“Sovereignty, Predestination, Providence and Evil:
When Is Destruction Inevitable?”
Some of you glanced at the sermon title today and wondered whether you should have stayed at home. Well, I ask you: “How often do I get a scripture text that will allow me to expound on four major doctrines of our faith in one sermon? To which, you will probably say, “Can it be done?” And I will respond, “Only time will tell…the next fifteen minutes or so, to be exact. But, hey, no guts…no glory, so fasten your seat belts! You are about to be Presbyterianized!”
Jeremiah is calling on the people of Israel to repent, for the destruction of their nation hangs in the balance. This is not Jeremiah’s first call to repentance for God’s people… nor is it his last. But, in this one, he tells a parable and that parable is a powerful illustration of God. “Go down to the potter’s house,” God tells him, “and I will let you hear my words.” God wants Jeremiah to see something before he hears the word of God. What he wants him to see is the potter at work... and then comes the question in verse six which is the center of our text today: “Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done?” says the Lord. “Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.” And the Lord goes on to say that God is plotting the destruction of Israel for all of its sins and that, if Israel does not repent, neither will God change God’s mind about the destruction that is to come.
Is that destruction inevitable? If not, at what point will it become inevitable? And how does our faith determine what we believe about the inevitability of Israel’s destruction… and by extension, our own destruction? For isn’t that what we are talking about? If the word of God still speaks to us today, then this passage from God’s word about Israel and Israel’s future is saying something to us about us and our own future. And that’s where Christian doctrine comes in. Christian doctrine helps us to understand what we believe the word of God is saying to us and what we believe about the nature of God in all circumstances. So, what do we believe… and how does that impact our lives today?
Now, there is one caveat or word of caution I must give about this entire discussion… and that is that we are human and we can only think and speak about God in a human way. From the beginning, that limits our understanding of God, who is not human, and who is capable of moving… thinking… acting… and, indeed, of being in ways that are so totally beyond our comprehension that human language cannot describe God. But we must try… and I will say that I owe much of my interpretation of Christian doctrine to Shirley Guthrie… one of the giants in theology who was able to make the incomprehensible understandable to ordinary people like me… a man who died in 2004 and whose presence will be sorely missed.
So, we begin. Sovereignty: God rules. Predestination: God chooses. Providence: God provides. Evil: The absence of God. Let’s take things one at a time. Sovereignty: God rules. What do we believe about the sovereignty of God? We believe that God is infinite… almighty… omnipresent… omniscient… and beyond the greatest and the highest that we can imagine. Because we believe this, we absolutely believe that God can do to Israel… and by extension, to us… all and more of what the potter can do to the clay. Period. If God chooses to destroy us, God is capable of doing so… and of doing so in the blink of an eye. Equally, this eternal… unchanging…and omnipotent God is also capable of not destroying us… but of preserving us… and of remolding us… of remaking us… into something totally different… if that is what God chooses to do… for God rules. Sovereignty. Pretty simple.
Predestination: God chooses. There is no doctrine of the Christian faith that is more misunderstood than the doctrine of predestination. The doctrine of predestination does not say that every good or bad thing that happens to us and in the world around us is predetermined by God and that we should therefore accept everything that happens as the foreordained will of God. Predestination has to do specifically with the question of salvation: Whom does God choose (or not choose) to love and care for in the bad as well as good things that happen to us. To whom does God choose (or not choose) to give the gift of faith that enables people to trust… count on… and live by God’s love in sickness and in health, in life and in death? Who is chosen (or not chosen) to be included among those to whom the “saving grace” of God is not only promised but actually given so that, whatever happens, they find wholeness of life now and forever in loving the God who loves them… and in loving others as they have been loved? Who, in short, does God choose to save… or not to save? Whether we believe in the classic “double predestination” – that is that some are included, while others are excluded – or in “universal salvation” – that God is gracious to all and chooses all, rejecting none – or in “Pelagianism” – that our own actions determine whether or not we are saved – the end result is that it is God who decides who is and who is not chosen. And, by the way, those who are chosen are not chosen to be God’s privileged elite, but God’s servants… chosen not to receive and enjoy for themselves all the benefits of God’s saving grace that others do not have… but, rather, to be instruments of God’s grace so that others may receive and enjoy those benefits as well. It is God who chooses. Predestination. A little more complex than sovereignty.
