What If God Has Other Plans? | Tony Evans Sermon

When the quarterback comes and he sees a different alignment on the other side, he audibleizes it at the line of scrimmage and on the spot changes it. Providence is God audibleizing your life and causing people, places, things, and thoughts to happen that you weren't looking for. But if you're stuck in your plan, then you may miss His providence because he's inserting things, changing things, reversing things. Tony Evans coming to you again with our series, Living Real in a Fake Culture. We want to talk about planning and why planning matters, but why planning can be also a problem. You know, this series is coming to you from the Lanier Theological Library, and I'm in the Stone Chapel. And to erect this took a lot of planning. It took a lot of time. It took a lot of intricate detail to produce what I'm standing in right now. And to plan well does that. Did you know God encourages planning to a point, but not to a fault? You can plan yourself outside of the will of God, or you can plan within the will of God. That's why James chapter 4, verses 13 to 18 teaches us how to plan properly. When we plan properly, we bring God into the equation, which means we bring the unknown into the situation, because no human being can plan perfectly. There are too many things that could go wrong in this building. Weather delays, or heat delays, or other kind of negative things can affect what you plan to build, where you plan to go, and all of us have had to deal with the uncertainties of planning. But when God is added to the equation and our uncertainties of life are brought into that equation with God, now you're planning in the will of God and not outside of the will of God, which James says is the key to proper planning. So I hope you are a planner to a reasonable degree. I hope you're not a planner to an unreasonable degree so that your plans can be Overlaid by the purposes of God. If you want to learn more about this series and this message on planning, visit us on YouTube. Because when you tune you will hear God's perspective on planning in your life. We'll be right back. Over and over again, we find ourselves disappointed with life. When things didn't go like we thought they would go, like we wanted them to go, like we anticipated they would go. And we find ourselves... Confused about this bittersweet thing called life. James has a word for us today about life and about planning it. He begins in verse 13 by saying, come now. Now, he's getting ready to make a negative statement because he's going to end by talking about your arrogance and pride. He starts off by saying, come now. Let me put it in more colloquial language. Come on now. Are you serious? You've got to be kidding me. He says, come on now, come now. You who say, and look at what they're saying about their life's plan. They start off with their schedule, today or tomorrow. They go to their location, such and such a city. They give their timeline. We're going to spend a year. They give their purpose. We're going to do some business. And they give their expected result. We're going to make a profit. That's our plan. We've got a plan. We got a plan. We got a plan. We catch the plane tomorrow. I'm going to go to this city. Going to go there for a year. Going to cut my deals. Going to make a profit. I got it lined out. A lot of us have it lined out. We've lined out the schedule of our... Retirement funds, we've lined out the schedule of our growth in the company and the corporation. We've lined out our plan for raising the children. We've lined out our educational goals, what we're going to major in and what will be the degrees and what will be the results. And we have lined that thing out. Now, James is not saying anything negative about planning, but he's going to say a lot about planning. Fake planning in a fake culture. The Bible is not against planning. In fact, the Bible expects you to plan. We're told in Proverbs 16, verse 3 and verse 9, to commit your plan. Put up your plan. Lay out your plan. If you have no plan for your life, for your future, for your family, for your goals, you're falling short of a divine expectation. We're told to commit a plan. Nothing sinful about planning, nothing negative about planning. That's having an organized goal for where you're going or where you hope to go. He says, nothing negative about planning. But what he does say is if you plan independently of God, you're a fool. He doesn't say don't plan. He says, but you better not plan and leave God out. Verse 14, yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. He says, you didn't plan for a year and you can't guarantee tomorrow. You plan for 365 days and you're not sure you're going to make it 24 hours. He says, don't plan like you're omniscient. Notice he uses the word no. No has to It has to do with knowledge. Yet you do not know. See, plans are future oriented. It's where I hope to go, what I hope to be, what I expect to do that I have not arrived at yet, but I want to get there. The problem is we are not infinite, we're finite. The problem is we're not omniscient. We don't know all things. Therefore, we don't know that what we plan can or will happen. And the lack of omniscience, the fact that we don't know the future, Ought to never allow you to make an absolute plan because you're not in absolute control. He says, you do not know. He says, you've got this plan. You've got this schedule. You've got this goal. