The external course of events tells us nothing of what is really going on, which is inside it all. If the external plannings of men or of 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 the Jews would not have taken Jesus on the feast-day, to avoid uproar; but He was to be the Paschal Lamb, and He is taken. They would have often taken Him; but His hour was not yet come: when it was, they take Him and their wicked plans succeed. When the heartless superstition of the Jews had the malefactors' legs broken, that which they really did in the one case was to send the man into paradise.
To the outward eye there happened to Job raids of Arabs and Chaldeans, ordinary predatory raids; and a violent storm blew down the house. Satan was in it all, and above him God arranging to purify Job's heart and to instruct us in all ages.
The political measures of Augustus as to the census of the empire brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus; and then it would seem that it was not carried out for nine years when Cyrenius, or Quirinus, was governor.
All we have to do is to discern God's will, and find 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 to 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 plan. Jesus knew His Father's will, and sought only to glorify His name, and had faithful obedience to act upon it; though to man's eye it was the ruin of everything, of 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 God will be glorified forever, of that wherein He was glorified in all He is essentially. The outside was wicked men's success, and the end of pious men's hopes; the inside (what all blessing that ever was, or could be really and permanently) is entirely founded upon that wherein alone God is fully glorified. Christ learned and did His Father's will: Satan's power and man's wickedness were there and triumphed as nowhere else; yet His death was the foundation of all true and everlasting blessing. J. N. D.