| Isaiah 40:18-28 - 13 June 2010
Andrew Lim
Twenty-six years ago / Charles Colson said that the western church
is drifting / enculturated / and infected with cheap grace
Colson’s words have proven true
The church is shallow and anemic / her message is trivial and frothy
The church at large that has long been eaten by white ants
is only now beginning to crumble
You look around you / and you know as well as I do
that the world is not troubled by the presence of the church
it is not troubled by Christians / not roused to take notice of us
Well / they may take a couple of pot-shots at us every now and again
but largely / the world pretty much leaves us alone
to our own devises
Young people in the 18 to 25 age bracket may explore the church
- it’s a part of their journey searching for the truth
But largely / after 25 / they grow cynical
they see nothing in us to cause them to take a second look at us
Why?
Because we’re not a threat to them / we’re not a force to be reckoned with
And we’re not a threat to them / because we’re not troubling them
And we’re not troubling them
because we don’t speak with boldness and clarity and conviction
And the reason / we’re not speaking with boldness / clarity and conviction
is because we don’t half-know what we believe
And the little of what we know we believe
we have no courage or conviction over those beliefs
What a contrast when you look at Jonathan Edwards
It has been said of Jonathan Edwards
that he knew his heaven even better than he knew his hell
that his vision of the glory of God was just as ravishing
as his vision of hell was repulsive
Now what’s all this got to do with the sovereignty of God?
Honestly everything
If you aren’t convicted that God is absolutely sovereign
If His sovereignty is dubious and disputable
then you can’t trust
that He’s speaking the truth / that / His Word is true
that His promises can be depended on / or even that He’s really God
And / plagued with doubts like that
you’ll be incurable ill-confident about your beliefs
and nobody around you is shaken or troubled!
Your belief in the sovereignty of God
is the foundation to all your other beliefs
When that is shaky / everything else crumbles in a matter of time
Most Christians are ill-confident about the teaching of God’s sovereignty
Maybe they have become numbed living in a world such as ours
- drenched in senseless violence and disaster
- the holocaust / the killing fields / tsunamis / famines / pandemic
acts of terrorism / rampant and senseless violent crime
and every kinds of horrendous evil
And perhaps you quietly they ask
“Is God still in control / Does He even care?”
And you wonder if the classical doctrine of God’s sovereignty
could even have any meaning
When Dr J.I. Packer was asked which teaching in the Bible
Christians are most prone to neglect / He said:
“I don’t think enough Christians believe deeply enough
in the sovereignty of God
We say we believe it / but we still live our lives
as if everything depended on us / rather than on him”
But if we are to impact the world / in any big or small way
we’ve got to grow a deep conviction of the sovereignty of God
biblically / intellectually and emotionally
Let me begin with the definition of the word
What exactly is the meaning of the word “sovereignty”
The thesaurus gives us such words as:
ascendancy / authority / autonomy / undisputed dominance / dominion
emperorship / absolute mastery / independence / infinite power / majesty
royalty / unqualified and unmitigated supremacy
To say that God is sovereign
is to say that God has absolute total power and control over everything
God is sovereign in that He is absolutely free to do whatever He wills
to anyone / at any time / without interference
This does not mean
that God is therefore whimsical and capricious in His ways
He does not act in any haphazard manner
He is never unjust in what He does
He always does what He deems is best
Our sovereign God acts in ways
that are totally consistent with His own character
He acts in total consonant with all His other divine attributes
such as His wisdom / mercy / righteousness / love / goodness
and holiness
We often say of someone who is a loose cannon
“He is a law unto himself” / we usually say that in a negative sense
But in a real positive sense / God is a law unto Himself
He is answerable to no-one / subject to no one / influenced by no one
God does as He pleases / only as He pleases / always as He pleases
None can hinder Him / or compel Him / or stop Him
He is able to do as He pleases always / everywhere / for all time
Now / that / is what is meant by the teaching that God is sovereign
Arthur Pink says
To say that God is Sovereign is to declare that God is God
To say that God is Sovereign is to declare that He is the Most High
doing according to His will / in the army of Heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth
so that none can stay His hand or say to Him
“What is this you are doing”
To say that God is Sovereign is to declare that He is the Almighty
the Possessor of all power in Heaven and earth
so that none can defeat His counsels / thwart His purpose
or resist His will / Psa. 115:3
To say that God is Sovereign is to declare
that He is “The Governor among the nations”
setting up kingdoms, overthrowing empires / and determining
the course of dynasties as pleases Him best
To say that God is Sovereign is to declare
that He is the “Only Potentate / the King of kings
and Lord of lords”
What inspiring words these are!
But it is to the Bible that we must go for our learning
And the Bible leaves us / with not a shred of doubt
that our God reigns supreme over all
This truth is asserted in countless places in the Bible
directly or indirectly
Listen to some of its breathtaking declarations!
