THE external course of events tells us nothing of what is really going on—that is inside it all. If the external plannings of men or Satan further God's plans they succeed, if not, they come to nothing; but what is really going on is still inside them all. Thus they would not have taken Jesus on the feast day, not to have an uproar, but He was to be the Paschal Lamb and He is taken. The Jews would have often taken Him, but His hour was not yet come; when it was, they take Him—their wicked plans succeed. When the heartless superstition of the Jews had the malefactors' legs broken, what was really doing in the one case was sending the man into Paradise.
To the outward eye what happened to Job were raids of Arabs and Chaldeans—ordinary predatory raids, and a violent storm blew down the house; Satan was in it all, and behind him God arranging the purifying of Job's heart and our instruction in all ages.
The political plans of Augustus, as to the census of the Empire, brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus, and then it was not carried out for nine years, when Cyrenius was Governor.
All we have to do is to discern God's will, and have by faith the courage to do it. All His strength is power to carry us forward. It may seem all to turn out ill, or be a cross—it may be so, but we shall have the result of God's counsels and blessing by the way. Man succeeded in crucifying Jesus because however wicked the act on their part, it was just carrying out God's plans. He knew His Father's will—sought only to glorify His Name—had faithful obedience to act upon it, though to man's eye it was the ruin of everything, every religious hope even, and so it was in man and in flesh, but the birthplace of all counsels in glory, of that new thing in man wherein He will be glorified forever, that wherein He was glorified in all He is essentially: The outside was wicked men's success, the end too of pious men's hopes—the inside what all blessing that ever was, or could be really and permanently, is entirely founded upon, and that wherein alone God is fully glorified. Christ learned and did His Father's will, Satan's power and man's wickedness were there, triumphed as nowhere else. It was the foundation of all true and eternal blessing.