christian church that practices what we preach, hopefully. And so God didn't call me to save the SBC. He called me to preach the gospel. I think there are some who would like to save America. I believe America is worth saving. has been a great light. I don't see saving America as my calling. I see you preaching the gospel. So if some of you, and I know you'll come up afterwards and, let's talk about this. Well, I'll just say bluntly, I think Christian nationalism is ill-advised and doesn't have the best handling of scripture. If you want to become a Paedo-Baptist and join Doug Wilson in Idaho, Go for it. But again, again, people are like, why did you go there? Because it is because it needs to be said. You know, I don't know what America is going to what's going to happen. I believe we're in Romans one. We're at the end. God's judging our nation. And. Francis Schaeffer said, before he died in 1984, he said, America's biggest problem is it loves peace and affluence more than it loves the Lord. And that's true of the church. I like to be comfortable. I've been examining my life. I like to be comfortable. I like to be, have ease. That's not my calling in life. My calling is to be obedient to the Lord. And so what if things get hard? Well, I gotta, A letter yesterday passed on from my senior pastor about our missionaries in a nation in Southeast Asia I will not name for the sake of their safety. They were in China. They got booted out after 20 years. And they're another Southeast Asian nation that's going through civil war. They have hundreds of orphans, 625 orphans they're responsible for. They care for all the time. And because they don't have access to Digital cameras or film or anything like that, they don't take pictures. But some of the kids in their ministry drew watercolors of what's going on. So there's, see, watch a watercolor of a kid drew of a plane strafing and dropping napalm on villages that these kids used to live in. Or a 50-year flood that hit and washed away 85 kids they've not seen since the flood. And the wife writes poems like, Amy Carmichael or things like this, a very godly couple. And they're loving the Lord. They have joy. They have great heartache and great grief, but they have joy in the Lord. And they don't know what's going to happen. And I don't know what's going to happen. God's the God of providence, not me, not the electoral college. But I think we should teach our people the providence of God. I thought the Reformed churches did best, not perfectly, during COVID. And other people were wailing and gnashing their teeth and wondering what to do. And Reformed people thought, like, we're going to trust the Lord. We're going to obey him. And we're going to persevere. I think if you apply the doctrine of providence to what's going to happen, and I don't know. I'd like to think I know. I'd like to push a button and have it happen. you will have peace and sanity and you can minister from a place of strength if you're walking with the Lord, regardless of what happens. And what if what if the church saved America but lost its soul? Wouldn't that be a sad thing? Wouldn't that be a sad thing? So I thought your question was diplomatically asked and bullheadedly answered. But I think that In fact, I think a lot of bright evangelicals who wonder why we're such dimwits and believe the things we believe. But when they see your life, Acts 17.6, the people in Thessalonica are gnashing their teeth. Those men who have turned the world upside down have come here now also. That was Paul and his associates. These men have turned the world upside down. I would prefer to say these men who are turning the world right side up have come to our town. We're going through Sermon on the Mount and one of the screenshots behind the speaker, it's just a Sermon on the Mount. A guy asked me last week, he goes, I noticed that every week the picture of the city is upside down. Why is that? And I said, well, to see the subtitle here, Christ turning the world right side up or something like that. And he goes, oh, I see. That's meant to explain what we're doing. We're different. We're called to be different. And whether the nations roar, whether we have Hurricane Helene, whether we have COVID, we're just to be different. We're to shine as lights in a dark world. And if I stepped on a couple of toes, I'd be glad to meet you out by the dumpster. And some of my associates who are pugilists will take my case. But I think that we have a real opportunity, regardless of what happens, to show the world what it means to be a Christian and trust the Lord, regardless of what happens. All right, so before I call upon Pastor Josh White to close us with a word of prayer today, just a few notes. There's plenty of food over there to give, but I think for the raw stuff that's not in here, it's kind of embarrassing, but if you would, Pastor Josh, if you would just give thanks for the food that the church provided for us, Brother Duncan and Brother