“I know that you can do all things?
No plan of Yours can be thwarted / Job 42:2
“Our God is in heaven / He does whatever pleases Him” /Ps 115:3
“For the Lord Almighty has purposed / and who can thwart Him?
His hand is stretched out and who can turn it back?? / Is 14:27
“Yes and from ancient days I am he / no one can deliver
out of my hand when I act / who can reverse it” / Is 43:13
“I make known the end from the beginning / from ancient times
what is still to come / My purpose will stand
and I will do / all that I please” / Is 46:10
“He does as He pleases with the powers of heaven
and the people of the earth / No one can hold back His hand
or say to him / “What have you done?”” / Dan 4:35
“Consider what the Lord has done
Who can straighten what the Lord has made crooked” / Ec 7:13
“What He opens no man can shut
and what He shuts no man can open” / Rev 3:7
What clear teachings those are!
But unless we unpack all that / it remains one huge general concept
So what I want to do is break it down to seven areas / in our lives
in which God is sovereign over
Now I am acutely conscious that as I move through these seven areas
there will be one or two areas / that will touch a raw nerve in your heart
- perhaps you’ve felt that God had been unfair to you
- you felt you’ve been short-changed
- perhaps you felt you’ve been dealt a raw deal
If you feel that way / you may feel the heat rising under your collar
even as I speak
Or perhaps you’ve been fighting God and unwilling to let Him be God
and you’ll find all this talk of His sovereignty / most annoying
and you’ll sense a quiet frustration rising in your heart
But let me say this / if you find yourself feeling this way / do two things
One / ask yourself this question
If God isn’t sovereign / do I have a worldview that’s coherent enough
durable enough / to account for all the mess of this world
Two / think about this
Why is it / that all the gods out there claiming to be gods
our God is the only One / who has wounds
How was it / that a sovereign God / could get himself impaled
Now / the seven areas in which God is sovereign
ONE / God is sovereign over both the good and the evil
We almost always use the expression “the providence of God’
when we talk of something good that has happened to us
e.g. in the providence of God I met a man who gave me a job
But you almost never hear anyone say something like
“In the providence of God / I had an accident
and became paralyzed from my waist down”
We are reluctant to attribute “bad” things to the intervening hand of God
But the Word of God is clear / He is totally sovereign over “all” things
* Rom 9:14 / “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion”
* Rom 9:21 / “Does not the potter have the right
to make out of the same lump of clay
some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?”
*Lam 3:38 / “I help one / and I harm the other”
- Peter was delivered from prison / but John was beheaded
* Lamentations 3: 38
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
that both trouble and good things come ?”
* Isaiah 45:7 / “I form the light and I create darkness
I bring prosperity and I create disaster
I / the Lord / do all these things”
Did you know / that Jesus Himself
affirmed the sovereignty of the Father / over the bad things of life?
Now / the crucifixion was a most macabre and ghastly thing
for Jesus to have to endure
and yet / to Him / it was the Father
Who ultimately / gave the orders for His execution
You’ll remember Pilate said to our Lord:
“Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?"
Now just listen to the force of His reply to Pilate:
Looking Pilate straight into his eyes / our Lord replied
“You would have no power over me
if it were not given to you from above” / John 19:10-11
Our Lord Jesus Himself affirmed the sovereignty of the Father
over the bad things of life?
After losing all ten of his children in the collapse of his son’s house
Job says / “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away
Blessed be the name of the LORD” / Job 1:21
After being covered with boils he says: “Shall we indeed accept good
from God and not accept adversity?” / Job 2:10
Of course Satan is real and active and involved in this world of woe!
and it was he who smote Job with sore boils
from the sole of his foot / to the crown of his head
But Job knew/ that behind all the stratagem and trickery of Satan
is the sovereign hand of God
So he simply cut the slack and said
“Shall we not accept adversity from God?”
So / does all this make God the author of evil?
That is an issue too huge to address this morning
and I have reserved that question for next week
Next week I want to ask ourselves / three questions:
One / Is God the author of evil?
How could a holy and good God ordain and decree evil?
Two / Would God be less a God / for ordaining evil?
