The Sovereignty of God

There are some foundational things we all know and believe about God; what He’s like; His nature.  Things we trust, things we're sure of, things that'll don't change.

1. God is good. He's absolutely pure, holy, righteous, clean, without spot, blemish or defect. There is no evil in Him, no shadow of darkness, no iniquity or impurity.   There is no part of Him that is filthy or dirty.

2. God is Love.   He can hate what's wrong, but He is love.

3. God is Just. In other words, God, at his nature is Just.   He must execute Justice. What that means is God would give us what we deserve.  He is fair. He can only be fair. He is always right in what He doles out. It says that "God is impartial"; He won't favor one over the other.   It says Justice and Judgement are the foundation of His throne.

4. God is Merciful.   This character trait seems to be at odds with His trait of Justice.   He desires Mercy, in other words, not giving us what we deserve. An expression of His mercy is that He’s patient with us, longsuffering. He goes the extra mile to withhold judgement, condemnation, punishment.

5. Lastly, God is Gracious.   This is kinda the converse of Mercy.   With Mercy, God withholds judgement that is deserved.   With Grace, God gives gifts that are not deserved.

There’s lots more to God's nature; we get to spend all eternity getting to know God, but those are some pretty good foundational things.   Kinda like baselines about God's nature.

Put everything I just said in your back pocket for a moment.   Don't forget about those aspects of God's nature, we'll come back to them...

An illustration:   I have a condition with my vision that I experience occasionally.   It doesn't happen very often, and happens even less frequently than it used to (before I got my heart blockage fixed).   Every once in a while, I have a temporary spell where my vision gets affected; it’s called a scintillating scotoma. Basically, I get this blind spot in my eye sight, that looks like a blank hole.   Around the edge of the hole, it's kinda sparkly. It goes away after a few minutes, I don't know it might take up to 15 minutes to go away. So, for that amount of time, I'm on break. I can kinda sorta work; barely, slowly, with difficulty.   It usually happens at work, and if I'm going to get anything done during that time, I have to try real hard to see what's on the computer screen, but I definitely can't see the whole picture, so-to-speak. So, during that period of time, I'm impaired.

I want to ask the question; do we have a blind-spot in our thinking about God. Is there an aspect to God’s nature that we miss.   There’s an aspect to God’s nature that we might even begrudge him. In other words, we want take away from Him. So here’s another aspect to God’s nature, I want us to examine, and apply our lives.

6. God is sovereign.  Like many other theological concepts, that word is not necessarily scriptural, but it does explain a scriptural concept. In other words, God is in control.   God is ruling and reigning over His creation. It may not seem like it sometimes. It may seem like things are spinning out of control, but in reality, things are falling into place.

Psalm 115:3
3 Our God is in the heavens;
   he does all that he pleases

Psalm 135:5 For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods.   6 Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places.

Proverbs 16:9
9 The heart of man plans his way,
   but the Lord establishes his steps.

Job 42:2
2 “I know that you can do all things,
   and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Daniel 4:17…  that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.’

Romans 8:28
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

When we pray, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, we aren’t saying God can’t (or won’t) accomplish His will without us being willing.  We aren't saying unless we're involved in performing God’s will, his ultimate will, shall not come to pass. We are in essence saying, “help me Lord, to surrender and submit my will to conformity with yours. Help me to get in step with your program.  I want to participate in what you're doing.

What about the bad things that happen?   Think about all the bad things that happened to Joseph ( son of Jacob).   Genesis 50:20 But as for you, you thought evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save many people alive.

My goal for telling you this is two fold:

1. That you'd rest in Him
2. That you'd be bold in Him

God bless...