The Plan!
(Charles Spurgeon, "A Feast for Faith") Play Audio! Download
"This is the plan determined for the whole world; this is the hand stretched out over all nations. For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart Him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?" Isaiah 14:26-27
God does not work without a plan.
God has not left the world to chance.
There are some men who are always kicking against the doctrine of an eternal purpose, and who grow angry if you assert that God has settled what shall occur.
It is by the consent of all agreed, that men are foolish if they work without a plan; and yet they cry out when we insist that God also, in all His working, is fulfilling a well-arranged design.
Depend upon it, however, let men rebel against this truth as they will; that God has determined the end from the beginning.
He has left no screw loose in the machine. He has left nothing to chance or accident!
Nothing with God is the subject of an "if" or a "perhaps." But even the agency of man, free as it is, as untouched and undisturbed as if there were no God—even this is guided by His mysterious power, and works out thoroughly His own purpose in every jot and tittle.
God wings the thunderbolt; and shall He not guide the most passionate spirit of man?
God puts a bit into the mouth of the whirlwind; and shall He not control the most ambitious will?
God takes care that even the sea shall come no farther than He bids it; and shall not the heart of man be equally subject to the Divine purpose?
Everything that has moved or shall move in Heaven, and, earth, and Hell—has been, is, and shall be, according to the counsel and foreknowledge of God; fulfilling His holy, just, wise, and unalterable purpose!
God is wonderful in His design, and excellent in His working.
Believer, God overrules all things for your good. The needs-be for all that you have suffered, has been most accurately determined by God.
Your course is all mapped out by your Lord. Nothing will take Him by surprise. There will be no novelties to Him. There will be no occurrences, which He did not foresee—and for which, therefore, He has not provided. He has arranged all, and you have but to patiently wait, and you shall sing a song of deliverance.
Your life has been arranged on the best possible principles, so that if you had been gifted with unerring wisdom, you would have arranged a life for yourselves exactly similar to the one through which you have passed.
Let us trust God's heart, where we cannot trace His hand!
In the end we shall read the whole of God's purpose as one grand poem, and there will not be one verse in it that has a syllable too much, or a word too little. There will not be one stanza or one letter redundant, much less one that is erased.
But from beginning to end we shall see the master-pen and the master-mind drawing forth the glorious array of majestic thoughts. And with angels, and seraphs, and principalities, and powers—shall burst forth into one mighty song, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!"
We shall see how from the first even to the last, the King has been ruling all things according to His own sovereign will.
"In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will." Ephesians 1:11