Preservation

Let's go ahead and divert in prayer before we get started.

Heavenly Father, what a blessing it is to be here, Lord, with my brothers and sisters, Lord, to be able to sing Your songs, to be able to hear testimonies about godly men and women of the past, Lord God. And we just thank You for this time each Wednesday. And Lord, we want to lift up Joe and Don, that You'd bless them, that You would keep them. Tonight we're studying Your preservation, Lord. And I pray You'd just preserve them in life and health and strength. Give her grace as she's having these tests done on Sunday, Lord God. Give Joe peace, Lord God. I pray You give the doctors and nursing staff wisdom and grace as well. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

We'll be looking at lesson four tonight, which is preservation. And turn over on the back because I want to go over where we've been and where we're going. We're at the halfway point at the end of the night. When this is all said and done, we've gone through eight different lessons on God's works, His decrees and works. If you look over on the back, unit three, we started off with theology proper, the review of God's nature and attributes. And what that simply was, was a way for us to try to explain the God of this universe. All of God's works are flowing from His character, right? And all of His works reveal His character as well. Then we looked at the decrees of God. And the decrees of God is an attempt to explain the end of the universe, right? God's appointed end, His plan for all things. Last week, Pastor Casey led us through the study of creation, which explains the beginning of the universe, right? This universe had a beginning. It says so in the very first book of Genesis. Genesis chapter one, verse one: "In the beginning God." And now we're looking at the preservation of the universe, which is our way of understanding the continuance of the universe. And then next week, Caleb's going to be teaching. You don't want to miss next week. We're going to be looking at the providence of God, which explains the development and the progress of the universe. So this all has to do with how God created all things, how He sustains all things, how He directs all things. So tonight we're looking at preservation.

Last week we saw that God created all things. But for things to be created, to come into existence, doesn't mean that they would stay in existence. God has to uphold all things. God is the only one who is self-existent, right? All created things — this is a podium made out of wood. This wood is a created thing. God created the trees, right? But for this to even be here, God has to will, continuously will the existence of this entire world, right? The spinning of the earth, right? Everything is dependent on God. So let's look at number one.

Preservation is the continuous operation of God, whereas creation was a one-time event where God spoke the world into existence. Preservation is continuous. Every single second God is upholding all things in this universe. It's a continuous operation of God by which He maintains in existence — that's the first blank, "in existence" — all the things that He has created, along with all the properties and powers that He gave or endowed to them.

All natural forces — that's the second blank — and all creatures — that's the third blank — bear testimony to the will of God, which not only originated them, but sustains — that's the fourth blank — sustains them. So the first blank is "existence," the second blank is "forces," the third blank is "creatures," the fourth blank is "sustains." So He maintains the existence of all things that He has created, along with their properties and powers which He gave them.

God created all things, and that includes the earth and all the natural forces of this earth. For example, in this earth, who causes the winds to blow? Who causes the vapors to rise up from the sea and to form the clouds, that then water the green, right? That then feeds the animals, right? That then feeds us. It's God's continuous willing of sustaining His creation. If He were to step away from that, everything would disintegrate into chaos and oblivion.

You know, I looked this up when the notes for this lesson were coming together. And for life to exist and the planet to be, there are 122 constants. Yeah. Gravity, the atmosphere — 122 things that have to be constant or nothing would be here. And those are things we can't even fathom. You know, right now, Ken, your heart is beating and it never rests except in between beats. When you're sleeping, your heart's beating. You're not telling your heart to beat. It's God who's maintaining that heart and pumping all that blood, and the amount of lifting that your heart muscle does throughout the course of the day is crazy when you think about it — every second it's pumping all those liters of blood throughout your entire system. So all natural forces and all creatures bear testimony to the will of God. That's the point of creation, to glorify God. We talked last week how creation is but a theater for the glory of God. All creatures and all forces bear testimony to the will of God, which sustains them. God alone is self-existent. Nothing is self-existent except for God.

The fact that we are created means that our existence is owed to God Himself. And if He continues to will our existence, we will always be. But if He were to stop, we would no longer be.

