Yesterday in The New York Times, there was an article about a picture taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, which launched two and a half years ago and currently orbits around the sun about a million miles from Earth. The picture is of a vast stretch of galaxies, and right near the bottom is a perfectly framed question mark formed by a pair of giant dust clouds.

Now, this was quite an energizing providence to me for today’s message. Not because I’m going to talk about astronomy, but because the last paragraph of the article filled me with a sense of sadness, urgency, and wonder that I get to talk to you about the Creator of this universe and his purposes for this church and Dana Olson’s family.

The author of the article, Dennis Overbye, closes like this:

We’ve barely begun to know anything — that’s why we build telescopes. Once the Webb has completed its rounds of investigations two decades from now, we might know a bit more about how this bowl of stars works. But we still won’t know why we are here. That question mark, our profound cosmic ignorance, is one of the great gifts of science.

So, the great gift of science is to underline the “profound . . . ignorance” that we do not know why we exist.

If that were the gift of science (and I don’t believe it is), it would be not a gift, but a curse. To wake up every morning and have to say, “I have no idea why I exist” — that is not a gift. It is a curse. And millions of people are taught to live under this curse.

But we — we who have been born again “through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23) — we know why we exist. We exist to know and enjoy and reflect the glory of our Creator and Redeemer, especially the glory of his sovereign, sustaining grace.

What Is Sovereign, Sustaining Grace?

What is God’s sovereign, sustaining grace? Where does God make plain that this is our portion? That’s my focus in this message. Let me give you a rhyming definition to illustrate what I mean from experience, and then I’ll show its meaning from the word.

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
     Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

I stress this because to celebrate a grace that bars what is not bliss, and gives flight from all distress, and does not order our pain — that grace would be biblically false and experientially unrealistic.

Our experiences and the Bible teach us that grace does not prevent pain, but orders, and arranges, and measures out our pain, and then in the darkness is there to sustain. Grace will one day banish all pain. But not yet.

Scarred by Grace

For example, years ago Bob Ricker was the president of the Baptist General Conference. He spoke at his daughter’s wedding. He pointed to some small scars on her neck and called them memorials of God’s grace — his sovereign, sustaining grace.

She had been in a car accident. Her injury prevented her from breathing right there at the scene of the accident. In the car behind her was a doctor who happened to have an air tube in his pocket. By the time he got to her, she was already turning blue. He forced the tube into her throat and saved her life. At her wedding a few years later, Bob told her: those scars you have to live with — they are memorials of sustaining grace.

Now, Bob Ricker is not naive. He knows that if God can ordain that in the car behind there be a doctor, and that this doctor have a breathing apparatus in his pocket, and that he have the presence of mind to use it savingly, then this God is fully able to prevent the accident in the first place. This is the God of whom Paul said in Ephesians 1:11, “[He] works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Bob even stressed, “‘All things’ means all things” — including, I assume, the paths of cars and airplanes and arrows and bullets and chromosomes and cancer cells. That was the inspiration for my little rhyming definition of sovereign, sustaining grace.

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
     Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

The God Above the Farmer

Here’s another story of grace, which I confirmed with Noël in the car yesterday driving over from Minneapolis. Noël, Abraham, Barnabas, and Talitha were traveling to Georgia, and the car broke down on a lonely stretch about an hour south of Indianapolis. The radiator was shot.

“Grace does not prevent pain, but orders, and arranges, and measures out our pain.”

A farmer in his mid-sixties pulled over and offered help. Noël said that she supposed they needed a motel and hoped that Monday morning there would be a garage open to work on the car. The farmer said, “Would you like to stay with me and my wife?” Noël hesitated. He said, “The Lord said that when we serve others, it’s like serving him.” He called his wife to get the okay and added, “You could go to church with us in the morning, if you can take a Baptist church.”