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, except if God is not included. He says, because what you need to understand is that verse 14, you are just a vapor. You appear here a little while and then vanish away. A vapor is a puff of smoke. He says, nothing wrong with planning. In fact, you're encouraged to plan. But what he says, you better not plan independently of God because you and I and we don't control the future. Not only do we not control it, we can't even see it. We can only hope for it. He says, what you ought to say, verse 15. As if the Lord wills we will live and also do this or that. Don't come out here like you're going to control it. You can plan it, but you can't guarantee it. What you ought to say is, I'm going to make my plan, to use a football phrase, with my head on a swivel. Head on a swivel means I'm going to leave some space. I'm not going to be stiff-necked. I'm going to be able to swivel. I got to have a little flexibility in my plan unless God has something else in mind that I didn't plan for, didn't expect because I'm not omniscient. I have no knowledge of the future. He says what you ought to say is not I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I will unless you add to it, unless you put a lip on it if the Lord will. In other words, God must be brought in To planning because life is full of contingencies. The unexpected, the surprise, the unknown. If the Lord wills, it's not just the throw in line. It's a philosophy of life. It's the way you roll. It's an orientation. If the Lord wills, I will do this or that. Now, I plan to do this or that, but my head's on a swivel. I've got some built in for contingencies, for the unexpected. You ought to say if it's the Lord's will, you and I cannot be sovereign over our lives. Now, there's a lot of theology here, so let's go theological for a while to see how this works and how God fits into the idiosyncratic elements of our planning so that we are nuanced properly to be able to plan with solid expectations with our spiritual heads on a swivel. With some contingency built in for divine intervention. There are two truths that you need to know as a Christian. The number one thing you need to know is the gospel. The good news of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and for the free gift of eternal life that he freely gives to all who come and believe in him for it. The good news of the gospel is the first thing that you need to embrace. But the second thing and the critical thing for the rest of your life My life, our lives, is the sovereignty of God. That theological truth of the sovereignty of God simply means God rules. God is the ruler, controller, and sustainer of all things. Absolutely nothing happens in history unless he makes it happen or gives it permission to happen. There is nothing that sits outside of the rule of God. Ephesians 1.11 says God does all things after the counsel of his own will. Job said in Job 42.2 that his plan can never be thwarted. First Chronicles 29 verses 10 to 13 says God sovereignly rules. Nothing happens in the smallest detail of which God has not allowed or caused. Scripture says that the very hairs of our head are numbered individually. Not one sparrow falls to the ground of which God is not fully aware. So the sovereignty of God means he is in control. The good, the bad, and the ugly. All of it. The devil can't even beat a good devil without God allowing it. Because the Bible says even evil does not happen apart from the knowledge of God. He is fully aware. Of all things knowable. And all things potential. He is the only one who can answer the question, what if? Because he knows all potentialities as well as all actualities. So you need to understand, we need to understand the sovereignty of God. The fact that he rules over all things and nothing sits outside of him. The reason why you must say, if the Lord wills, is because he can both rule and overrule. He can cancel and allow. He can reverse and crush. One of the great chapters on the sovereignty of God is Isaiah 40. Isaiah 40, he says, when even nations don't escape God, he simply blows on them and he can shift them, destroy them, raise them up, cancel them. He says, you must know that God is ruler, sovereignty of God. But underneath, The doctrine of God's rulership, his sovereignty, is the doctrine of his providence. Sovereignty, that's the big word, he rules. Providence is the miraculous and mysterious way in which he accomplishes his sovereign purpose. Sovereignty is what he's going to accomplish. Providence is when he doesn't want you to see him accomplishing it. Providence is when he operates incognito. When he doesn't want to be up front. See, sometimes God wants to be up front. And you know, it was God. It was just, he's up front. Sometimes he goes behind the curtain and his fingerprints are causing things to happen. So you don't see him, but what you see is what he did. That's called providence. If you believe in sovereignty, you won't see providence. If you don't believe in sovereignty, you won't see God calling audibles at the line of scrimmage. So when the quarterback comes up to the line of scrimmage, they've already called a play-and-play. They got a play. They got in the huddle, and they gave a play that had been previously planned and put on the books. But when the quarterback comes and he sees a different alignment on the other side, even though he started with a plan of a play he was going to call, he audibleizes it at the line of scrimmage and on the spot changes it. In other words, he's doing something different on the spot than the plan called for. Providence is God audibilizing your life and causing people, places, things, and thoughts to happen that you weren't looking for. But if you're stuck in your plan, then you may miss his providence, and you won't see him audibilizing things because it's if the Lord will, because he's inserting things, changing things, canceling things, reversing things. What he is saying is, you don't plan independently