Because He wills our existence. Only God is self-sustaining. We often think of ourselves as tough, rugged individuals here in America. We've got all we need. Give me some mule and 40 acres of land and I'll be able to make my own food and all that. What happens when floods come? What happens when droughts come? What happens when your mule dies? What happens when your body's strength withers? When arthritis sets in? We're dependent on God for everything, right? Only God is eternal. Only He has no beginning. We have a beginning so we're going to have an end. Only God is infinite. He is bound with supply from within. We do not. We are dependent on God. Only God is all-powerful and only God is ever present, right? We owe our very presence to the Lord.

Look at Nehemiah 9 verse 6: "You alone are the Lord. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens" — which means basically the plurality of heavens — everything as far as your eye can see and as you think about space, the outer reaches there, all the way to the very throne room of God. It's all from His hand, with all their hosts — all the stars, the planets that fill it and the heavenly creatures that we can't see. The earth and everything on it. He not only made the heavens but He made the earth. "The sea and all that is in them, You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You." Even angels are upheld by the very power of God. They're not self-existent. They are not eternal. Only God is eternal and has existence in and of Himself.

The application is this: exalt Christ who holds together all things. The first blank is "exalt," the second blank is "holds." Exalt Christ who holds together all things. Paul in Athens, Acts chapter 17 verse 28, says, "For in Him we live and move and have our being." Apart from Christ, we would not exist. We would not have an existence. We would not have being apart from Him. Colossians 1:17, speaking of Christ, says, "And He is before all things and in Him all things consist." Again, apart from Christ's power, the One who created all things, apart from His sustaining of all things, we would have no existence whatsoever.

Flip over on the back.

In Acts chapter 17, Paul goes ahead of his fellow workers and he's in Athens. In Athens, it was a multicultural city. I've been there before. It's been years ago and I stood on Mars Hill where Paul actually gave this sermon. It was known as the place where all the philosophers would come. It says in verses 16 through 18, "Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols." He was grieved because the city was busy, but they weren't serving God. They were serving figments of their imagination. Verse 17, "Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshippers and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there. Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, 'What does this babbler want to say?' Others said, 'He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,' because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection."

He mentions two particular groups there. First of all were the Epicureans. The Epicureans were very popular among the Greeks because they were like people today. They were trying to make sense of their existence, right? And what the Epicureans believed is that although they thought there may very well be a pantheon of gods, a plurality of gods, those gods were nowhere near. They were somewhere far off, and this world just consisted of atoms. And if you wanted to have true virtue in life, what you should do is maximize pleasure and minimize pain. That's the point of life. That was the Epicurean way. That's how you should live your life. Because God's not around. There's no meaning other than to have pleasure and avoid pain, right?

Stoics were also very popular, but they were very different. The Stoics, instead of believing that God was far off, totally transcendent, they believed that he was totally immanent, that he was totally in and of creation — that I am God, the rocks are God, the trees are God — and that he's not a personal being. You can't know him. And so if you want to have virtue in life, you deny yourself. You have self-discipline and try to become one with the universe, basically, right? And that's how they made sense of this world.

But Paul came and he preached a very different God, a God that they had never heard of before. Unlike the Stoic God, who was impersonal, he preached a very personal God, a God who was triune in person before the world even began, who had perfect harmony and perfect self-impartation, perfect love between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, right? And this perfect, triune God the Father gives to His Son a people to save, right?

And Christ, unlike the Epicureans who believed God was far away, Christ became intimately involved in His creation, did He not? And He, in the incarnation, took on human nature, right? And instead of avoiding pain and maximizing pleasure, Christ did the opposite, right? He said, "Not My will, but Thy will." And He submitted Himself to death. What kind of a God would do that, right? Out of love for His creatures, out of love for His people.

Not only did He die, but He was the God who actually had the property of life in Himself. He's the ground of all being, so He took His life again in the resurrection. He came back to life, right? Because the grave could not hold Him. That's a very different God.

And let me tell you something. The same Christ that was radically different from everything in the first-century world is radically different from everything in the 21st-century world itself today. These same philosophies are still at work today.

But when they're confronted with a God who's radically personal, who loves His people, who's willing to suffer for His people in the person of Jesus Christ, to give His life — "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life" — that He brings us into the Trinity and fellowship of the Trinity through His Son Christ Jesus. That's radically different. That's what this world needs, right?

Let's look at point number two.

The physical universe is in no sense independent — that's the first blank — of God. The forces of the universe are only the constant willing of God — that's the second blank, "willing." The laws that seem to govern it are only the habits of God — that's the third blank. So the first blank is "independent," the second blank is "willing," and the third blank is "habits." We speak of things such as the laws of thermodynamics and entropy. We talk about gravity. As if those are laws that are external to God.

