Grace Baptist Church

1. God who, in infinite power and wisdom, has created all things, upholds, directs, controls and governs them, both animate and inanimate, great and small, by a providence supremely wise and holy, and in accordance with His infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable decisions of His will.  He fulfills the purposes for which He created them, so that His wisdom, power and justice, together with His infinite goodness and mercy, might be praised and glorified.  (Job 38:11; Ps. 135:6; Isa. 46:10-11; Matt. 10:29-31; Eph. 1:11; Heb. 1:3)

2. Nothing happens by chance or outside the sphere of God's providence.  As God is the First Cause of all events, they happen immutably and infallibly according to His foreknowledge and decree, to which they stand related.  Yet by His providence God so controls them, that second causes, operating either as fixed laws, or freely, or in dependence upon other causes, play their part in bringing them about.  (Gen. 8:22; Prov. 16:33; Acts 2:23)

3. Ordinarily, in His providence, God makes use of means; yet He is free to work without them, to give them efficacy above what they normally possess, and even to work contrary to them, at His pleasure.  (Isa. 55:10-11; Dan. 3:27; Hos. 1:7; Acts 27:31, 44; Rom. 4:19-21)

4. God's almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness are so far-reaching and all-pervading, that both the fall of the first man into sin, and all other sinful actions of angels and men, proceed according to His sovereign purposes.  It is not that He gives His bare permission, for in a variety of ways He wisely and powerfully limits, orders and governs sinful actions, so that they effect His holy designs.  Yet the sinfulness involved in the actions proceeds only from angels and men and not from God who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.  (Gen. 50:20; 2 Sam. 24:1; 2 Kings 19:28; 1 Chr. 21:1; Ps. 50:21; 76:10; Isa. 10:6-7 12; Rom. 11:32-34; 1 John 2:16)

5. God, who is most wise, righteous and gracious, frequently allows His own people to fall for a time into a variety of temptations, and to experience the sinfulness of their own hearts.  This He does in order to chastise them for sins which they have committed, or to teach them humility by revealing to them the hidden strength of evil and deceitfulness remaining in their hearts. His purpose is also to cause them to realize their need to depend fully and at all times upon Himself, and to help them to guard against sin in the future.  In these and other ways His just and holy purposes are worked out, so that all that happens to His elect ones is by His appointment, for His glory, and for their good.  (2 Chr. 32:25, 26, 31; Rom. 8:28; 2 Cor. 12:7-9)

6. God, as a righteous judge, deals otherwise with wicked and ungodly men.  He awards them blindness and hardness of heart for their sins.  He withholds from them the grace which might have enlightened their minds and exercised their hearts, and in some cases recalls the gifts He had bestowed upon them.  Also, He sets them in situations which their evil hearts seize upon as opportunities for sin.  In other words, He abandons them to their own innate corruptions, to the temptations of the world, and to, the power of Satan, with the consequence that they harden themselves by the use of the very means which God employs for softening the hearts of others.  (Exod. 8:15, 32; Deut. 2:30; 29:4; 2 Kings 8:12-13; Ps. 81:11-12; Isa. 6:9-10; Matt. 13:12; Rom. 1:24-26, 28; 11:7-8; 2 Thess. 2:10-12; 1 Pet. 2:7-8)

7. God's general providence reaches out to all creatures, but in a very special way it is directed to the care of His church.  All things are controlled providentially for the good of the church. (Isa. 43:3-5; Amos 9:8-9; 1 Tim. 4:10)