So, they stayed with the farmer — who was also an aviation mechanic that diagnosed the problem, drove to town Monday morning, bought a new radiator, came back, put it in at no expense, and sent the family on their way. In the meantime, Barnabas had pulled his fishing rod out of the car and caught a nineteen-inch catfish — the icing on the cake. Spectacular, sovereign, sustaining grace.

The God who can cause a farmer to stop to help Noël, and who sees to it that he is a Christian (even a Baptist!), and that he and his wife have room for the family to stay, and that he is a mechanic, and that he finds a radiator first thing Monday morning, and that he is willing to take the time, and that he has a pond with catfish — this God is perfectly able to keep a radiator from bursting open in the middle of Indiana. But in this fallen world of futility, that is not usually the way sustaining grace works. It does not always spare us frustrations and disappointments and losses.

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
     Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

Responding Like Paul

A young man in our church who was dealing with a physical condition that did not get better in spite of prayer said to me, “It would be easier if Jesus hadn’t healed, but instead had given grace to endure the absence of healing.” One of the things I said to him was this: “That’s exactly what Jesus did do — and for that very reason — in 2 Corinthians 12:9–10.”

God’s grace ordained that Paul have a thorn in the flesh for the sake of his humility, and then he does not remove it in answer to prayer. Instead, God says, “My [sovereign, sustaining] grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

To which Paul responds, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
     Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

Grace Abounds Even in Babylon

Our text in Jeremiah 32 is about this kind of sovereign, sustaining grace and holds the key to why Faith Baptist Fellowship exists after 44 years, and to why Dana and Christa and the girls served so faithfully.

Jerusalem and God’s chosen people are in darkness and distress, and it is God himself who has ordered it so. Look at verse 36: “Now therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city of which you say, ‘It is given into the hand of the king of Babylon by sword, by famine, and by pestilence.’” That’s what those outside of Israel are saying, and it is true. Grace has not spared them this calamity. Nor will the grace of God spare you your appointed calamity. He will spare you many sorrows, but not all.

But what they say about God’s chosen ones is not the last word. God has the last word. And it is a word of sovereign, sustaining grace. Verse 37: “Behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them in my anger and my wrath and in great indignation. I will bring them back to this place, and I will make them dwell in safety.”

So, God declares that he has ordered the trouble and pain: I have driven them to these foreign lands. And he declares that he himself will deliver them and bring them back to himself and to their land. In other words, sovereign grace will eventually triumph over the calamity.

What Makes Us Saints So Sure?

How can we be sure of this triumph of grace in our lives, our churches, our souls? It is one question to ask, Why has Faith Baptist Fellowship endured for 44 years? But an even more urgent question is, How can we be sure that grace will triumph for this church and in our own lives in the future? How can you be sure that grace will sustain you to the end in the faith and holiness that brings you safe to heaven?

That’s what the rest of this text is about. The answer is sustaining grace for God’s chosen people is sovereign grace. That is, sustaining grace is omnipotent grace. It is grace that overcomes all obstacles and preserves the faith and holiness that bring us home to heaven. This is our only sure confidence for the future. You and I, in ourselves, are utterly fickle and unreliable. If we were left to our own powers to persevere, we would make shipwreck of our faith. It is sure. This is why the saints have prayed and sung for centuries,

Oh, to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart; Oh, take and seal it;
Seal it for thy courts above.

Is that the way saints should pray? Is that the way to pray for your future and for Dana’s future and for this church’s future? Is that a biblical way to pray?

Make your goodness like a fetter — a chain — that binds my wandering heart to you. Seal my heart with an unbreakable bond for the courts of heaven. In other words, keep me! Preserve me! Defeat every rising rebellion! Overcome every niggling doubt! Deliver from every destructive temptation! Nullify every fatal allurement! Expose every demonic deception! Tear down every arrogant argument! Shape me! Incline me! Hold me! Master me! Do whatever you must do to keep me trusting you and fearing you till Jesus comes or calls.

May we — should we — pray and sing like that?