No, those are merely the habits of God, the way that He works. He holds this world in existence, as Anne was saying before. We were talking earlier how God just hangs this world on nothing, right? God fills all space and He puts everything in its place. It's amazing what our God does. We're not like the deistic conception of God. The deistic belief that the Creator left the universe to run on its own powers and laws is contrary to Scripture.

The deists have been called the watchmaker God because they believe that God designed the universe like a watch. He intricately designed it, He wound it up, and He left it on its own, and He's walked away from it, that He's not involved in His creation. Thomas Jefferson was a deist. My mother had a copy of his Bible, a reproduction copy of his Bible, and he took the Bible, the New Testament, and he stripped out the resurrection, he stripped out all miracles, and he stripped out all claims of divinity, and left it with just teachings about loving the neighbor, because he did not believe that there was any kind of a personal God. He believed that God was a great designer who set up these laws, so to speak, even moral laws to run the universe, but left it behind and wasn't involved in it whatsoever.

But that's not the God of the Bible. That's contrary to Scripture. Hebrews 1 verses 2 through 3 says, "Through whom" — speaking of Christ — "through whom also He made the worlds, who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power." Christ, through whom the worlds were made — the world was spoken into existence — it is through the lips of Christ that the world is upheld by His power, constantly.

He's saying, "Live, be, earth spin, waves roar, wind blow." God's constantly upholding this universe, right?

The application is this: be assured that God's breath governs all. God's breath governs everything in this physical realm, okay?

We've entered hurricane season, and already there's a named storm going towards Mexico or so. It's not a hurricane, I think it's a tropical storm. But still, when you hear those things and you hear the very first one — it's got the letter A, as they always go alphabetically — it makes you wonder, okay, are we going to get one? Well, who's the God who controls the storms? Look up on the back. Psalm 104 is such a beautiful psalm. We're going to read verses 5 through 9.

Ken, would you actually read that for us, please? You've got such a great voice. Verses 5 through 9.

Who made the foundations of this world? God. Who spoke to the waves and told them where to go? God, right? It's all by the very power and voice of God.

Point number three: all creatures are in no sense independent of God. We just read in number two that the physical universe is in no sense independent of God. Now we're talking about all creatures, all created beings — whether angels or demons or humans or animals — all creatures are in no sense independent of God. The very ground of our being is found in God alone.

God's upholding of our existence does not destroy or absorb our own being — that's the first blank, "being." Nor does it negate the powers — the second blank — that we have been given.

In other words, the fact that God upholds us does not mean that we are absorbed or that we have no distinct existence, that we are not personal beings. We are made to be personal beings in the image of God, right? And we are distinct from God.

The pantheistic belief that the Creator and the creation are one and without distinction — that's the third blank, "distinction" — in their existence, persons and powers, is contrary to Scripture.

There are many people just like the Stoics of old in today's world who believe that we should worship nature — Gaia, the goddess of nature — because we're all part of nature. And therefore, we all have a universal God-consciousness that lives in the rocks and lives in the trees and lives in you and lives in me. And that it's selfish to pursue our own interests. It's selfish to pursue our own lives. In fact, it would be most sacrificial for us to cease existence and be reabsorbed back into this world because we are a part of this world, a part of the organic system as a whole. That's what they believe — believe it or not — as if it's wrong to have individuality, as if it's wrong that God created you as a distinct person and has set His love upon you, as if it's wrong that you're created in the image of God, male and female. That's even at the heart of all this transgender nonsense, right? You can identify as a cat. You can identify as any 150 some odd different genders, whatever you want to be today or tomorrow. You can change who you want to be because you have no personal identity. That's not true. God has made you fearfully and wonderfully and in His own image, right?

So the first blank, again, is "being," the second blank is "powers," and the third blank is "distinct."

When Paul's at Athens on Mars Hill in Acts chapter 17, he says, "God who made the world and everything in it, since He is the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is He worshiped with men's hands as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things." If we were all part of God and all the same substance of God, would He need to give us life and breath and all things? No, He created us as distinct from Him, right? With a purpose. The application is: rely on God and depend on Him always. So the first blank is "rely."