Three / I want to address quite specifically
the issues of suffering / sickness / and death
in the face of a good and loving God
So / first point / God is sovereign over both the good and the evil
TWO / God is sovereign over rulers and kings
It is God / Who sets up / those in authority
And it is God Who removes them from authority
Whether a leader takes a throne by force of arms
or through a royal inheritance / or through a democratic election
it is ultimately the Lord who places rulers in office
* Daniel 2:20-21 / “Wisdom and might are His
He changes the times and the seasons
He removes kings and raises up kings
He gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to those who have understanding”
* Romans 13:1 / “There is no authority except from God
and the authorities that exist are appointed by God”
God stands sovereign over the nations and over all their rulers
Without His decree / kings and rulers do not move
And no king makes a single move / outside God’s sovereign plan
THREE / God is sovereign over natural disasters
We watch on TV / earthquakes in China / famine in Somalia
volcanic eruption in Hawaii / hurricanes in the Caribbean
We watch people perished from massive flooding / hurricanes
tornadoes / tsunamis / and severe droughts
hundreds of thousands of people are killed
The Scripture does not hide the fact
that God stands behind everyone of these disaster
The Bible declares unabashedly
that calamity happens / because God has decreed it
* “He summoned a famine on the land /He broke all supply of bread”
Ps 105:16
We’ve all seen what damage a huge forest fire can wreck / Australia last year
* “He makes the winds His messengers / Flaming fire His ministers”
Psalm 104:4
Some years back here in Palmy
there was a spate of winds that almost drove everyone insane
with their incessant howling
* “He causes His wind to blow and the waters to flow
Fire and hail /snow and clouds /stormy wind / fulfilling His word”
Psalm 147:18; 148:8
* “Even the wind and the sea obey Him” / Mark 4:39, 41
The Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 killed 275,000 people
There is a verse which comes the closest
to affirming the fact that it is God
who shifted the tectonic plates on the ocean floor
* Job 38:8-11 / Job asks a rhetorical question
“Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb”
and locked it behind barred gates / limiting its shores
and said / ‘Thus far shall you come / and no farther
and here / shall your proud waves be stayed”?
In the last few years we seen much evil and disaster
How will you explain this in the face of a good God?
Will the view you adopt end up being hollow and frivolous
It is a tragedy / that against the overwhelming weight
of evidence from scripture / many Christians have chosen
to remain shallow / slushy and trivial
Result: They remain irrelevant in the face of great suffering
FOUR / God is sovereign over diseases and physical defects
Often we struggle over the question of diseases and physical defects
Outbreak of malaria in Nigeria
Children are born without limbs / born with speech impediments
born without a nose / born blind / with some kind of mental defect
Is God out of control? / Most absolutely not
God is sovereign / even over those apparently evil afflictions of life
Did you not know / that God openly assumes total responsibility
for deafness / muteness / and blindness
* Exodus 4:11 / So the LORD said to him / “Who gave man his mouth?
Who makes him deaf or mute?
Who gives him sight or makes him blind? / Is it not I / the LORD?”
The immediate cause for such defects and accidents
may be an abnormal genes / or careless medical research
but behind them all / stands a sovereign God
whose purposes cannot be frustrated
As Donald Grey Barnhouse once said
No person in this world was ever blind
that God had not planned for him to be blind
No person was ever deaf in this world
that God had not planned for him to be deaf
If you do not believe that / you have a strange God
who has a universe which has gone out of gear
and He cannot control it
Behind all diseases and disabilities / we trace the supreme will of God
This does not mean that Satan stands well clear and is uninvolved
Satan is often involved in our sickness
But he does not have the last word on the matter
The story of Job makes it clear / that Satan cannot strike us
with sickness without God permitting it
Job knew this / When he was afflicted with boils
the Word of God says / “Satan afflicted Job with sores” Job 2:7
Satan afflicted Job / but God had a purpose for Job
James brings that up / He said “You have heard
of the steadfastness of Job / and you have seen
the purpose (telos) of the Lord
How the Lord is compassionate and merciful” / James 5:11
FIVE / God is sovereignty over the mistakes and failures of other people
Did the other driver run the red light and hit you?
Did the doctor misdiagnose your illness?
Are these circumstances not under God’s controlling hand?
The Bible affirms that not even people’s wicked acts
nor their unintentional failure / can thwart God’s purpose for us
Margaret Clarkson writes beautifully:
“The sovereignty of God is the one impregnable rock
to which the suffering human hearts must cling
The circumstance surrounding our lives are no accident:
- they may be the work of evil / but that evil is held firmly
within the mighty hand of our sovereign God
All evil is subject to Him / and evil cannot touch His children
unless He permits it”
SIX / God is sovereign over the actions of other people
- especially bad things they do to grieve us
We live from day to day / believing that our future
lies in the hands of other people
We feel that their decisions can determine
the success or failure of our own plans
- we imagine that a government official
can deny our application for a visa to enter a country
- we imagine that a professor
can determine our academic success or failure
- we imagine that a supervisor / an employer / a boss
or a manager can block our career
Quite often / we imagine that we are at the mercy
of the decisions and actions of other people over us
But you are not / never / ever at the mercy of any single human person
The final equation is this:
God rules over those decisions and actions
* Proverbs 21:1 / “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord
Like the rivers of water / He turns it wherever He wishes”
As His children / you can be assured of this:
that all the evil that may be conspired against you / by other people
passes through the sieve / of God’s sovereign control
And God either permits it / or he restrains it
But whether he permits it / or restrains it / one thing we may be sure
For people who love God / all things work out for their good / Rm 8:28
Joseph’s brothers acted spitefully and maliciously against him
- they sold him into slavery
Potiphar’s wife acted viciously against Joseph
and they had him thrown into prison
But through all those difficult periods of his life
God was in sovereign control / to accomplish His purpose for Joseph
And years later / Joseph had this to say to his brothers
Looking at his brothers in the eyes / He said
“It wasn’t you who sent me here / but God” / Gen 45:8
Then he added these now famous words / “You intended to harm me
but God intended it for good” / Gen 50:20
People may plot your fall / instigate / gossip / shoot off a dozen emails
and you may indeed end up looking like a victim of their plot
- but are you?