Providence: God provides. Basically, the doctrine of providence says that the powerful… just… and loving God who first made heaven and earth continues to uphold… protect… rule over… take care of… and provide for God’s good creation and for each one of us. So, God provides rain, when we need rain. God provides food, when we need food. And so on. This sounds wonderful, but there is a small problem… the problem of evil: the absence of God. The problem of evil is that evil exists. Duh! Evil is like a black hole in space. There appears to be nothing in it, but what is in it (whether matter or anti-matter) has a gravitational attraction to it that nothing can resist the pull of it. There are times and places where God appears to be absent…or, more accurately, when we turn away from God and that relationship is broken. In those times and those places, evil sucks us in. Theologically, we have a dilemma: Because evil exists… because evil is real… the problem is that, if we believe in God, then we have to choose between a God who is willing to prevent evil, but not able to do so… or a God who is able to prevent evil, but not willing to do so. How else can we explain the misfortunes of life? God could have prevented the destruction of Israel, but did not want to do so… or God wanted to prevent the destruction of Israel, but couldn’t do so. Which would you choose? What a dilemma!
There are four things that might help us to understand the misfortunes of life. Greatly simplified, they are human finitude, natural law, human responsibility and negligence, and the “we just don’t know” option. Human finitude: We have term limits. The life of one of God’s creatures is fragile… vulnerable… and temporary in nature. What is evil is not the fact that the life of every creature comes to an end. It is our refusal to accept the fact that people die and our terror of our own impending death. Natural law: Stuff happens. Our world is a relatively ordered, intelligible system of interrelated parts that functions in a fairly consistent way. However, under certain conditions, the system that is normally favorable to human life can also bring tornadoes… famine… cancer… and death, among a host of other things. Painful and tragic things sometimes happen to us because we live in a world that operates according to the natural laws and processes God has built into it. Third, human responsibility and negligence… also known as “We sometimes mess up.” Human negligence… selfishness… greed… and unconcern cause many forms of evil that we would like to blame on God. And human intelligence and good will can remedy many forms of evil that we think God ought to do something about. It is amazing what we attribute to God that actually belongs to us! Finally, there are some unanswered questions. Why do some people suffer more than others? Why do tragedy… deprivation… or death happen to “good” people? Bluntly, we don’t know why. We know what we are able to discern to the limits of our human knowledge… but we don’t know… and never will fully understand… the mind of God.
What we do know from scripture is that God is love. In everything God does… always… in dealing with all people… God is a loving God… and God’s love is universal… unconditional… initiating… and reconciling. And I simply don’t have time today to explain each of those, except to say that, in love, God gave Godself to us in the person of Jesus Christ… to live with us… to love us… and to die for us so that we might live with God. A doctrine of providence that is based on the biblical witness to the suffering love and liberating power of God enables us to live in hope for the future, even when present experience seems to offer no hope at all. For we know from the Bible that here and now… once in a while… now and then… light breaks into the darkness and people are healed… life is given… justice triumphs… and hate turns to love. Providence and evil. Mind-boggling at best.
So, now we have discussed sovereignty… predestination… providence and evil. The question still remains: When is destruction inevitable? Sovereignty would say, “Whenever God commands.” Predestination would say, “Whenever God chooses.” Providence would say, “Whenever evil causes it.” And evil would say, “Whenever God is absent.” Unfortunately for most of those in Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah’s message, the presence of evil revealed the absence of God in the lives of the people of God, making their destruction at the hands of their enemies inevitable. At the same time, the power of God was sufficient to transform the evil in that place into a refiner’s fire… remolding and remaking the remnant of God’s people into a righteous and obedient people of God again. And so, the image of the potter reflected the nature of God to the just and the unjust alike.
We do live in a dark and evil world… where, at certain times and in certain places, the presence of God cannot be seen… or felt… and the force of evil so strong that we cannot resist it. But there is a light shining in the darkness… and the darkness will not be able to overcome it. How do we know that? Because even in the darkest days and years, we remember the history… the story… of our God… the God from whom all blessings flow… the God who formed us in our mother’s womb… the God from whom we come… and in whom we exist. And that allows us to hope in the God toward whom we go… the God who holds our future and all that is… and will be… in the palm of his hand… so that, despite everything, we can recognize and serve the One who goes with us every step of the way. When is destruction inevitable? It is never inevitable for those who love God… who are willing to seek God’s presence in their lives… and who allow God to reign in perfect sovereignty in their hearts… trusting in God… to rule… to choose… and to provide in all things. Come… just as you are… for God is in charge… and God has already chosen you… and God will provide. Amen.
Jeremiah 18:1-11