Any time tragedy strikes in our world, or maybe in our personal life, we are all

in our world. The resulting chaos can knock us off balance. So where do we find comfort and

stability and how can our response to disaster bring assurance to others? We'll find out today

on Truth for Life as Alistair Begg is teaching from Genesis chapter 45.

Let me remind you of a columnist in the Wall Street Journal that I mentioned probably a couple of years ago now,

when in a somewhat humorous tone, he began his column by saying, for the first time in my life, I have no idea what's going on.

He said it somewhat humorously, but he meant it entirely. The events of the world seem haphazard in many ways,

uncontrollable, for many people frightening and almost inevitably uncertain. And so the question that falls to the Christian

believer is, do we then have anything that is valid to say and he responds to make when what is not

uncommon perception is offered to us in the course of everyday life? Let me give to you the direct quote from the Westminster Confession.

Here we go. God, the creator of all things, upholds, directs, disposes and governs, all creatures, actions and things,

from the greatest even to the least. He exercises this most wise and holy providence according to his infallible

foreknowledge and the free and unchangeable counsel of his own will to the praise of the glory of his wisdom,

power, justice, goodness and mercy. Now, in contrast to Henry Allen's, for the first time in my life, I'm going to clue what's going on.

The Westminster Divines were sitting down to say, we want to say that the Bible has an answer to that.

What the writer of the Hebrews gives to us in really just a phrase when introducing his letter he says in the past,

go to spoken in various ways through the prophets. And now in these last days he has spoken to us in his son,

and he is the one who sustains all things by his powerful word.

It's important to recognize what is being said here. The Divines are not suggesting that God as creator is simply exercising a kind of maintenance ministry,

a sort of deistic view of the universe, that there was a watchmaker and he made the watch and he wound up the watch and he set the watch down,

and then he just led everything run on its own from there. No, the language is very straightforward, namely that he directs, he controls, he sustains, he upholds all things according to his word.

The Psalmist says the plans of the Lord stand firm forever the purposes of his heart through all generations.

...