Not according to Scriptures! / They may do all that
but no one can touch you / unless God allows it
And if God allows it / it must be for your good
and for the good of God larger purpose for you
“Who can speak / and have it happen
if the Lord has not decreed it” Lam 3:37
SEVEN / God is sovereign over life and death
He has absolute control over the length of our lives
The Scripture is abundantly clear on this
* 1 Samuel 2:6 / “The Lord brings death / The Lord makes alive
He brings down to the grave / and raises up”
* Deuteronomy 32:39 / “There is no god besides Me
It is I who put to death and give life
I have wounded and it is I who heal
And there is no one who can deliver from My hand”
God has absolute rights over your life
Each single breath you pull into your lungs comes to you as a gift of God
And when God / should one evening / say to you
“That’s enough friend / Its curtains” / that’s all / it’s over !
God apportions the length of each person’s life
and He is not beholden to anyone for when He takes it away
Sometimes / when women and children are killed / in a huge disaster
people clenched their fists / and hit out at God in anger
But the fact is that He takes away lives every day?
He will take about 155,000 lives away when this day is over
56 million people die each year
7,000 or 8,000 people will have died during this worship service
3,000 from the time I began this sermon to when I finish
Most of these will not die peacefully / in ripe old age
Many will die young / some of a bullet wound / other from an illness
But for each one who dies / God decides when their last heartbeat will be
When God takes away a life / He does absolutely no wrong
whether He takes it at three or eighty-three
God does not owe it to anyone to explain why He should take a life
He is beholden to no one
Psalm 104 / tells us that God gives people their food
They open their hands / God fills them
When He hides His face / they are thrown into confusion
Now listen to this / when He takes away their breath / they die
and return to their dust
Now / if God is sovereign / what difference should it make in my life?
Unless we believe in God’s sovereignty / we will be left to despair
in the face of all the evil and violence and tragedy all around us
I want to illustrate this from the life of one man / Primo Levi
Primo Levi was an Italian Jew who survived the holocaust
He saw unspeakable evil / he came face to face with absolute evil
evil that defied all explanation
Every day / of every week / He smelled the stench of death
But he survived the holocaust
And the amazing thing was that he didn’t afterward take his own life
as many intellectual survivors later did
Walter Benjamin / Stefan Zweig / Bruno Bettelheim
But Levi didn’t take his own life
Instead he married had children / wrote books and won literary prizes
He saw himself as someone who survived to bear witness to the truth
and to serve as guardian of the memory
of the darkest chapter in human history
He’d said many times that although Auschwitz left its mark on him
it had not removed his desire to live
So it came as a shock to many / when on April 11 / 1987
more than forty years after his release from Auschwitz
Primo Levi plunged to his death
down the stairwell of his home in Torino / Italy
- he had taken his own life
How could anyone explain that
He had so much to do to continue to serve as a witness
to the collective conscience of the nations
He had a clear sense of purpose
He may have had a calling / but he had no resource of his own
to make sense / and to go on living / after what he saw
Levi was an atheist when he went to Auschwitz
and the death camp further imprinted in his mind
that there was no god
Levi described how he raged in anger when he heard an old Jew
thank God for saving him from gas chambers
“If I was God” / said Levi / “I would spit at Kuhn’s prayer”
And he wrote in his first book
“If there is an Auschwitz / then there cannot be a God”
As an atheist / Levi didn’t have faith in a sovereign God
Who would be able to give him meaning
to all the meaninglessness that went on to haunt him
through some dark nights of his soul
But as it turned out / Levi’s atheism / like a noose
tightened around him / until it finally snuffed him out
Atheists argue that the presence of evil disproves God
Really / it is the other way around
But for the sovereignty of God / evil is totally inexplicable
God’s sovereignty guarantees the ultimate victory of good over evil
He gave His Son to be impaled on a cross for our evil
He gave His sinless Son to hang there
when we should have hung there
But only the Sinless One can atone our sin
___________________________________________________________
|
