It was hot and steamy. The streets were busy: the port city was teeming with activity. But the preacher hardly noticed; he had other things on his mind.
Why had everything suddenly gone pear-shaped: things had been going so well in his calling up till now.
Only recently, in his finest hour, he had had the king’s ear and had told him the word of the Lord that he would soon recover all the lands the Evil Empire had stolen. And just as he had predicted, the territory of Israel had been restored to Solomonic proportions.[1]
But now, this same God was telling the preacher to travel to the same Evil Empire, bearing a message of judgment. No problem there.
Only the preacher didn’t come down in the last shower: as likely as not, his hearers would believe him and repent of their wickedness. Then where would they be? The preacher knew what his God is like. Instead of judgment, there would be mercy!
The Empire would revive.
And again threaten Israel!
No way! No way was the preacher going to be party to that!
So now, having fled as far west as he could go, he wandered the dusty streets of the port city, wondering what to do next. It wasn’t fair; never had he been so sorely tried – and not least in his conscience; after all, he had rejected his calling, God’s calling.
He was desperately looking for a way out.
And then… he found a ship![2]
Eureka! Well, that was providential, wasn’t it? Providence that “does not allow one to be tried beyond what he is able, but with the trial will also make the way of escape, that he may be able to bear it.”[3]
Here was the “way of escape”.
I mean, it must be, mustn’t it? Why else would a ship suddenly appear, ready to weigh anchor, at the very moment he was wondering what to do next?
Reading Providence
Don’t get me wrong. I believe God does lead us by providence.
I am truly thankful for God’s many wonderful providences in my life.
Not least in bringing an Irish girl from the other side of the world, meeting her in the same church I was attending at the time, and bringing us together in marriage 51 years ago.
(As I have observed before, Irish girls make the best wives. O.K., I know, that’s based on a sample of one. 😊)
Most of all I am thankful that, through family and other circumstances, we both of us heard the gospel and responded to find new life in Christ.
Looking back, there are so many of God’s providences in my life I am so thankful for.
I say, “looking back” because, much of the time, at the time, it would have been so easy to misread and misinterpret where God’s providence was leading me.
In fact, looking back, I am so thankful that God in His providence kept me from pursuing foolish decisions and sinful choices when, at the time, it would have been so easy to excuse such a choice on the grounds of my perspective on God’s providence.
Which brings us back to the preacher:
Providence and Our Duty of Care
What did God rebuke the preacher for in the end? Disobedience?
Certainly he was disobedient. But in the end (literally in the end[4]) God rebukes the preacher because he abandoned those he was called to care for. He abandoned his duty of care.
“You cared for a plant. Should I [and you (implied)] not care for a great city, filled with persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left?”
Preacher, don’t be too quick to abandon those for whom you have a duty of care.
Don’t be too quick to find an excuse in your interpretation of God’s providence: “I’m finding it so hard to work among these people. O, look, I have found a ship out of here: this other place wants me to go there, where it will be so much easier. So much easier, an open door. How providential.”
But the providence behind “open doors” is not that easily interpreted: “Easy” does not necessarily mean an “open door” to go through.
When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he reckoned he had an “open door” where he was in Ephesus. But there were also “many adversaries” giving him a hard time.[5]
Later, as problems multiplied in Corinth, he abandoned the “open door” in Ephesus, and set out for the troubled church. On the way he came to Troas specifically (he says) “to preach Christ’s gospel”; and found there “a door opened” wide by “the Lord” Himself.
It seems like a no-brainer.[6]
But Paul was deeply concerned for divisions that had emerged in the church across the sea. His colleague Titus, who had gone to seek to resolve the issues there, had not returned.
Paul makes a choice: “I had no rest in my spirit, because I did not find Titus my brother; but taking my leave of them, I departed for Macedonia.” (v 13)[7]
Really? A “door wide open for evangelism” and he “takes his leave of them”?
A door to an easy way of escape is no sure indication of God’s providential leading.[8]
Against Hastening to Remove from our Post of Duty
Back in 1880 Charles Spurgeon warned preachers against being too quick to abandon their calling to a local church because of problems there.[9]
While allowing that “occasionally it may be prudent to remove, or to change one’s form of Christian service” he warns that, more usually:
“The very worst thing will be to hasten away and make a change, for the change will only bring trial in a fresh form, and you will endure afresh the evils which you have already almost mastered. The time which you have already spent at your new place will be lost, and the same weary first steps will have to be taken upon another ladder. Besides, you may readily leap out of the frying-pan into the fire. Change has charms to some men, but among its roses they find abundant thorns…
“There is no position in this world without its disadvantages. We may be perpetually on the move to our continual disquiet, and each move may bring us under the same, or even greater, disadvantages… The matters which hinder a man’s success are generally in himself, and will move with him…
“It is wiser to ‘bear the ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of’. It is probable that our present condition is the best possible for us, no other form of trial would be preferable. What right have we to suspect the wisdom and the goodness of God in placing us where we are? It will be far more prudent to mistrust our own judgement when it leads us to murmuring and discontent…
“A tree that is often transplanted will make but little growth, and bear but slender fruit. An increase of spiritual strength by greater communion with God, and a more resolute determination to glorify him in every possible way, will usually conquer difficulties and win success… Do not, therefore, change the work, but change yourself…
“Be a man, and play the man. Resolve that even at this present time, and where you now are, you will set up the standard, and hold the fort.
