The Sovereignty of God
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· 7 viewsWhat does it mean for God to be Sovereign?
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The Sovereignty of God
The Sovereignty of God
5 I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me, 6 that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. 7 I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things. 8 “Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit; let the earth cause them both to sprout; I the Lord have created it. 9 “Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’? 10 Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ or to a woman, ‘With what are you in labor?’ ” 11 Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and the one who formed him: “Ask me of things to come; will you command me concerning my children and the work of my hands? 12 I made the earth and created man on it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host.
9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
13 When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, 14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
There was an article in Christianity today that held the headline, “Christianity offers no answers to Coronavirus”...
I about came unglued with righteous indignation… How dare any christian believe that this is a season where we can only lament and hope for the best outcome… which is basically what the article spells out. as if that is more loving than what God actually intends… Listen just because it is difficult to understand, that doesn’t mean that we should shy away from Biblical truth.
There is an answer… albeit insufficient for many who don’t know God, but none the less the answer is this...
God is Sovereign over all!
God is Sovereign over all!
What does it mean that God is sovereign? How can we understand this attribute of our God?
John Piper would say,
Saying that God is all-governing means he is sovereign. His sovereignty means that he can do, and in fact does do, all that he decisively wills to do.
Piper, J. (2020). Coronavirus and christ. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.
A.W. Pink said it this way...
The Sovereignty of God may be defined as the exercise of his Supremacy -
But what does it mean for God to be supreme? What is the supremacy of God? Well it is something that we can barely imagine. He is so far higher and above us in every way… And yet when we use words we don’t tend to understand them. In the english language in modern times words like Supreme have lost all true value.
I asked my Kids about some words this week just to try and get some perspective from a younger generation. They reminded me the Supreme is a brand. It started as a skateboarding brand and has now become more of a status symbol of high urban fashion. But to say God is Supreme should carry so much more weight. They hear supreme and they think of a sticker that represents a brand, and so… for them to say God is supreme has been brought down to a level of human understanding of hype fashion.
It was the same with the word awesome. For many people, this word means that something is really cool, its great, its awesome. And yet the idea of awesome is supposed to mean - extremely impressive and inspiring awe. Breathtaking, amazing stunning astounding… the cause of your breath being removed and your soul shrinking within you as you experience something of such great magnitude...
How about what we do with the word love??? We love a beverage, and we love a meal, and we love to visit places and we love our family… oh yeah we love God too… Could all these things be on the same level? Should all these things be on the same level?
Listen words matter and they have always meant something, and yet it seems as though they are used in a way that doesn’t matter at all. They have become so common that when applied to a knowledge we have of God, we have reduced him to a mere humanistic understanding and have lost something in translation… and so we do not really understand him like we would declare we do.
I think A.W. Pink captured this problem well in his book on the attributes of God when he said, “The “god” of this century no more resembles the Supreme Sovereign of Holy Scripture than does the dim flickering of a candle the glory of the midday sun. This “god” who is now talked about in the average pulpit, spoken of in the ordinary Sunday school, mentioned in much of the modern religious literature, and preached in most of the so-called Bible Conferences is a figment of human imagination, an invention of sentimentality. Any “god” who is resisted, whose designs are frustrated, whose purpose is checkmated, possesses no title of deity, and so far from being a fit object of worship, merits nothing but contempt.”
Words matter when describing our knowing of God and they need to be reclaimed in our understanding of God… Why? Because of how Beautiful Eulogy summed it up…
“The Ultimate Source of Authority,
Who rules with mercy and grace but man
Reduces this attribute to foolish debate.”
So what does it mean for God to be sovereign? Again i am going to quote A.W.Pink here.
“That he is infinitely elevated above the highest creature, He is the Most High, Lord of heaven and earth. Subject to none, influenced by none, absolutely independent; God does as he pleases, only as he pleases, always as he pleases. None can thwart him and none can hinder him.”
Well how do we know this? Look to his word...
10 declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
Divine sovereignty means that God is in fact God, and that he is on the throne of the universe. And from his throne he is working all thing according to the counsel of His will...
11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,
This is what the Bible teaches us… This is what we must hold to, especially in these turbulent times of uncertainty. And yet we would not be wrong to say that much of what is called a church today hardly believes this anymore.
Listen to what Charles Spurgeon had to say about the doctrine of God’s Sovereignty...