Four Promises of Sovereign, Sustaining Grace

The answer from this text is yes. That kind of singing and praying is rooted in the new-covenant promise of sovereign, sustaining grace. Let’s read it. Keep in mind that this is one of several Old Testament promises of the new covenant that Jesus said he sealed with his own blood for all who are in him. It is not just for Jews, but for those who are true Jews by virtue of union with Jesus, the seed of Abraham (Galatians 3:7, 16). Jeremiah 32:38–41 says,

They shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.

Notice four promises of sovereign, sustaining grace.

1. God will be our God.

God promises to be our God. Verse 38: “They shall be my people, and I will be their God.” All the promises to his people are summed up in this: “I will be your God.” That is, “I will use all that I am as God — all my wisdom, all my power, and all my love — to see to it that you remain my people. All that I am as God, I exert for your good.”

2. God will change our hearts.

God promises to change our hearts and cause us to love and fear him. Verses 39–40: “I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever. . . . I will put the fear of me in their hearts.” In other words, God will not simply stand by to see if we, by our own powers, will fear him. He will sovereignly, supremely, mercifully give us the heart that we need to have, and give us the faith and the fear of God that will lead us home to heaven. This is sovereign, sustaining grace. (See also Deuteronomy 30:6 and Ezekiel 11:19–20; 36:27.)

3. God will not let us turn away.

God promises that he will not turn away from us and that we will not turn away from him. Verse 40: “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.” In other words, his heart-work is so powerful that he guarantees we will not turn from him. This is what’s new about the new covenant: God promises to fulfill by his power the conditions that we have to meet. We must fear him and love him and trust him. And he says, “I will see to that. I will ‘put the fear of me in their hearts’ — not to see what they will do with it, but in such a way that ‘they may not turn from me.’” This is sovereign, sustaining grace.

4. God will do this with infinite intensity.

Finally, God promises to do this with the greatest intensity imaginable. He expresses this in two ways, once at the beginning and once at the end of verse 41: “I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” First, he says that he will exert this sovereign, sustaining grace with joy: “I will rejoice in doing them good.” Then he says (at the end of verse 41) that he will exert this sovereign, sustaining grace “with all [his] heart and all [his] soul.”

How Great Is God’s Desire to Do You Good?

He rejoices to sustain you, and he rejoices with all his heart and with all his soul. Now, I ask you, not with any sermonic exaggeration, or with any rhetorical flourish, or with any sense of overstatement at all — I ask you, I challenge you, can you conceive of an intensity of desire that is greater than a desire empowered by “all [God’s] heart and all [God’s] soul”?

Suppose you took all the desire for food and sex and money and fame and power and meaning and friends and security in the hearts and souls of all the human beings on the earth — say, about eight billion people — and you put all that desire, multiplied by all those eight billion hearts and souls, into a container. How would it compare to the desire of God to do you good implied in the words “with all [his] heart and all [his] soul”? It would compare like a thimble to the Pacific Ocean, because the heart and soul of God are infinite, and the hearts and souls of man are finite. There is no intensity greater than the intensity of “all [God’s] heart and all [God’s] soul.”

“Grace will one day banish all pain. But not yet.”

And that is the intensity of the joy he has in sustaining you with sovereign grace: “I will rejoice in doing them good . . . with all my heart and all my soul.” Some of you may be tasting the sweetness of such sovereign, sustaining grace for the first time this morning. That is the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, and I urge you to yield to it and be mastered by sovereign, sustaining grace.

Others of you have lived in this sweet assurance for decades. It has sovereignly sustained you in the worst and best of times. Pain has not pushed you into bitterness; pleasure has not lured you into idolatry; God has kept you. He has held you fast — with all his heart and all his soul.

He has done it for your church, and he has done it for Dana and Christa and Anna and Mary and Betsy, and he will — with all his heart and all his soul. This is sovereign, sustaining grace. To know it, rejoice in it, and reflect it is why you exist.

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
     Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.
However long the sorrows last,
     This mighty grace will hold you fast.