Proverbs 19:21, Stormy Below! – All Calm Above!

December 16, Proverbs 19:21

Acts 2:23-24; 4:23-30; 23:11 “He is of one mind, and who can turn him?”

Stormy Below! – All Calm Above!

Survival for “man and his world” is one of the buzzwords in our frightened times. Man’s devices are continually backfiring on him. We seem to lurch from one brink of disaster to another in spite of our much-vaunted progress. Whether we like it or not, this text presents the only source of hope for man in God’s world.

1. Man’s Devices are many (21a). Yet these devices in puny man’s heart cannot be made to stand (Gen. 37:19-20). After the death of Jacob, Joseph’s brothers, fearing that now he would take his vengeance on them, went begging for forgiveness. How wonderful was Joseph’s reply, You thought, devised, evil against me, but God meant, devised, it for good (50:20). The rulers of the Jews devised many things against Jesus (Mt. 26:4-5; 27:63-64), but what they did, unknowingly, was to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel [God’s] determined before to be done (Acts 4:27-28). What a small world man’s heart is! The word devices may not always mean bad things, as man understands them. Since, however, man does not know his own heart, which is deceitful and desperately wicked, how can he know what is good apart from God? The text implies that these devices are independent of, and contrary to, God’s will. If there could be an open inspection of proud men’s hearts, what a mass of corruption and conflict would come to light! How many could hold up their heads then? Indeed, if man’s devices were carried out, what a shattered world would result! What a reversal of the ends man had set his heart upon, for they were all fancies, all castles-in-the-air! How foolish it is for frail man to resent or resist a God whose counsel shall stand (Isa. 7:6-7)!

2. God’s Design is One (21b). “The decrees of God are his eternal purpose, according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass” (S.C.7). Who can fathom all that that embraces (Eph. 1:11)? It is “the counsel of His Sovereign will” that concerns everything that has come or shall come to pass in the world (Job 23:13; Ps. 33:9). Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his anointed. Then what? He that sits in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision (Ps. 2). The counsel of the Lord is “to exalt Christ upon the abasement of the creature, to make the strength of Christ perfect in our weakness, and the wisdom of Christ perfect in our folly, and to establish Christ’s righteousness upon the ruin of the creature’s righteousness” (J.C. Philpot, 1841). God makes even the wrath of man to praise Him (Ps. 2:11)! “God is working out his eternal purpose not only in spite of human and satanic opposition, but by means of them” (Pink). In the end, Christ will be all in all (Col.3:11), and stand upon the wreck of the devices of man’s heart as Lord of All (Phil. 2:10)!

Thought: The devices of man cannot frustrate the counsel of God.

Prayer: Lord, to humbly and completely rest in Thy Sovereign Will.