“Many are the instances in which men have commenced their life-work under every possible disadvantage, and for months, and even years, they have seemed to make no headway whatsoever, and yet they have ultimately triumphed, and have come to bless the providence which called them into a place so well adapted for their gifts. It would have been their worst calamity if, under a fit of despondency, they had changed their station or relinquished their vocation. The church would have been the poorer, the world would have been the darker, and themselves the feebler, if they had shifted at the first even to the most promising spheres which tempted them…
“If we desire to glorify God, we must not select the comfortable positions and the hopeful fields; it is best to make no selection, but to yield our own will to the will of God altogether.”
Providence and the Word of God
But in the end, it was not just that the preacher abandoned those he was called to care for; but that he did so deliberately disobeying the Word of God.
If we are to interpret providence aright first and foremost we must listen to the Word of God.
But today, increasingly, I am seeing the very opposite. I am seeing those who “providentially” discover a hitherto unheard-of hermeneutic that justifies an interpretation of God’s Word that allows them to disobey its plain teaching.
They first of all decide what (they think) the Word of God should say; and then, lo and behold, like the preacher, they find a ship going in their direction.
They discover a paper, written by some foolish unbelieving academic that agrees with their own pre-conceived ideas. They have found a way out of having to obey the Word of God.
Against those who hold to such a revisionist hermeneutic[10], Rosaria Butterfield rightly maintains “the Bible unfolds its own hermeneutic, as God himself determines how we should approach him. Of course you can read the Bible through a lens other than that which God asks, but you will never know the God of Scripture through his written Word if you do… Every generation seems to arrive at new evidence to explain away a biblical truth.”[11]
It is this that fuels endless debates on such matters as leadership roles in churches.
Or, when it comes to marriage: I once had a woman go to great lengths to try and convince me from “new evidence” she had providentially come across that the Bible supported her in leaving her husband, even though there were in fact no Biblical grounds for her to do so.
Worse still, in the face of an overwhelming consensus in the society around them on matters of sexuality, it is pathetic to see the way various churchmen are using ingenious methods in an attempt to realign the Bible’s teaching on these matters with the views of the society.
What about you personally?
Do you try to use providence (or, your understanding of it) to justify disobedience to what the Word of God is plainly saying in your life.
Alistair Begg imagines what was probably going through the preacher’s mind when he found that ship: “See? If I’d been supposed to go to Nineveh, there wouldn’t have been a ship here waiting for me. And I’m sure that I’m really supposed to go to Tarshish, because after all, there’s a ship here, and I want to go on a ship, and there’s a ship, and there’s…”
Alistair Begg then asks:
Do you do that? “God, I frankly don’t want to do this.” Now, over here we’re trying to rearrange our lives:
– “Well, if the car hadn’t been there…
– “If she hadn’t been there…
– “If that hadn’t been there, I’m not supposed to do this.”
And we play around in our minds with all kinds of nonsense. Look very carefully at what it says: that “he found a ship bound for the port. And after paying the fare, he went aboard.”
I tell you what, the devil will always have a conveyance waiting for you when you’re determined to run away from the presence of the Lord. You can be guaranteed a way out of town. But be very careful; you will pay the fare. He may provide the ride, but you will pay the fare.”[12]
“Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.
“He who does not love Me does not keep My words.”[13]
[1] 2 Kings 14:25
[2] Jonah 1:3
[3] 1 Corinthians 10:13
[4] Jonah 4:10-11
[5] 1 Corinthians 16:8
[6] 2 Corinthians 2:12
[7] 2 Corinthians 2:13
[8] For further on this see here: https://transformingourconforming.com/looking-for-the-lords-leading/
[9] https://metropolitantabernacle.org/articles/against-hastening-to-remove-from-our-post-of-duty/
[10] Revisionist hermeneutic: a reading practice that questions and reconceives the Bible’s plain meaning and the shared testimony of the church.
[11] Rosaria Butterfield. Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ (pp. 13-14,17)
[12] Alistair Begg, https://www.truthforlife.org/resources/sermon/the-man-who-said-no/
[13] John 14:23-24