Because God is Sovereign...

Series Overview

Welcome everyone! Thanks for checking out our series Shelter in Peace, my name is Cody and I will be your guide through this journey into 4 weeks on the character of God.

Before we jump in I wanted to give us a quick overview of this series.

The idea for this really came out of this whole COVID-19 season while working through some Psalms.

I came across this verse, which for us is kind of a theme verse for this series.

Its Psalm 142:4-5

Psalm 142:4–5 CSB

Look to the right and see: no one stands up for me; there is no refuge for me; no one cares about me. I cry to you, Lord; I say, “You are my shelter, my portion in the land of the living.”

Its this idea that the LORD is our shelter. But sometimes its hard to take shelter in something or someone you do not know.

That’s why we are working through some of the character of God.

Now each week we are going to fill in the blank for this statement:

Because God is _______ , I can trust Him.

I made this easy and something you can memorize, but something if you have kids that are a little older and talking you can teach to them.

So each of these episodes is designed like the teaching portion of one of our community groups. So we will have the teaching portion, then I will bring in a fun special guest, Miss Vickee to walk parents with kids through a way you can communicate this truth to you children. Lastly, if you look in the description of this video you will see a link to a Google Doc. That Doc has all the points, as well as a discussion guide with some questions to take you a bit deeper.

So with all that being said let’s get started.

Context

So we start off our text in verse 15 but there’s been a lot happening before this. David, the author of this Psalm starts off by commanding His own soul to:

Praise God

Remember His benefits

David then lists some of the actions God has done for His people (forgives, heals, redeems, crowns, satisfies)

Then for the next 8 verses, David goes on to speak about God’s righteousness, graciousness, and His faithful love and compassion towards His people

All of this seems like a bit of a difference between our first 2 verses right?

Well, David is speaking of the compassion of God He describes it like a father being compassionate to His children…and then in the verse just before ours, in verse 14....David says:

Psalm 103:14

Psalm 103:14 CSB

For he knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust.

God’s compassion here is magnified by the fact He is compassionate to us, in spite of the fact that we were formed from dust (that is referring to Adam and mankind through Adam)

David continues this contrast in our verses.

We are temporal, not eternal (vs. 15-16)

We first see the description of us, people.

David writes:

Psalm 103:15-16

Psalm 103:15–16 CSB

As for man, his days are like grass— he blooms like a flower of the field; when the wind passes over it, it vanishes, and its place is no longer known.

We can see this verse about us in placed to contrast that of God because the next word we see is BUT

But these verses bring us to a reality we don’t often like to talk or think about unless we are forced to - the fragility and temporal nature of human life.

When living in our moments, we go about our days and rarely think of this. We have good days and bad days and mostly we just have ....days.

But in times of crisis or times like this in a pandemic, we are by nature of our surroundings forced to think again of this reality.

We remember that we are temporal by nature and limited by time.

But this isn’t just something said as to be depressing, but notice the language used by David is describing us like a field of grass or a blooming flower.

But yet, by the description there is still a beauty to it. A thing such as a flower or a field can still be beautiful despite it not lasting long.

And yet, that is our lives, short, yet with such potential to be meaningful and beautiful but how?

Let’s look at our next verses.

God is eternal and calls us, in this life, to follow Him (vs.17-18)

Psalm 103:17-18

Psalm 103:17–18 CSB

But from eternity to eternity the Lord’s faithful love is toward those who fear him, and his righteousness toward the grandchildren of those who keep his covenant, who remember to observe his precepts.

Man, what a start to a verse.....from eternity to eternity....gotta say that is a LONG TIME.

But this is the description of God’s enduring, faithful love towards His people.

This point, in my opinion is the craziest point of these three. That there would be a Creator God who not only formed and fashioned mankind…but then despite their temporal nature and relative smallness comparatively, would chose to love them.

That He would love us when we mess up, when we lash out, when we get upset with Him because we don’t understand. That a being so big as God would love us in spite of us…wow.

But see not only God being eternal and Him loving His people but even that would call us to follow Him!

That God would invite us in to observe that which He has called us to

But the real focus of today is the next verse...

God is worthy to be followed because He is always in control (v. 19)

Why follow this God? - Because He is worthy to be followed because He is always in control…that is He is Sovereign.

Psalm 103:19

Psalm 103:19 CSB

The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.

Now when David says that God’s Kingdom “rules over all.”

The “all” there in Hebrew, its a technical term…can you guess what it means?

.....IT MEANS ALL.

God has established His throne and His Kingdom is over all and rules all things

This. This is God’s Sovereignty. This is God’s “in control.”

But remember, God’s sovereignty here, is not separated from:

Man’s temporal nature

His love and compassion for His people

His call for people to follow Him

This is exactly why we didn’t jump right to this verse despite this entire video being themed around the aspect of God seen in this verse.

Because in this time of crisis.....yes we need to understand that God is sovereign and in control of all things. We need to understand that we can trust God because He is sovereign.

God’s being sovereign and being in control is not this robotic, lifeless, loveless thing..

In this season I am not here just to say God is in control....that’s it.

I’m also not saying “God is in control, therefore, you can do nothing. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

Absolutely not! That’s why verses 17-18 exist!…As a matter of fact, that’s why this whole Psalm is more than just verse 19. God is eternal and sovereign and calls us to follow Him.

That’s why our theme statement today is

Because God is Sovereign, I Can Trust Him.

Trust in not passive inaction, it is faithful action. It is faithful action because we know at all times “God’s got this.”