of God. All things work together for good, Romans 8, 28, to them who love God and are called according to his purpose, which is ultimately, verse 29, to conform us to his image. But all things are working together to create something. God has a cosmic blender. He has a life blender. And he's able to take all the nuances of our life, good, bad, and ugly, And blend them so that we see the outworking if we love him. The problem is, if you don't love him, you may not see him blending you. So let me go over something I went over with you. If you believe in sovereignty, he will. To understand providence, that he mysteriously interconnects, links, allows or creates negatives. He brings about positives. If you believe that, that that is the God to whom you belong. And you say, this is my plan. This is where I want to go. This is what I want to be. This is what I want to do, if the Lord will. I have now inserted the contingency. You know what that means for your life? That means there's no longer anything of chance, fate, coincidence, or happenstance. No such thing. The big word that you must remove from your vocabulary is luck. You cannot have a sovereign God who operates in providence and luck at the same time. You can't do that. Because luck is a random chance happening, not a divinely orchestrated intervention. But you cannot have a sovereign God who operates providentially. He operates directly, but also providentially. That is why you must always keep your head on a spiritual swivel for divine surprises. The unexpected. Joseph, he's thrown in a pit. He's sold into slavery. He finally gets a good job. He's thrown in jail. They forget him in jail. They call him up years later. He interprets a dream. He's made second in charge of the kingdom. And then he concludes the book of Genesis chapter 50 with these words. You sold me into slavery. You meant it for evil. But God meant it. Oh, God meant it for good. Wait a minute. He meant my negative experience? Yes. He meant my being in jail? Yes. Yes. Because you love me, I even let the negative happen to bring you to this place. The book of Esther, you know, is a book that turns on one thing, insomnia. The whole book, the whole book is going to come down to the king not able to go to sleep. They're out to kill the Jews and They got a law, Medo-Persian law, the law that can't change, and Haman is out to get them, and the king can't sleep. Now, okay, that's just a normal activity. You know, some nights you can't sleep, you know, and he can't sleep. He calls his servant. He says, I can't sleep. I need to read. I need to read, you know, so I can get sleepy. Find me a book and read something to me, because I can't sleep. Servant goes, get the book, and as luck would have it, When he opens the book, he opens the book with the page that talks about Mordecai that the king didn't know it saved his life. He calls Mordecai in, Esther in, they get rid of Haman, and the whole Jewish nation is saved because the man can't go to sleep. That's because God even uses sleep to accomplish his idiosyncratic purposes. He says what you ought to say is if it's the Lord's will Because then you'll see Moses in a basket that's going down the Nile at the exact time that Pharaoh's daughter decides to take a bath. Was that a lucky time? The mother just luckily put him in the water at the perfect time. If you don't have a sovereign God, you think that's a lucky connection. You don't see that God is orchestrating things, moving things, twisting things in his cosmic blender to bring about his sovereign will. He says, but as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So he's talking about an arrogant attitude because the one thing God hates is pride. Pride. Thinking more of ourselves than we ought to think. We are not all that. God knows how to bring the proud, the pride cometh before the fall. So when you think because of the money you make, the position you have, the degrees you own, the place you live, the car you drive, the folks you know, if you think that makes you better, he says, I want you to know God views that as arrogance and he knows how to bring you down. Because he says, therefore, to the one who knows to do right and does not do it, to him it is sin. And he's talking about the boasting of living life independently of God, making plans without room for divine intervention. He says in Proverbs 27:1, don't boast because life is too uncertain and too unpredictable. He says, what you ought to say is if the Lord will, Because now you're walking with God. Now we are including God. In the uncertainty of life, Psalm 39 verse 5 and verse 11, you and I are not to plan independently of God. He calls that boastful arrogance, not the planning, but the planning that does not include him. That's why we must always move in humility and confess it as a sin when we don't. He must be included in all of life because life is a vapor. What Paul said in Acts 18:21, he told the folks, I'm going to return to you if the Lord wills. Plan out your years, plan out your retirement, plan out the golden years, plan out your travel, plan out, but I can testify those plans can get graphically interrupted and canceled. You and I can go a lot of places independently of God. You can become a big name independently of God. You can make a lot of money independently of God. You could become noted independently of God, wealthy independently of God. You can do all that and climb the ladder of success till you run out of gas. Because when you run out of gas, it's coming down. So make your plan. God to bless your plan. Because Jeremiah 29:7 says, I have a plan for you. Ask God to cover over your plan, but then pad it with if the Lord wills. 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