The second blank is "depend." God gives us our breath. We depend on Him for life, for breath, for everything in our lives. Flip over on the back. Part of Psalm 104, verses 10 through 30, speaks of the dependency of every creature upon God. "He sends the springs into the valleys and they flow among the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field. The wild donkeys quench their thirst. By them birds of the heavens have their home. They sing among the branches. He waters the hills from His upper chamber. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of Your works. He causes the grass to grow for the cattle and vegetation for the service of man, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine that makes glad the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread which strengthens man's heart." He gives us things that bring us joy, right? All more than just sheer sustenance. "The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which He planted, where the birds make their nest and the stork has her home in the fir trees. The high hills are for the wild goats. The cliffs are a refuge for the rock badgers — or the conies, right? He appointed the moon for seasons. The sun knows its going down. You made darkness into the night in which all the beasts of the forest creep about." He gave seasons to man so we know when to plant, right, and when to harvest. And He gives night and day so the animals know when they go out, right? Many animals are nocturnal, such as the lions who often hunt at night, right?

"Verse 21, 'The young lions roar after their prey and they seek their food from' who? From God. 'When the sun rises, they gather together and lay down in their dens. Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening.'" God orders that, right, to protect man. "'Oh Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your possessions. This great and wide sea, in which are innumerable teeming things, living things both small and great. There the ships sail about. There is that Leviathan which You have made to play there.'" That's a great sea creature, whether it's a whale or whatever it is. "'These all wait for You, that You may give them their food in due season. What You give them they gather in. You open Your hand and they are filled with good. You hide Your face, they are troubled. You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. You send forth Your Spirit, they are created and You renew the face of the earth.'"

Every part of life is from God. The breath that's on our lips — when He takes away that breath, when new life is brought into this world, it's only by the hand of God, right? So we must depend and rely on Him.

Point number four. The first blank is "sinful." Sinful beings are upheld in life by the God they resist.

That is amazing.

Who here is a sinful being?

"All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," yet He upholds us in life even when we resist Him. What grace, what mercy.

They exist only by God's preservation. They don't have self-existence, right? They are upheld — the second blank — by God in their being, but opposed — that's the third blank — by God in their conduct. They are upheld by God in their being, but they are opposed by God in their conduct. The fact that He creates us with free will to be individuals who act according to our natures — that we can, like God, reflect and be resolute and act freely from within — does not preclude the fact that we may choose sinful things and resist God and rebel against Him. And though He upholds our being, that doesn't mean He approves our conduct, right? He actually opposes our conduct when we are sinful because He is a holy God. He must oppose that.

Preservation is compatible with human freedom, responsibility, sin, and guilt. The fact that God preserves us does not make us robots.

In fact, it leaves room — it's His self-limitation. He could do all things, but He doesn't do all things. He allows us to act on our own and hopefully we'll act for His glory, right? But when we serve ourselves, we're actually resisting God. And yet He preserves even the most wicked person in life.

Psalm 36:6 says, "Your righteousness is like the great mountains. Your judgments are a great deep, O Lord. You preserve man and beast." Such a beautiful verse there. When we discussed the holiness of God as part of God's attributes, we talked about how God's holiness consists of His righteousness and His justice, right? His righteousness is God's love and approval and blessing of what is right. He must maintain and uphold righteousness because that's who He is, right?

On the flip side, He must visit nonconformity to righteousness with penalty and judgment and justice, right? Because that's who He is. And here He says, "Your righteousness is like a great mountain" — it's so splendid, it's so great. Just when you stand before a mountain, you're in awe of how big and how vast it is, so are we when we stand before His righteousness — "and His judgments are a great deep." Think about the great depths of the sea, how dark they are and how scary they are and how they seem to be impenetrable and unfathomable. So too is God's justice, right? But, "O Lord, You preserve man and beast." Even though God is the holy God, He's the One who preserves us in life, both man and beast.

The application is threefold: love, trust, and obey the God who upholds you. Love, trust, and the third blank, "obey," God who upholds you.

In our men's Bible study, we're going through 1 Timothy and we're in chapter six right now. And this is just this past Sunday — how we read through verse 13: "I urge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things." When it speaks of giving life to all things, he's not speaking of creating all things here. He's speaking of sustaining — who gives life to all things. In 1 Timothy, fight the good fight of faith because I'm urging you to do this because you're in the very sight of God who is giving you breath, who's upholding you, who's giving life to all things, who's empowering you. So use the life that He's given you to fight the good fight of faith. Use all the abilities and the powers that He has endowed you with to serve Him, right? It says, "And before Christ Jesus who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate." Right? You're in the sight of God with everything you do and He's the One who's upholding you in breath. So live for Him, right? Flip it over on the back.