There is no attribute of God more comforting to his children than the doctrine of Divine Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe troubles, they believe that Sovereignty hath ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all. There is nothing for which the children of God ought more earnestly to contend than the dominion of their Master over all creation—the kingship of God over all the works of his own hands—the throne of God, and his right to sit upon that throne.
On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings, no truth of which they have made such a foot-ball, as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the Sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. Men will allow God to be everywhere except on his throne. They will allow him to be in his workshop to fashion worlds and to make stars. They will allow him to be in his almonry to dispense his alms and bestow his bounties. They will allow him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends his throne, his creatures then gnash their teeth; and when we proclaim an enthroned God, and his right to do as he wills with his own, to dispose of his creatures as he thinks well, without consulting them in the matter, then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on his throne is not the God they love. They love him anywhere better than they do when he sits with his sceptre in his hand and his crown upon his head. But it is God upon the throne that we love to preach. It is God upon his throne whom we trust.
We need to recognize what the scripture teaches us as truth and proclaim what is true about God and not allow the false to be believed and another gospel to be preached in it s place because of the troubles we face as a society.
6 Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.
3 Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.
That means that everything happens happens because God is in control and has a purpose in all things and directs them from his throne in heaven. Nothing on this earth can happen with his expressed consent, but furthermore: without his divine decree. Yes, even the Corona virus is happening under the divine decree of the Almighty God who is in control of every nation, and every individual case of COVID-19. What am I saying?
God is sovereignly in control of the whole in its present state.
God is sovereignly in control of the whole in its present state.
He is in control and he has never not been in control. He has so much purpose in all things that he uses to bring himself glory and this global pandemic is not different than any other plague, and other war, any other hardship, any other season of peace and prosperity, and other time in all of human history, in which God saw fit to best glorify himself in the eyes of all humanity. The difference is that this is just the first season you were alive to experience it first-hand. What is happening today is not written in the books of the Bible because your Bible is pointing you to the one who is directing the events unfolding around you in an effort to bring you closer to him. The question is, are you paying attention?
God is sovereignly allowing all of our idols to be stripped away from us in this season. Anything that we put our attention on and our hope in is being demolished right before our very eyes, and the Lord is in charge of that.
401K’s and retirements are being decimated and the global economy is being revealed as smoke and mirrors under the hand of God’s divine decree.
Our entertainment that has been distracting our attention away from the Sovereignty of God and his gospel has been removed. This is a season when we have a chance to reclaim what we have proclaimed as most important to us. Our relationship with the God of the universe in which our full attention is on him and we are pointing other to him.
John Piper wrote a book recently called, “The Corona-virus and Christ”… It is free to download in all formats, I highly recommend you get it and read it. He does an excellent job of helping make sense of all this we are living through. As he describes the Sovereignty of God in this season, he makes the argument that we should receive the news of the sovereignty of God over the coronavirus and over our lives, as sweet teaching. Why? and How?
If you are anxious in this season, if you are fearful, if you are at high risk or you are indifferent because you think you are healthy.... You need to understand why God’s divine Sovereignty is sweet teaching for us who believe. The secret, as John Piper stated is...
“Knowing that the same sovereignty that could stop the coronavirus, yet doesn’t, is the very sovereignty that sustains the soul in it” - John Piper
“Knowing that the same sovereignty that could stop the coronavirus, yet doesn’t, is the very sovereignty that sustains the soul in it” - John Piper
Can God stop this whole thing? YES… Why? Because it is under his direct decree that we are in this whole thing in the first place. And yet to wish it was just something that never happened in the first place would discredit that work of God in the midst of it… Most of which is yet to be seen.
And at it very core, the Sovereign God who doesn’t stop the coronavirus if sovereignly sustaining his people in the midst of it… And even brings some of his people home from it. Who can fully know the mind of God and see how glorious his works are in the face of a plague or global pandemic.
The fact that God is sovereign over that which he has allowed, which in our eyes seems like its all bad, is the same doctrine that shows us we can trust God in dark difficult places in this life… Because he is sovereign and can do whatsoever he pleases, while also knowing that he for some reason has set his love on those who he has called to be his own.
Please understand that there is no more favorable position to be in, than under the hand of the Almighty Sovereign God who saved you through the work of Christ, because he decreed that work as well.
See when people say, “What about all the damage that is being done to the earth and its peoples?”
We would respond with, “Did Jesus get a free pass? NO! And he was the sinless one!”
