2026-10-05
River Scene (1854)by Asher Brown Durand
1 Kings 12:15 So the king did not listen to the people, for it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord that he might fulfill his word, which the Lord spoke by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.
This is still on Rehoboam, how that he didn’t listen to the old men who had served in his father Solomon’s council but instead followed the ill-counsel of the young men he had grown up with. Rehoboam definitely had no mind to doing God’s will when he acted so foolishly and capriciously, yet when he ignorantly acted upon the counsel of those scoundrels when they told him to answer the people harshly, even then he was fulfilling God’s purpose. His imprudence was a turn of events brough about by the Lord to fulfill His word.
We must all sincerely agree that this at the first confrontation something so difficult, impossible in fact, to comprehend. If it had been the Lord who had brought about Rehoboam’s folly, then it should be fair that Rehoboam is let off the hook; how possibly is he still to blame? Well, that’s the claim we can perhaps get away with when we haven’t yet appreciated the meaning, magnitude, and scope of God’s sovereignty. Arthur Pink in his Attributes of God defines God’s sovereignty as the action of God’s supremacy over all that his creation. Put simply, it means that whatever surprises us so far as our future for instance is concerned doesn’t surprise God in the same sense. Time too was created in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth. God, therefore, sits outside time, experiencing it quite differently as we do; he is not constrained by it as we human beings are bound to be. As C. S. Lewis puts it, God watches the whole course of human history the same way a man would watch a procession from the balcony of a high building; he isn’t part of the procession as it were, and can see the whole of it from its beginning to its end. With God there isn’t any such thing as yesterday, today, and tomorrow but rather an ‘eternal now’ to use St. Augustine’s words. That’s perhaps why he can be the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8) and why a thousand years can be but as one day to Him (Psalms 90:4)
God testifies of Himself in Isaiah 46:10 that He declares the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done. This is, expectedly perhaps, at the same time disturbing even as it is comforting. It is comforting indeed to know that our future is secure in God’s hands, and that victory is assured no matter how fierce the strife might be. Still, it is disturbing because it sometimes makes us wonder whether God himself ordains or actively causes evil and is responsible for the pain, suffering, and trouble in our lives; that He causes our sins, blunders, including even our outright disobedience. I would only go so far as to repeat what has been said before; God allows evil, but He is not the author of it–we are fully responsible for our sins. As Milton aptly put it in Paradise Lost, man was made “sufficient to stand, but free to fall”. To attempt any confident answer beyond that would be to wade into waters quite beyond my depth when I do not know how to swim yet. Nor am I sure if I’ll ever know how to in this life. We are never given all the answers on this side of eternity, that alone is certain.
But we are right too in being certain that no matter how things turn, God’s purposes will never be frustrated. It is mind-blowing to think that God has in fact factored men’s sins and disobedience into his divine purpose. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:8, “None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory”. The devil must have thought he was winning big against God by putting Christ on the cross, yet it was he who was being put to public shame and he who who would suffer a great, proper, and complete vanquishing (Colossians 2:14-15). As Peter put it so articulately in his sermon during Pentecost, “Jesus, was delivered according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, to be crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23. Jesus Himself made it clear that no one was taking his life from him, no one could, he was laying it down all of his own accord (John 10:18); “I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.”
“There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,” says Shakespeare through Hamlet; if indeed no sparrow falls to the ground without the Father’s knowledge (Matthew 10:29) then we can be sure that He is watching over us. Are we not of more worth than many sparrows? Psalms 33:13-16:
The Lord looks down from heaven;
he sees all the children of man;
from where he sits enthroned he looks out
on all the inhabitants of the earth,
he who fashions the hearts of them all
and observes all their deeds.
The king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
The war horse is a false hope for salvation,
and by its great might it cannot rescue.
Joy Davidman writes in Smoke on the Mountain that the conquest of Israel by their enemies was less about their enemies victory over them than it was an action of God’s justice. Nebuchadnezzar with all his wrath and fierceness was merely God’s instrument. In the words of John Piper, “if we are sure that God is watching over us, we can also be sure that nothing bad can happen to us that is not good for us.”
Prayer:
Merciful Father and Sovereign Lord, thank you for the comfort that is to be found in this attribute. Thank you because your eye is over all the children whom you love and have chosen for yourself. May this give us hope and confidence, and may it cause us to rejoice and praise you all the more. Even amidst our pain and troubles. In Jesus Name. Amen.