When Jesus stood before Pilate, we find this in John chapter 19. It's number four on the back on your references. It says, "Then Pilate said to him, 'Are you not speaking to me?'" He was offended that Jesus wouldn't speak to him. Right? He says, "Do you not know that I have the power to crucify you and the power to release you?" Kind of big on himself, right? He's like, "I'm the boss. I'm where the buck stops."

Verse 11: "Jesus answered, 'You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given to you from above.'" Here's the sovereign ruling.

"'Therefore, the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.'" He's saying, "Yeah, Judas has greater sin for betraying Me, but you're still not without sin, Pontius Pilate. You're accountable to Me. You're accountable to the God of this universe who is the One who's given you all power, who's upholding you in life." Right? Flip over on the front again.

Point number five.

"God is unburdened" — that's the first blank — "God is unburdened by upholding all things in existence."

In God's inexhaustible fullness of life — that's the second blank, "life" — there is always more.

God's omnipresence, His omniscience, His omnipotence — that's His ever being ever present, His all-knowing, His being all-powerful — turns into delight — third blank — what overwhelms us.

God's infinite nature helps us understand His eternal blessedness and glory. The first blank is "unburdened," the second blank is "life," the third blank is "delight." God is unburdened by upholding all things in existence. We're limited, finite creatures and we only have so much energy and so much power, right? And we can become overwhelmed.

I have a friend who is a Christian illusionist. He travels all over the world — Vegas, Atlantic City — and does shows for entertainment purposes. And he's got a guy that he works with sometimes who's a juggler. And this juggler is pretty amazing. He gets a ladder — it's a tall ladder because he has a custom-built unicycle, taller than me, which makes it very hard to maintain your balance. He climbs up on top of the ladder and gets on top of this unicycle. He's getting his balance and he juggles things. And one of the most amazing things he'll juggle is chainsaws while he's doing that. Can you imagine the concentration that that takes, right? The effort, the sustained effort to do that. In our own lives, we have a hard time just keeping grasp on just two or three things, right?

Think about the most important things that God has given you to do.

Your ministry, right? The children He's entrusted to you, perhaps the marriage He's given you, the family that He's put into your life, your brothers and sisters in Christ. Sometimes we gas out, right?

Sometimes it just seems too much for us. Think about Moses. Remember when he had been with the children of Israel and they were constantly rebelling, constantly murmuring — and there again they were doing it again, and in the wilderness they said, "You've let us out here in the wilderness and we're going to die. We don't have anything to feed our cattle. We don't have any water to drink. And we would have been better off going back to Egypt."

And Moses just loses his cool, loses his patience, right? And he calls them rebels. He says, do I — or do we, he and Aaron — have to bring water out from this rock?

And he misrepresents the holiness of God to the people of Israel, right? So speaking of the rock, he strikes it twice in anger, not showing God's patience and not showing God's long-suffering and kindness.

Has that ever happened to us? Yeah, right? Those we disciple, sometimes they will rebel against us, right?

We're trying to teach our children and the people God's entrusted to our spiritual care and they reject and throw it right back in your face. And it does hurt when that happens, right? And we can lose patience, right? We can lose steam. We can grow weary in that.

Think about sometimes it's not our work that we're doing, but it's the enemies who oppose us, test us and try us in ministry. Think about Elijah, right? When Ahab was making his life miserable.

And what does he say? He says, God, come to my end. He says, just put me out of my misery. I'm no better than my father. So he actually asked God to kill him, right? Because he's so discouraged because the enemy seems to be succeeding, right? And what does God tell him? There are still 7,000 who haven't bowed the knee. You're not alone, right?

Sometimes it's not our opposition in ministry, but it's just the grind and the affliction of our daily lives that we face as we minister, right?

Think about Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 9. He talks about how, writing to the Corinthians, he says, "When we were in Asia, we were tested beyond our ability to cope." He says, "We despaired even of life itself," because just the daily grind was so tough and difficult. The ground was so difficult for him to plow there. And what does he say? He says, "But God brought me to that end so I can trust in Christ," right? What I'm getting at is: the things that vex us are no vexing at all to God.