If Jesus was the sinless savior and he endured the wrath of God being poured out on him, then what do we think that God owes us, and how should we understand events like the one we are in the midst of?
They happen under the the Divine decree fo a Sovereign God who means for this whole world to understand something of who he is.
But what about the pain being caused by this? Well that is a good point and it has a dual purpose. Whenever God allows or sends calamity upon the earth, it has a twofold purpose.
To once again borrow from Piper’s new book: For believers it is Purifying and for unbelievers it is Punitive...
Let’s land here for a moment. Can we be sure that this is true? What does God’s holy word have to say in regard to these things? Does he speak to this in his word at all?
17 For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And “If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”
Listen, here we have a clear example of God allowing judgement to touch his children. Under his sovereign hand he is allowing his own to be touched by this current calamity. For “the household of God,” this judgement from God is PURIFYING not punitive - not punishment. And for those who are in in the household of God, it is left to reader to use their imagination as to what will do… Certainly a punishment for those that are his enemies and stand opposed to him.
And I know that this can sound too mean to be an accurate representation of God, who is Love according to 1 john… Yet we need to realize that the very language we use to describe our relation to God is that we are SAVED.... Does that not mean at its very core, that we were headed for destruction and yet God intervened on our behalf and saved us from something or someone… Well that something or someone is His wrath and Him… The Holy God who will judge sinners.
We do not like to often think about it, but you must recognize what you have been saved from.
God did not just save you from a hard life, or brokenness, or physical pain, or financial ruin, or any of the other benefits that he may lavish on his children. We are primarily Saved from...
We are saved FROM God, FOR God, THROUGH God, and TO God
We are saved FROM God, FOR God, THROUGH God, and TO God
And this is a Sovereign decree that God meant to enact when he started his creation. He created the earth and everyone on it in every generation including the first people with this in mind. He was always intended to be glorified through the Son who would have to come and save his people by Dying for them.
We are saved from the wrath of God. -
9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Well what if we are not Believing in Christ?
12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.
No matter who you are, you will be judged and you are in need of a savior. If God by his grace should save you… he is then saving you from him, because he will judge the nations for their sin.
So we are saved FROM God… But we are also saved For God...
If you then, are a believer in the work of Jesus Christ on your behalf, and you nature has been changed… you life has new meaning...
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Whatever you were about before… Whoever you were trying to find, by searching through this life, it is inconsequential because it is all changed when you are in him… You now have a new identity and a new purpose...
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
We are saved FROM God, and FOR God, but also THROUGH God… in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the God-man who is Fully divine and fully human. He came to seek and save the Lost. and he accomplished the task he was given before the foundation of the world...
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Jesus, God the Son saved us.
So we are saved FROM God, FOR God, THROUGH God, and TO God...
This is not our home as believers in Christ. We have an eternal home, a dwelling not made with human hands, and as Christians we know the scriptures are true when they comfort us by telling us...
8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
The scriptures declare that when we are away from these bodies we will be in the presence of the Lord, and that is our true home.
And while this is truth we need to remind ourselves, we cannot divorce it from the truth that this is all under the divine Sovereign hand of God that purposes to save us before we could say anything about it...
4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,
IF before the foundation of the world, God, in love adopted us in Christ… that means he intended to send Christ to suffer and die for us before Adam sinned… Because only a Sovereign God who knows all things and works all things together for his own glory can do this.
And so the darkest day is not the days in which we live, because God predestined dark days before the ones we are in...
23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
God is so sovereign that he intended Jesus to be delivered up… that was when he suffered at the hands of sinful men, they crucified him and killed him and this was according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.
You see, we cannot be so self consumed that we question God in the midst of this global pandemic as if God doesn’t ordain evil to be used for the good of his people. Because none of us would be here is he didn’t decree it as the only God on his throne could.
And so let us look at the verses we started by hearing read to us with the understanding that God is sovereign and he uses all things for his glory and we are not to question him in that… in fact we are to come to him in that and pray and beseech him because we have found grace in Christ and our future is secured...
5 I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me, 6 that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other.
God is God and there is no other. It is only he who knows us and equips us when we do not of him at all. He does all this people he will have the attention of the whole world for them to know, He is the Lord there is no other.
But what does that actually look like?
7 I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.
These words harken back to creation when he made light and darkness and separated the day from the night. And yet in all the history of the world he takes the credit for well being and calamity… We can’t run from that tension… Why? Because he says, I am the Lord, who does all these things… This includes coronavirus and our current tribulation.