Peyton, he was the young man that cooked the food. Just give thanks for their service, it takes a lot of work. And everyone, you're welcome to stay, I encourage you to stay. And for the next meeting, a lot of folks ask, I always tell them to get this, you can go to rbfi.org, www.rbfi.org, and they'll post the next meeting there, all right? So I suggest you do it. Most gracious Heavenly Father, as we come before you this afternoon, Lord God, we praise your holy name for the opportunity granted to us by your Holy Providence to gather together, to hear from your word, to have fellowship around your word, to praise your holy name. Lord, what a blessing it is to travel to a place where I can meet other like-minded believers and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ and see some faces that I know and many I don't. Oh, Lord God, continue to bless our fellowship around the things of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ today. I pray that later on today as people travel various various places, you give us traveling mercies and safety. Lord, I do want to praise your holy name for the assembly here who has sought to make guests comfortable. Lord, what a blessing it is to Lord Jesus Christ, take serious hospitality. Lord, I pray that you would bless the food we are about to partake to our bodies. I pray that our speech would be enveloped with meekness and humility. Lord, I pray that you would bless the hands that help prepare the food for us, oh Lord God. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen, amen, we're dismissed. All right, I'm going to the dumpster. Okay. I need a couple of pugilists to help me. I had two hip replacements. Well, you got to get to it quick, right? I'll buy you a book. Thank you, brother. I know. I know. It's always $2,000. Thank you. It's always. It's always. Yes. We're learning. We're learning. We're just having conversations. And even on Providence, we started talking about, you know, starting with one, you know, 1 through 17. Our discussion was actually about the point where it was so serious. we're not going to split that up? no, not that split smart way of saying church, right? It's a current experience. In fact, when he says, it's so bad that children were all raped on campus, we go, no, that's a rite of passage. We expect kids not to be raped. No, he said, that's a gender joke. The better, the better, the better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. That's where I was saying, that's the answer. Well, yeah, this is the diagnosis. That's ours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't say you speak one. I'll tell you. I'm broke. I don't mean this as a sabotage. I mean we don't know each other. So, I mean to say, I've dealt with this much more fully than it. I was 21 years at the convention. We've been five and a half years out. I'm thankful. So I'm a friendly next-door neighbor. I write for Foundation Journal. They were doing a series for the 16-1800s. That's where I went to high school. Well, you come to Savoy just a few years later, and in the preface to Savoy, they explicitly name the exceptions on law. This is always the case. So they said that they've got good prosecutors who, you know, they're on different persuasion, or they go that way, but not entirely. There are different points on the spectrum. And this was too explicit. And so there were good men that were being forced to either sign against their conscience, or who would endorse everything else except that phrase. Right. And they couldn't, that clause, you know, and they were about to do that in their conscience. And so it was denying them fellowship in writing. Right. So they said, we've deleted all that. I mean, they discussed this. Well, the particular Baptist follows that way more than they follow Westminster. And so they are completely in the same setting. They're slightly different contexts. The particular Baptist pertains to those contexts. But I would kind of also note that they keep the silence. But the majority of them, I actually, there are exceptions. I'm sure one time, I'll treat them in that way. I'd also like to say this. Yeah. Yeah. You're not the one. They do things that, like, one of the sites, SuperHeroes, it's like, shh. I have a, I know another, here's those that are open as easel, and it's really bad. I don't think somebody would like this. I don't think my boy does. But anyway, it's just like, And so I had to, and of course that opened the door to a lot of questions. I had to reach on that. And so that's why I was, I don't want you to think I was like, oh my gosh, I wouldn't learn. And I was kind of, you know, I don't know. If I was her pastor, well, I think I'd need to do that. It's a good question. Some of that was, I'm not going to argue for a situation like that. Right, right. So that's the thing that's stricter here is a lot more structuring toward what we all tend to do. Right. I don't think. I know that you're right here. I'm saying they were