God has infinite resources, right? And to uphold everything in this world in existence, to give us breath, to give us power for ministry, to give us power to be faithful, to serve Him, to orchestrate our heartbeat, our breathing, the rain — all that's way too large for us. But it's not too large for our God, right? He's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.

Look at Psalm 145 verses 14 through 16. "The Lord upholds all who fall" — you ever fallen before? Yeah. — "and raises up all who are bowed down." You ever been discouraged and bowed down?

"The eyes of all look expectantly to You. And You give them their food in due season. You open Your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing." When you look at that, look at verse 14 — the Lord upholds all, and yet raises up all. The eyes of all look expectantly to You and You give them their food.

It's as if the whole weight of the world is on God, and it is, right? With Him, that weight is nothing. Do you ever feel like every eye is on you and everything's dependent on you and you just don't know how you're going to make it, right?

Lean on the Lord, because the One who preserves all life — He can preserve you and get you through the most difficult ministry tasks, the most difficult parts of our lives, right? The application is: seek satisfaction from God's mighty hand. Seek satisfaction — that's the first blank — from God's mighty hand. You're never going to find satisfaction anywhere apart from God's gracious mercies. You're never going to find might anywhere apart from the hand of God. Verse 16 right above there says, "You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing."

Flip over on the back.

When Moses gives his final blessings to the 12 tribes of Israel and he gets to Benjamin, it's such a sweet blessing. He says of Benjamin — it's Deuteronomy 33:12 — "The beloved of the Lord shall dwell safely by Him who shelters him all the day long and he shall dwell between His shoulders." Some people say this explains the topography of the tribe of Benjamin. Theirs was the land where the temple was, and geographically it's like between two shoulders, so to speak, the boundaries. But most scholars believe — and I think too — that it's all about dwelling in the very bosom of God, right? Nearest to God's heart. God carries His sheep and gently carries those who are with young, right? So God's power to uphold all things — what would be a burden to us is a delight to Him. And this is part of His eternal blessedness. The Bible says that God is eternally blessed, which means He's eternally happy, right? It's part of His glory to rescue us and glory to share His strength and to share His very life with His children, right?

Flip over on the front.

Number six: God preserves the existence of all things for His own glory. Just as He created all things for His glory, He preserves all things for His own glory. God's governance of creation reveals His awesome majesty. The properties and powers that He has endowed us with are meant to be used for His glory. That's the first blank.

God's continual willing of our being shows that He loves us, giving purpose — that's the second blank — to our existence and giving us the hope — third blank — of knowing Him. The first blank is "glory," the second blank is "purpose," the third blank is "hope."

Let me read the second half of that again. The properties and powers that He has endowed us with are meant to be used for His glory. What God has given you — don't sit on your hands. God has given you your body. He's given you your mind. He's given you your breath for His glory. Put it into action, right? God's continual willing of our being shows that He loves us, giving purpose to our existence. Sometimes when we get down on ourselves, we say, "What is the purpose of my existence?"

If God's holding you in life, it's for His own glory, right? He's the One who gives you breath. It's to relate to Him. It's to know Him and to make Him known, right? And giving us the hope of knowing Him.

Genesis 8 is such a beautiful promise. Verses 21 and 22 — this is after the flood of Noah, where God has destroyed every living thing except for what was on the ark. Because in those days, the thoughts of men were only continually evil, right? So after God destroyed that, He makes a promise. And this promise applies to us today. He gives us purpose, certainty, and hope for today and for the future. He says, "I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. Nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease."

If you watch Hollywood productions, they have many movies that are apocalyptic in nature, where it's the end of the world. The pollutions destroy the earth and it's a nuclear winter or it's a barren wasteland.

Right here, what does God say? He says, "While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night shall not cease." He gives us this environment to live in so we can glorify Him. He gives us the seasons. He gives us the things that we need. That's hope for our future. And that's the certainty that His decrees will indeed come to pass. And we'll be looking next week when Caleb teaches us the direction and development of all things, how His decrees meet their end in God's providence.

The application is this: "Rest in His promises" — that's the first blank — "and His perfect care" — the second blank. Rest in His promises and His perfect care. You don't need to be worried about the end of the world, okay?

You don't. God's in control. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says — Matthew 6:30 — "Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?" Right? And just before that, it says in Matthew 6:26, "Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?"

God's providential care shows His love for you and His value for you, right?