8 “Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit; let the earth cause them both to sprout; I the Lord have created it.
Look even the rain that comes from above is under his control… the plants that grow are under his control. But these are just pictures of what he is really growing on the earth… Righteousness and salvation that he created. Not a self righteousness that we are in control of. God is the author of everything we know. So why would we want to deny him his place of ultimate rule?
9 “Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’? 10 Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ or to a woman, ‘With what are you in labor?’ ” 11 Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and the one who formed him: “Ask me of things to come; will you command me concerning my children and the work of my hands? 12 I made the earth and created man on it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host.
Can it be any more clear, that we have no right to approach the Sovereign God of all creation and complain about anything, including pain and brokenness. That does not mean that we do not feel it and that he is not compassionate towards us when we do, yet it stands that we cannot demand that he shouldn’t have allowed it in the first place..
It is clear that we sometime want God on our terms and to do things our way. Remember when Job who had suffered so severely started to think wrongly about God? Do you remember what he said?
2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
We must not speak about that which we cannot understand.
So what shall we do? How shall we pray? What are we left with??? Well a sovereign God would not leave us as if we are not loved or encouraged to come to him. But he does instruct us.
9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Now this may not seem like such a powerful prayer, as it is known commonly as the Lord’s prayer. People can recite this prayer on demand without giving much thought to it… And yet I would submit to you that we need to think of it freshly today in light of understanding the Sovereignty of God. And I would have you focus one little word in it that may help you understand its purpose for us who prayer it. We can clearly see that it starts with acknowledging God as holy and hallowed in our Father, and when it comes to His kingdom and his will being done on earth, we get people bringing their own false beliefs about God into the rest of this prayer and so we lose what I believe we are to see..
It is found in one little word...
It is the word “AS”…
Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth AS it is in heaven...
Please hear me brother and sister… in Heaven it is never disputed that God is ON His Throne. That he rules from his throne and he is in total control at all times. He is the SUPREME SOVEREIGN God, and in heaven they know it! There is no denying it. There is no explaining away the hard realities found in his sovereignty. And if we are to pray this prayer and understand it, then we better understand the power of the little word AS in this prayer.
It is only as the Sovereign ruler over all things that we can ask for our daily bread, because AS the God on the throne that he is, he is able to make all grace about to us.
And it is only the Sovereign ruler that can forgive us of our debts of sin, and we cannot fathom forgiving others until we see him on his throne extending to us what we absolutely do not deserve.
And if we can get this then we can not only accept the text but practice it with great joy as we desperately need to do today!
Look at who God is and how he commands us as his people to know him and approach him...
13 When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, 14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Now being that we are found in Christ, it is true that this is not a work we can do to earn this favor from God as Christ has secured it for us already… and yet we need to pause and see what the scriptures are declaring to us about our God...
It is he who sends the pestilence, or plague or Viruses… God is sovereign over this coronavirus because it is he who allows for it to be sent on the earth.
All your conspiracy theories mean nothing when you understand the Sovereignty of God in all of life.
And yet the principle still stand, that when his people who are called by his name...
Brother and sister in Christ… When we who are called by Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, HUMBLE ourselves and pray… When we seek his face, which according to 2 Cor. 4 is found in the person of Jesus Christ… When we turn from our wicked ways… when we repent… God hears our prayers and will heal our land.
If this was true before Jesus came to redeem the lost, if this was true for the nation that constantly turned its back on God and his commands, then how much more is it true for us in Christ in this very moment?!
The sovereignty of God may bring a plan of wrath on the sinful enemies of God, as we once were, but the same sovereign God bring Peace, and Hope and Grace and Mercy on his own people.
The Sovereignty of God doesn’t help us escape this troubled world, but is the only thing that gives us Hope in this broken world.
The Sovereignty of God doesn’t help us escape this troubled world, but is the only thing that gives us Hope in this broken world.
Let us pray now, with a strong understand that God is Sovereign and in control. Let us not seek to try and change his mind about what he has seen fit to send upon the earth, but let us ask him to reveal his Glory to us in this plan that we may worship him more fearfully and wonderfully than we did just a few short weeks ago. For we brought nothing into this world and we can take nothing from it.
So let us thank him for this season by remembering Jobs words which pleased God...
21 And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” 22 In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.