always just feeding milk. They weren't giving on meat. You know, because I left church because I didn't want to remember what it was like. It was going to be Calvinistic. But at the point, it was always Cody Jean MacArthur. And the Bible knew that. And at the time, that just broke me wrong. And then I was thinking about it, and I was like, all right. So he always liked to spoke in the Old Testament. He's always saying it. All sorts of what we would call demonic charismatism. As with any point of theology, time to reflect and mature at these, I thought, in terms of the whole counsel of God. This was a historical theology. OK. That's where we see how men build on one another. It's not just a conversation moving forward so much as it is. And so then I had to meet up with the Elvish man. He said, I'm sorry, I can't do this anymore. And then you've got a guy sitting in the mess room. Oh, no. I just got the one that I have. And you've got nothing to say to him. You should see the Puritans. Read him. Read him. And he said, damn, sobering to the surface. No one really reached out to me to talk about what I had. You didn't hear this. And that's what I was talking about. So when I hear, you know, what I love about history and I've studied it for a couple of years, it's fine if you're excited about R.C. Sproul's lessons, but he doesn't. But in the end, one thing that scares me is that one man who I was so happy to be surrounded by, plus Mike's, he's all done with the church history, and this one happened in the dark. So then they get Andy. Yeah. And I'm looking at my laptop camera, and I'm like, well, we should keep talking to this guy. We've got to write down the church history. Andy is starting to reform the church. So that's why. Right, and that's a place where you have other problems. It's just like, I've been there. I was all the dissertation. My guys, my other siblings, I won't tell you, because I've been through a long time. I may go back to it, but my reasons for continuing are not sufficient for what place this place is going to start in. And it was like, OK, and then the Lord entrusted, I was working with John Flable, the leading Flable scholar, 45 minutes too late, dear brother, So we were editing for Banner. It was great. Lots of fun. Brian is still a dear friend now. We text each other and give each other more time. Well, we do that. Right, right. We went there before we went to the Lord of Collins, when we were there long enough that he got his second post released, but his third particular post. I mean, Ryder, his corpus has been lost. He was the third pastor, the largest, and oldest pastor. His head came to grace one time in London during this time. And we don't understand, and he has got things to say that we need to hear. And so it was like, OK, stewardship under Providence. And my guys turned to me going, we know that you've been conflicted about continuing this work. First of all, I've continued training on our own, but I've been training for five and a half years now. I grew on the basis of those experiences. Each time I started this forum, I worked to this point and got there, and I've always explored how people are behind us as well. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get to help them. I'm in the research thing, so I don't have classes, personally. I don't have Latin. But OK, that's fine. That's fine. That's fine. But I get to audit their classes. I'm reading the books with them, getting a walk with them. It's like, OK, this is helping us as a session to pull tighter together. Our people are seeing them grow. That's awesome. And so they are just spreading. I get to go to church. When we brought it to them and said, what do y'all think? We were just asking permission. We were going to pay for it ourselves. And the emotion from the floor came, listen, we love y'all. We see how you've been growing so far. We can only imagine what a blessing this is going to be to y'all and to our church. So let us cover everything. And Reagan, we know you're doing research, and you're going to do a lot more books than them. Turned in the receipts, and I was like, whoo-hoo. And I'm getting work. So Dr. Meadows, I did my MA and my MDiv at Southern. He supervised my MA. I did MDiv online. How's he doing now, by the way? He's well. He's well. He's getting older. I mean, obviously. Yeah, yeah. He's a dear brother. He's had a hard time. Yeah, he has. He and his wife, he and his partner, dealt with long COVID. Yeah. And so that's been. And she's still dealing with her illness. It's not going to happen. That's encouraging, brother. Yeah, so it just. Yeah. Anyway, that was one more information. No. It's problems, brother. That's what we are. I can hear. I know we need to hear some things today and some peace. And I'll just over the fence. And it's been a blessing to have young brothers. We met Doug a few years back. He came down. Yes, sir. We're all over the issues that have come down. I'm not exactly sure. I flew in.